Russian threatens to sue Shapps over online video of superyacht seizure

Had it not been for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the £38 million superyacht Phi would be gliding through the blue waters of the Mediterranean this weekend, while its passengers enjoyed its onboard luxuries.

For a charter fee of €500,000 (£421,000) a week, guests could take advantage of its freshwater swimming pool, an outdoor cinema, black marble bathrooms and an “infinite” wine cellar.

Instead, the 192ft boat is languishing in a dock at Canary Wharf, east London, from which it has barely moved since it was boarded by officers from the National Crime Agency (NCA) in March and served with a detention notice. The yacht is the most high-profile Russian-owned asset targeted by the British government in response to the outbreak of the Ukrainian conflict.

At the time of the raid, Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, described the sleek new vessel as “an icon of Russia’s power and wealth” and hailed its arrest as a “stark warning to Putin and his cronies”.

In a TikTok video he filmed at the quayside, Shapps referred to its owner as an “oligarch” and a personal “friend” of the Russian president.

Now, however, the yacht’s secretive owner, Sergei Naumenko, has hit back, accusing Shapps of defaming him and putting him on notice of a libel action.

Naumenko, who strongly denies having any ties to Putin, is also due to challenge the legality of his yacht’s continued detention in a High Court test case.

The development threatens to undermine the UK’s approach to Russia-linked sanctions and could leave taxpayers with a bill running into hundreds of thousands of pounds for costs and loss of earnings incurred by Naumenko and his all-British crew.

“This was nothing more than a publicity stunt,” said Guy Booth, the yacht’s captain, as he gave us a tour of the stranded vessel a few days ago. “Mr Shapps was parading up and down the quay for the cameras like a big game hunter posing with a dead rhino,” he added.

 “I generally speak to the boss [Naumenko] twice a week ... and he is of course understandably frustrated and feels he has been unjustly punished. He is nothing to do with the current Russian regime.”

Unlike the owners of other superyachts and private jets that have been detained or seized across the world, Naumenko is not the subject of sanctions himself.

Officers working for the NCA’s Combating Kleptocracy Cell boarded the Phi at Canary Wharf on March 29 just hours before it was to set sail for international waters.

The Dutch-built vessel had been docked in London for the fitting of its plush interior, including leather wall panels and oak flooring, as well as for inspection by judges in an international superyacht competition. It was detained using regulations drawn up after Brexit that give the transport secretary the power to hold “a ship owned, controlled, chartered or operated by persons connected with Russia”.

Booth, 52, who has worked for Naumenko for eight years, claimed the broad definition was “arbitrary” and could equally apply to the children of wealthy Russians attending private schools in the UK.

He indicated that any High Court action was likely to question the lawfulness of punishing an entire people for the actions of a leader.

Although there is little mention of Naumenko in public records, Booth said the businessman was in his mid-fifties and lived in the Ural mountains in western Russia.

A DfT spokeswoman said: “We stand firmly by our decision to detain assets such as the Phi. The secretary of state will continue to act within his available powers to ratchet up the economic pressure on Russia and make life harder for Russian elites. We will always stand with Ukraine against this despicable and illegal war.”