Russian Billionaire Can’t Scuttle $300 Million Yacht Forfeiture

A Russian billionaire bid to stop the forfeiture of a $300 million superyacht he claims to own failed Monday after the Second Circuit ruled he doesn’t have standing to contest the US government’s seizure.

The New York-based three-judge panel agreed with a district court that former Rosneft OJSC. head Eduard Khudainatov is likely only a straw owner of the 348-foot yacht, the Amadea. The ruling sides with the US government that alleges the boat is actually owned by Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov, who was sanctioned by the Biden administration in a larger effort to target wealthy Russians linked to Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Straw owners who hold the title for somebody else “do not have Article III standing to contest the property’s forefeiture because they ‘do not themselves suffer an injury when the property is taken,’” Judge Raymond J. Lohier Jr. of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said. Senior Judge Barrington D. Parker and Judge Sarah A. L. Merriam signed on to the opinion.

Khudainatov transferred possession, dominion and control, any financial stake, and all other ownership through a September 2021 memorandum of agreement in which his company, Millemarin Investments Ltd., sold the Amadea for €225 million (nearly $262 million) to a Cayman Islands entity formed less than one week before the agreement was signed.

The yacht was seized in Fiji in 2022 at the request of the US by a Justice Department task force dubbed KleptoCapture. The government claimed the boat was owned by Kerimov, who has a net worth of $11.9 billion and is the 293rd wealthiest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The US government says Khudainatov, who is not on the task force’s list of sanctioned billionaires, is covering Kerimov’s ownership to help him dodge the sanctions.

‘Colorable Interest’

The US District Court for the Southern District of New York in March 2025 concluded that after the agreement was signed, Khudainatov held only “bare title” to the Amadea.

None of Khudainatov’s “asserted connections” to the boat before the 2021 agreement help support his claim that he continued to have a “facially colorable interest” in the boat after that date, Lohier said. Khudainatov and his family stopped using the Amadea after the agreement was signed and none of his personal possessions were on the boat when it was seized, the judge said.

The US government “made a prima facie showing” that Khudainatov was a straw owner, Lohier said. The district court was correct in finding that Khudainatov’s legal title “to the Amadea did not itself establish standing to contest the Amadea’s forfeiture,” the judge added.

Shapiro Arato Bach LLP, Brune Law PC, and Ford O’Brien Landy LLP represent Khudainatov.

The case is United States of America v. Khudainatov, 2d Cir., No. 25-869, opinion 6/1/26.