Wake · Issue No. 01 · Summer 2026

Scheherazade

On paper: Bielor Asset Ltd, an anonymous Marshall Islands shell; US DOJ names ex-Rosneft chief Eduard Khudainatov as proxy owner, Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation says the real owner is Vladimir Putin — still impounded at Marina di Carrara, Italy, with no forfeiture or sale as of early 2026.

Nobody owns Scheherazade. That is the official position, and it has held for four years — through a freezing order, a crew-list exposé, a US indictment naming a proxy, and a refit conducted, improbably, under armed guard. On paper she belongs to Bielor Asset Ltd, a Marshall Islands shell with no face and no forwarding address. In practice, somebody has been quietly wiring money to Tuscany the entire time — for crew, for dockage, for upgrades — and the Italian state, which seized her, will not say who.

She was built to be invisible. Lürssen delivered her in June 2020 as Project Lightning: 140 metres, 10,167 gross tons, Espen Oeino outside, François Zuretti inside. Two helipads. An indoor pool with a retractable dance floor, a hammam, a cryotherapy chamber, gold fittings in the bathrooms. No outdoor pools — a deliberate omission, for privacy. She summered in Sochi, called at Hurghada, then settled into The Italian Sea Group's yard at Marina di Carrara in September 2021 for work. She never left.

The unravelling came from an unexpected quarter. In March 2022, Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation published her crew list. Every crew member but the captain was Russian, and at least ten were serving officers of the FSO — the Federal Protective Service, the agency whose day job is guarding the Russian president. State employees, rotating to Tuscany in groups, to polish a boat that officially belonged to no one. Within days the Russian crew vanished from Carrara overnight, replaced by a British complement. On 6 May 2022, the Guardia di Finanza executed the freezing order. That same month the US Department of Justice named Eduard Khudainatov, the former Rosneft chief executive, as her proxy owner. Navalny's team was blunter: Khudainatov, they argued, was a nominee — a man of comfortable but not $700-million means, suddenly the paper owner of a small fleet of the world's largest yachts. The New York Times noted she appears to be a sister ship to the 135-metre Crescent, linked to Igor Sechin. A family resemblance, in every sense.

What followed is the strangest chapter in the seized-fleet saga. Most frozen yachts rot. Scheherazade got better. Italy permitted the unnamed owner to keep paying for maintenance, staff and refit work throughout her detention — Rome confirmed the arrangement to NPR in 2023 while declining to identify the payer. In February 2024 she left port for the first time in two years, for yard operations, with Italian navy ships shadowing her lest her transponders go dark and she make a run for international waters. She returned. She always returns.

As of early 2026 she is still there, immaculate at Marina di Carrara: no forfeiture, no auction, no owner. Italian prosecutors cannot conclusively pin beneficial ownership on a sanctioned individual; the Marshall Islands paperwork holds. Compare the Amadea — Khudainatov's other alleged nominee holding — which a US court cleared for sale in 2025 after a three-year fight. Scheherazade endures in limbo, the best-kept boat in purgatory.

Her hero is a phantom: an owner so powerful that his name cannot be spoken, so committed that he funds a yacht he may never board again, guarded once by his own security service and now by the state that took her. Four years on, the cheques still clear. Somewhere, someone is keeping the faith — at ten per cent of $700 million a year.

The record

• Navalny's team found at least ten FSO officers — Putin's own protection service — on the crew list; every crew member except the captain was Russian.
• Frozen by Italy's Guardia di Finanza on 6 May 2022 at Marina di Carrara — still there, with no forfeiture or sale, as of early 2026.
• The unnamed owner has kept paying for crew, upkeep and a refit throughout detention; Rome confirms the arrangement but refuses to say who pays.
• The US DOJ named ex-Rosneft CEO Eduard Khudainatov as proxy owner in May 2022; Navalny's foundation calls him a stand-in for Putin.
• Built as Project Lightning and delivered in 2020: two helipads, an indoor pool with retractable dance floor, a cryotherapy chamber — and no outdoor pools, for privacy.