When you think that Germany already stole a 600 million dollar boat from a rich Russian, stealing 150 million in boats doesn’t sound so bad.
Or maybe it sounds worse?
Italian police have seized more than $150 million worth of yachts and villas from four superrich Russians who had been placed on an EU sanctions list after Moscow attacked Ukraine, sources told Reuters Saturday.
A luxe villa owned by billionaire businessman Alisher Usmanov on the island of Sardinia, as well as a villa on Lake Como owned by state TV host Vladimir Soloviev have been seized, police sources told the outlet.
Yachts belonging to Russia’s richest man, Alexey Mordashov — who has a net worth just north of $29 billion, according to Forbes — and Gennady Timchenko, who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, were impounded overnight in the northern Italian port of Imperia.
Russian oligarchs reportedly bought a number of luxury estates in Italy over the past 20 years and sources said more of them are expected to be seized in coming days as the West increases its sanctions against Russia.
The Bank of Italy’s financial intelligence division on Friday told Italian banks to notify it of all measures taken to freeze the assets of people and entities placed on the EU list.
Yachts are not an investment item, they’re a luxury pleasure vehicle. So if you’re a billionaire, maybe you do own more than one, but I don’t think people collect them.
Most likely, some of these boats stolen in Italy are only worth a couple million dollars, belonging to people who are not “super-rich” but just “rich” (or even what we might call “upper middle class”), and they’re just stealing them because they belong to Russians.
The same goes for the estates they’re going to steal. I mean, you don’t have to be a billionaire to have a vacation home in Southern Italy.
But at this point, they’ve also said they’re going to steal condos in Miami. These could be worth less than $150,000.
Basically, all property owned by Russian nationals is going to be confiscated. I wouldn’t be surprised if they start stopping Russians at the airport and stealing their watches, cellphones, and the cash from their wallets.
This has never been done before.
The closest thing I can think of is Mario “repossessing” the wealth and estates of Bowser.
Mario went in and stole all of the guy’s gold coins, then repossessed the estates he owned across multiple territories – including his beach villa in Florida.
Let’s be real – we don’t know the relationship between Peach and Bowser, but it seems unlikely to me that she wasn’t sexually involved with him before the alleged “kidnapping.”
It goes without saying that this did not happen in the Cold War.
Stealing people’s stuff because they’re from a country is a totally new thing, and something people should probably be noting.
There are all kinds of weird escalations going on all over the place, but the confiscation of private property is one of the weirder ones, and one of the ones that has pretty wide-reaching implications.
Twitter has already started labeling independent journalists who don’t agree with NATO and point out the brutality of the Zelensky revolutionary occupation government as “Russian state operatives.” So how long until they get their property seized?
I’ve personally been accused of being a Russian agent. How long until I look out the window to find these people towing my 2008 Honda Civic?
This state seizing of property also happened to the trucker freedom protesters in Canada. The government seized their bank accounts and moved to seize their other assets.
A moral crusade is always a scary thing when it is separated from actual morality, and I don’t think there is really a bottom on it.