RICHARD KAY: Putin's Six-deck Superyacht Groans With Obscene Luxury

To those who recall the modest but elegant dimensions of the Royal Yacht Britannia, it is nothing less than an aberration, a monstrous floating palace built not for a queen but to one man's towering vanity.

That such a ship, where every conceivable surface is of gold or inlaid marble, should be given the name of one of the most gentle and noble figures in literature only adds to the sense of outrage.

For this is the Scheherazade, reputedly Vladimir Putin's £500 million superyacht where each of its six decks groans with obscene luxury and hideous excess.

There is, however, some grim satisfaction that as his guns continue to pulverise the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol and rain death on defenceless citizens across Ukraine, this monument to vulgarity — where even the lavatory paper is dispensed via tasteless golden holders — is, for now at least, trapped behind the masts of a forest of lesser craft and unable to put to sea.

When thousands are dying at his hands, it seems dishonourable to celebrate the impounding in an Italian dry dock of a mere boat.

But then ownership of possessions such as Scheherazade are how Putin, like some latter-day absolute monarch, demonstrates power.

In a country where the average Russian's annual salary is £5,000, the riches lavished on the yacht are almost beyond comprehension.

Outside are twin helipads, capable of landing Russian attack helicopters, immaculate teak decks and a highly sophisticated communication and defence system with the ability to shoot drones out of the sky.

But it is inside that the sheer opulence begins.

There is a self-levelling pool table, a spa with a cryotherapy chamber and a swimming pool that can transform into a dance floor.

There is an aquarium, theatre, ballroom, gym and a Jacuzzi. And for sheer chutzpah, a self-playing grand piano that, allegedly, repeats a song titled Vladimir Putin Is A Fine Fellow.

Below decks is an underground hangar big enough to hold a helicopter, six jet skis, five tenders and eight Seabobs.

Gold fittings and bling are everywhere, from the bathroom taps to the rivets and screws that hold a 4.5-metre-wide television to the wall of one stateroom.

Rumours of Putin's ownership of the vessel have circulated since its construction. But his ownership was not investigated until supporters of jailed Putin critic Alexei Navalny revealed that it was crewed, almost exclusively, by members of Russia's elite secret service, the FSO.

That Putin should be the beneficial owner of a billionaire's plaything is, of course, not the only mystery.

After all, he arrived back in his native Russia in 1989 following the fall of the Berlin Wall, as impecunious as he was disillusioned by the collapse of communism.

Married with two daughters under five, he had been based in the KGB's office in Dresden in East Germany.
His possessions included a clapped out Lada car and a 20-year-old washing machine.

Yet a decade later he was a multi-millionaire and, within 20 years, had amassed a fortune of such gargantuan proportions he was said by some distance to be the world's richest man.

Today, his possessions — along with at least two yachts — include a palace of breathtaking lavishness on Russia's Black Sea coast, and an aircraft upholstered not by a furniture-maker but by a jeweller.

Among a secret portfolio of assets are said to be luxury homes for his mistresses and a collection of priceless wrist watches — his favourites being a £70,000 Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar and a £15,000 Breguet Marine.

This combination of greed and acquisitiveness has marched in lockstep with a vaulting ambition to restore to Russia the influence and empire of its Soviet Union-era heyday.

However, Putin's dream of expansion of Russia's borders through his brutal invasion of Ukraine now threatens the very existence of the one thing he prizes above all others — the prosperity he has accumulated, much of it plundered from the very people he professes to serve.

He is believed to have stashed millions of his personal wealth in London, and a new so-called kleptocracy unit spearheaded by the National Crime Agency is set to launch an investigation. Anyone who is holding property or assets on Putin's behalf will be targeted and could face sanctions.

But layers of secrecy around the Russian president's holdings will make it extremely difficult for investigators to link any assets to him.

Calculating the worth of the one-time penniless KGB operative has been one of the conundrums of the past two decades.

How could a man who likes to describe himself as a mere ‘galley slave', a ‘humble servant' of the people with a state salary of just $140,000 (£104,000), afford to live a life full of such unimaginable excess? This, remember, is a man who boasts the most modest of declared assets — two small apartments, a couple of Russian-built cars and a 1,500 sq metre plot of land.

Yet according to Bill Browder, the U.S.-born hedge fund manager who has exposed much of the corruption in Putin's Russia, this is the same man who has accumulated a £160 billion fortune.

So what are his most visible assets?

First, his Black Sea lair, an 18,000 sq metre Italianate mansion within an estate that is 39 times the size of the principality of Monaco. It includes vineyards, an underground ice hockey rink and a lap-dancing studio.

It cost £1 billion to construct and images posted online by his critics show interiors of gold, marble and bespoke furniture of intricate detail, including a £200,000 leather sofa.

The ground floor accommodates an electric toy car racing track, theatre, casino and ‘aqua disco'. A wine-tasting room has a huge picture window cut into the cliff below the palace.

A lavatory brush imported from Italy for Putin's private bathroom is said to have cost almost £700.

Photographs show canopied four-poster beds adorned with plump cushions, chandeliers and a swimming pool decorated with statues of Greek gods.

In all, the style is said to be reminiscent of Louis XIV, France's so-called Sun King who famously lost touch with reality.

There is a no-fly zone overhead and a one-kilometre exclusion zone out to sea.

Between the house and the perimeter are other properties such as a dacha, vineyard and a Byzantine-style church imported from Greece and painstakingly reassembled.

If you loved this information as well as you desire to be given more info relating to หวยออนไลน์ generously go to the web site. The Kremlin, of course, denies that Putin owns any palaces.

However, a former business associate, who collaborated on the project, has said publicly that the funds for the construction were raised by a combination of ‘corruption, bribery and theft'.
Like most things that have fallen into Putin's ample lap, it didn't cost him a single rouble.

According to his biographer Mark Galeotti, funding came via a Kremlin decree for ‘health services' in that part of southern Russia.

While some money may have been spent on hospitals and the like, much was skimmed off to pay for the extraordinary presidential hideaway — which his enemies say is just one of up to 20 homes Putin has access to.

Other presidential assets are said to include 15 helicopters, an Airbus, two Dassault Falcon jets and an Ilyushin airliner with a £13 million neoclassical cabin with its bejewelled trimmings and a bathroom said to have cost £47,000.

Then there is Graceful, a £73 million, 270 ft sister ship to Scheherazade.

A few weeks ago, its crew suddenly set sail from a boatyard in Germany where it had been undergoing modifications — a move no doubt to avoid probable economic sanctions against Russia.