Russians send nearly 50 ghost yachts to Estonia over the summer

After Estonia, Turkey remains in second place in this ranking with 31, or a fourth smaller number of yachts owned by Russian owners. Photo: Pixabay

Russian customs declarations available to the Postimees show that 43 yachts have been brought from Russia to Estonia over the course of three months this summer, which is more than ever before and many times more than to other European Union countries at the same time, but there is no confirmation that these vessels have indeed arrived in Estonian ports.

According to Russian customs declarations, the most expensive yacht imported to Estonia is the 10-year-old Sunseeker Predator, which, according to the documents, is worth 5.46 million euros. In terms of price, it is followed by Ferretti 780, completed four years ago, with 3.37 million euros and Azimut 78 with 3.08 million euros.

According to the customs declarations, the value of 16, or more than a third, of the yachts allegedly brought to Estonia this year in May, June and July exceeds one million euros. Although luxury vessels are generally categorized by their length and level of service, most often those priced between one and 10 million euros are considered superyachts.

The cheapest vessel that arrived in Estonia -- the almost 8-meter-long Bombus -- costs a little more than 150,000 euros. Vessels with a value between 100,000 and one million euros are simply classified as yachts. Vessels worth less than 100,000 euros are considered boats.

At the same time, according to the customs declarations, six yachts went to Finland, but none to Sweden, Latvia and Lithuania. After Estonia, Turkey is in second place in this ranking with 31 yachts with Russian owners.

Postimees also forwarded the obtained data to the Estonian Tax and Customs Board with a request to check them. The authority appointed one of its specialists to investigate the matter and announced after a few days that the yachts exported from Russia had not been submitted to Estonian customs for import.

«Estonia's import statistics do not confirm that such a volume of watercraft has been declared for import in Estonia in the period 2021-2023,» Karin Ulvik, a specialist at the department of communication and external relations of the Tax and Customs Board, said..

Since certain vessels can also enter the European Union temporarily, without the aim of declaring the final import, and Estonian customs are not present in all ports, the Tax and Customs Board also turned to partner institutions with an inquiry. Both the Estonian Navy and the Police and Border Guard Board confirmed that they have not registered the entry into Estonian waters of any of the yachts shown in the Russian customs declarations obtained by Postimees.

The Navy said that the yachts in question have not been in Estonian ports this year. A random check by the Tax and Customs Board revealed that some of the 43 yachts that were allegedly brought to Estonia are still located in the territory of the Russian Federation.

Jaanus Rahumagi, who heads the international security company ESC Global Security, which deals with ensuring the security of shipping companies around the world, speculated that it could be a scheme created for Russian customs.

«The Russian customs demands that a ship with a foreign flag leave Russia after six months of duty-free stay in Russia or pay state taxes, and the documents are fictitiously filled out,» he said.

According to him, it is not clear from the customs declarations whether this is a case of movement of yachts or a sale.

Rahumagi said that it would have stood out in Estonian ports if such a large number of large vessels had entered the ports here.

«Therefore, it seems to be some kind of a bureaucratic necessity arising from Russian laws and Estonia has been included in the documents as a target country for some logical reason,» he added.

Rahumagi offered as one possibility that «there is some arbitrary agent from Estonia who has stamped eight seals and written 13 signatures onto the papers, issued documents that they will receive the ship in Estonia». This likely suited the Russian customs and then others started using the same scheme, he speculated.

Jaano Martin Ots, communications manager of the Estonian Maritime Museum and CEO of the Estonian Small Harbour Development Center, said that none of the buyers of the yachts shown in the Russian customs declarations are active in the Estonian boat business, so no systematic scheme can be seen behind these data.

«It seems that the Russians are saving their property, because the entry of boats with a Russian registration number into the ports of the European Union, including Estonia, was banned essentially right at the beginning of the war [started in Ukraine],» he said.

Ots added that there are almost no ships with Russian hull numbers in Estonian ports and harbors anymore, most of them disappeared from winter storage already in the first year of the war. He speculated that the Russian customs declarations may reflect the re-registration of boats that were already previously in European Union ports, and added that it is unlikely any of them actually came to Estonia, because one cannot currently leave Russia by sea without a special permit.

«It is possible that these boats were bothered in European Union ports because of Russian numbers, they were required to pay some taxes and so on, and they think that it is easier to formalize all this in Estonia,» Ots said. «And if they parade around with the Estonian flag somewhere in the Mediterranean, then nobody has anything to say -- it's the European Union, after all.»

Looking at the brief descriptions of the vessels in the customs declarations, Ots said that many of these yachts appear to be tax evasion boats with the aim of renting them out or leasing them, an option that is then usually used by the actual owners themselves.

Karin Ulvik summarized that, based on the available information, the Tax and Customs Board is of the opinion that the vessels indicated in the Russian declarations have not moved to Estonia, but she promised to continue the investigation of whether the vessels could have entered by evading customs control or in other fraudulent ways.

«We are also further strengthening cooperation with partner institutions in order to exclude possible cases of evasion of import sanctions,» Ulvik said. «It cannot be ruled out that the purpose of declaring exports in Russia was to commit tax or customs fraud there, including providing false information.»