It would be a spectacular find: On a confiscated Russian luxury yacht, US authorities discover a work of art that could be one of the rare Fabergé eggs. The ship is reportedly owned by billionaire Suleiman Kerimov.
US authorities may have found a valuable Fabergé egg on board a Russian luxury yacht. This is reported by several media unanimously. The British “Guardian” quoted US Attorney General Lisa Monaco as saying that it was one of the “most interesting” finds her team had made. She did not provide any information about the owner of the confiscated ship.
According to CNN, it is the yacht “Amadea” owned by the oligarch Suleiman Kerimov, which is currently anchored in the bay off the Californian city of San Diego. Their value is 300 million US dollars (currently around 294 million euros).
Speaking at a security conference in Colorado, the US Attorney General said, according to The Guardian, “We found some really interesting things… we found a Fabergé egg – or a supposed Fabergé egg – on one of these [yachts]. , so it’s getting more and more interesting.”
Of the 52 known Fabergé eggs, six are currently considered lost. The works of art were made from 1885 in the workshop of the Russian goldsmith Peter Carl Fabergé in St. Petersburg. All of the eggs were owned by the Russian royal family until the Russian October Revolution in 1917, and today many of them are on display in museums.
Due to their rarity, the value of the objects is difficult to quantify. The most expensive Fabergé egg to ever change hands at auction was sold at Christie’s in London in 2007 for the equivalent of around 12.5 million euros. According to the Guardian, US Attorney General Monaco also emphasized that the work of art, should it turn out to be real, would be one of the few surviving Fabergé eggs in the world and worth millions of dollars.
In the course of the sanctions against Russia since the beginning of the Ukraine war, authorities in the EU and the USA have not only frozen the accounts of numerous Russian oligarchs, but also confiscated luxury yachts and real estate. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Suleiman Kerimov, whose ship is said to be the subject of this case, is currently the 128th richest person in the world with a fortune of $13.3 billion.
