US application unit concluded by Donald Trump wins the right to auction yacht Russian

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American prosecutors have won the right to a tender with a $ 300 million superlyacht, but Donald Trump’s new general lawyer has dissolved the unity aimed at Russian illicit assets and raised questions about the direction of future efforts.

US Department of Justice It is expected to advance with the sale of Amadea, a movement that would raise the largest amount from its working group now deceased by Kleptocapture, ending years of high maintenance costs, supported by the Government, while the ship was under arrest.

But the cases that have been investigated by the unit and have not yet been accused are probably abandoned or deactivated, if not considered particularly important, according to a former prosecutor who worked at the initiative. And there is a lower probability of transferring revenues to support Kyiv, which was part of the initial goal of the program, but gave less than $ 6 billion compared to last year.

Meanwhile, the application efforts are expected to move away from the oligarchs and the confiscation of assets to emphasize an emerging concentration on export controls around sensitive technology.

Doj could continue to follow cases where there is a chance to sell confiscated assets with high maintenance costs, specialists said.

“It is unusual to give up a case, especially with a case you have won,” said Andrew Adams, a partner at Steptoe and the former director of the working group.

Lawyer General American Pam Bondi, named last month, dissolved Kleptocaptura, deviation of resources for combating drug cards and transnational criminal organizations. The unit was launched by the Biden administration just a few days after the widespread invasion of Ukraine from 2022 in Moscow, in an attempt to apply sanctions and to “respond corruptly Russian oligarchi ”.

The movement comes as Trump faced Kyiv in terms of American military aid and adopted a more friendly position than Moscow. But on Friday, the US and its G7 partners warned Russia that they could extend the sanctions, as Trump is trying to win on Russian President Vladimir Putin at his fire proposal.

The authorities confiscated Amadea, a 348 -meter ship with a helipad, a lobster tank and a swimming pool, in May 2022. It was towed to San Diego, where it remained on Friday, according to MarinetraFfic.

The prosecutors claimed that the yacht was the property of Suleiman Kerimov, a Russian gold tycoon with Kremlin ties under sanctions and were subjected to confiscation due to the potential violation of US and other statutes. Kerimov refused the property and a former executive director of the Russian oil company Rosneft, Eduard Khudainatov, claimed to be the true owner in judicial submission.

Judge Dale Ho of the Federal Court of Manhattan concluded that Khudainatov was a “simple straw” and allowed the auction to rule on the decisions issued on Monday and Tuesday. Adam Ford, a lawyer representing Khudainatov, said that the decision was “legal and faulty” and said he would appeal against it, causing “any sale or illegitimate transfer through international legal channels”.

Doj refused to comment.

Beyond the assets seizures, Kleptocapture collapsed on the illicit export of US sensitive technology, which could be used to develop nuclear and hypersonic weapons, quantum calculation or other military tools.

On his first day back to the White House, Trump in January issued an executive order that requested an assessment of “how to identify and eliminate the gaps in the existing export controls”.

The secretary of trade, Howard Lutnick, during his confirmation hearing, rang this accent, saying: “We must find a way to support our export controls with tariff models.” The force of Strike Technology, a common Effort and the Department of Commerce, aimed at preventing foreign opponents, which illegally acquire sensitive American technology, remains in force.

The concentration of applying the counter-project was “to continue, if it does not grow,” said Artie McConnell, a partner at Bakerhostetler and a former prosecutor working on cases of Kleptocapture. “There is a wide bipartidist consensus that, regardless of what is happening in Ukraine, we do not want our things to appear in the wars used by our opponents.”

“We do not want the Russians to widen the gap in hypersonic. We do not want the Chinese to develop the first quantum computer, ”he added. “There is a wider global security impulse for all these.”

While luxury boats, jets and apartments in the center of these cases captivate the public, experts claim that the disclosure of the supposed canvas of companies and co-conspirators who facilitate illegal transactions throughout the globe to benefit from Russian tycoon under sanctions is the true success of the working group.

“An objective of Kleptocapture was to disturb the network of hidden property structures, transfers of illicit money and facilitators,” said Joshua Naftalis, a partner in Pallas and the former Doj lawyer who worked on kleptocapture cases. “All the people and entities that made possible were really the idea.”