Fake journeys, fake customers: inside Roman Abramovich’s yacht rental scam.
The oligarch’s scheme to skirt taxes on his boats was enterprising, elaborate – and illegal.
Here’s how it worked.
'#InsatiableGreed': Richest 1% Have Already Burned Through Their #CarbonLimit for 2025
"The #SuperRich continue to squander humanity's chances with their lavish lifestyles, polluting stock portfolios and pernicious political influence. This is theft—pure and simple."
Jake Johnson, Jan 10, 2025
"An #Oxfam analysis published Friday shows that the richest 1% of the global population has already blown through its global carbon budget for 2025—just 10 days into the New Year. The figures, which arrive amid catastrophic fires in Los Angeles that may turn out to be the costliest in U.S. history, highlight the disproportionate role of the #UltraWealthy in fueling a #ClimateEmergency that is causing devastation around the world.
"Oxfam calculates that in order to keep critical climate goals in reach, each person on Earth must have a CO2 footprint of roughly 2.1 tons per year or less. On average, each person in the global 1% is burning through 76 tons of planet-warning carbon dioxide annually—or 0.209 per day—meaning it took them just over a week to reach their CO2 limit for the year.
"By contrast, the average person in the poorest 50% of humanity has an annual carbon footprint of 0.7 tons per year—well within the 2.1-ton budget compatible with a livable future.
"'The future of our planet is hanging by a thread,' Nafkote Dabi, Oxfam International's climate change policy lead, said in a statement Friday. 'The margin for action is razor-thin, yet the super-rich continue to squander humanity's chances with their lavish lifestyles, polluting stock portfolios and pernicious political influence.'
"'This is theft—pure and simple―a tiny few robbing billions of people of their future to feed their insatiable greed,' Dabi added.
"'Rich polluters must be made to pay for the havoc they're wreaking on our planet.'
"Oxfam's new analysis came as the @CopernicusEU Climate Change Service confirmed that 2024 was the hottest year on record and 'the first calendar year that the average global temperature exceeded 1.5°C above its #PreIndustrial level.'
"'All of the internationally produced global temperature datasets show that 2024 was the hottest year since records began in 1850,' Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement. 'Humanity is in charge of its own destiny, but how we respond to the climate challenge should be based on evidence. The future is in our hands—swift and decisive action can still alter the trajectory of our future climate.'
"Oxfam called on governments to move urgently to curb the emissions of the rich, including by implementing #WealthTaxes, banning #PrivateJets and #Superyachts, and imposing strict new regulations on #polluting companies.
"'Governments need to stop pandering to the richest,' Dabi said Friday. 'Rich polluters must be made to pay for the havoc they're wreaking on our planet. Tax them, curb their emissions, and ban their excessive indulgences—private jets, superyachts, and the like. Leaders who fail to act are effectively choosing complicity in a crisis that threatens the lives of billions.'"
https://www.commondreams.org/news/rich-carbon-limit
#EatTheRich #YeetTheRich #Oligarchy #CorporateColonialism #CorporateGreed #TechBros #CEOSeason
"How Superyachts Explain the World" [ ± 1min]
by MotherJones
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/w3-6hn7EP5M
Quote by MJ:
"Jan 3, 2024
This is how superyachts explain the world. For the last 18 months, one of the most opulent and unnecessary vessels ever constructed has been floating in a narrow channel next to a jungle gym and a fleet of industrial cranes at the Port of San Diego. Built in Germany, the superyacht Amadea is 348 feet long, with a helipad, a swimming pool, two baby grand pianos, and a 5-ton stainless steel art-deco albatross. And costs $1 million a month to maintain. Who has been picking up that tab in the past is a matter of some dispute, tangled up in a web of trusts and LLCs, code names and NDAs, and legal proceedings in two countries.
But the ship’s current owner is a bit less ambiguous: Congratulations—it’s you. The capture of the Amadea was perhaps the most spectacular piece of a larger international reckoning. In the nearly two years since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the US and its allies have blocked, seized, or frozen more than $280 billion in assets from hundreds of sanctioned Russian businessmen, politicians, family members, and fixers. By putting the squeeze on what the Treasury Department called Putin’s “enablers,” the thinking goes, these governments can hit him where it hurts, isolate his regime, and pressure Russia to wind down the war.
But pay enough attention to our American infrastructure of wealth, secrecy, and tax avoidance, and you might find yourself asking an uncomfortable question: If the Amadea is a symbol of a failed political and economic system, what exactly does that make all of our superyachts? As investigators pored over bank statements and real estate records, they added new layers to a map journalists and watchdogs have been piecing together for years. Through a labyrinth of corporations, trusts, and false fronts, oligarch money made its way into the hands of nannies in California, fracking firms in Texas, wealth managers in New York, and startups in Silicon Valley.
Tim Murphy's essay on superyachts opens up our American Oligarchy series, shedding insight into how the world's most useless and opulent people are hiding out on useless and opulent vehicles, watching a planet they stripped for parts.
@Radical_EgoCom Moreover, extreme capitalists in the US turn the environment into a #TragedyOfTheCommons by dumping a disproportional amount of carbon into the atmosphere with their #SuperYachts #PrivateJets and only pay a max 37% in taxes.
The Tories are right, we should stop the boats. Just not the ones they’re talking about - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/18/tories-stop-the-boats-superyachts-plutocrats-britain "The ocean-poisoning #superyachts of global plutocrats are a symbol of the class that’s really behind Britain’s misfortunes"
Documents show putin’s order to move superyacht before #Ukraine invasion
"Graceful" features a 15-metre indoor swimming pool that can be converted into a dancefloor, is just one of several #superyachts linked to putin.
An email sent to Hamburg’s Blohm+Voss shipyard on 19 January 2022 said: “The owner wants the Graceful to be brought to the russian federation on February 1st … Please mobilise an uninterrupted crew – 2 shifts.”
Read more here 
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/29/documents-show-putins-order-to-move-superyacht-before-ukraine-invasion
All those #Russian #superyachts that got seized over #RussiaUkraineWar are turning out to be money pits. Bloomberg reports that seized superyachts are sitting at ports all over and running into money pits. And taxpayers opening wallets to maintain them https://bloom.bg/3tfBLSG
