A sanctioned Russian oligarch’s superyacht was trying to dock in Cape Town, but the South African government declined to detain it.
The 57-year-old millionaire mentioned in the Pandora Papers and owner of the Russian mining firms Nordgold and Severstal, Alexey Mordashov, is the owner of the $500 million superyacht.
With a net worth of $13.2 billion, Mordashov was listed as the 51st richest person in the world by Forbes the previous year. Since the beginning of this year, he has lost about £10 billion as a result of western sanctions aimed at him and his commercial interests.
According to a spokeswoman for South Africa, there is “no reason” for the nation to abide by Western sanctions against Mordashov.
‘South Africa has no legal obligation to abide by sanctions imposed by the US and EU,’ said Vincent Magwenya, spokesman for South Africa’s president. ‘We have no reason to prevent their entry into South Africa.
‘South Africa’s obligations with respect to sanctions relate only to those that are specifically adopted by the United Nations. Currently, there are no UN-imposed sanctions on the particular individual.’
According to Mail Online, members of the African National Congress party, which controls South Africa, participated as observers in the phony referendums that were held in some Ukrainian areas last month as a cover for annexing the country’s occupied east.
The former Soviet Union trained and aided the ANC’s soldiers throughout South Africa’s apartheid era, and the two countries have a long history together.
However, Cape Town’s mayor, Geordin Hill-Lewis, stated that he did not want his city to become into a haven for Russians escaping Western sanctions.
He said South Africa has a ‘moral duty to protest unjust war,’ according to The Times.
Hill-Lewis of the opposition Democratic Alliance party tweeted that there should be “no place” for “enablers of Putin’s war,” urging the government to prevent the superyacht from docking.
