It’s likely you’ve seen a few headlines about the massive superyachts belonging to Russian billionaires in overseas harbors being seized by various governments in opposition to the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine. Yachts in Italy (most notably Russian billionaire Andrey Igorevich Melnichenko’s $538 million Sailing Yacht A and Alexei Mordashov’s Lady M, pictured below), France, and the UK have been sanctioned, and in his recent State of the Union address President Biden promised the same for “your yachts, your luxury apartments, your private jets.”

But what exactly happens to a seized superyacht? A recent CNBC story tells the tale, which might be a lot more complicated than you imagine. Legally speaking, it’s not a simple matter to determine what happens with a seized yacht once an international sanction is imposed.

Every country has its own laws governing such sanctions, but many of the current rounds go beyond any legal precedent, which creates numerous challenges for the governments involved. As British lawyer Benjamin Maltby, who specializes in yacht and luxury asset law put it to CNBC:

“We’re in uncharted waters…The situations we’re seeing now have never really occurred before.”

To actually seize property in this way, governments have to go beyond the usual legal bounds of freezing assets, which means that the property in question remains the property of its owner, but can’t be used or sold/transferred in any way to another party….