It’s official: The former yacht of the late Saddam Hussein belongs to Iraq.
So says a French appeals court, which recently upheld the block of the sale of the 269-footer currently known as Ocean Breeze but launched as Qadissivat Saddam in 1981.
If you’ve been following my reports over the past few months, you’ll recall that a Cayman Islands company named Sudeley, which is partly owned by King Abdullah of Jordan, has been trying to sell the megayacht through Burgess. Lawyers for Sudeley maintained that the king of Saudi Arabia received the yacht from Hussein in the 1980’s and in turn gave her to King Abdullah. However, in March a tribunal in Nice ruled that Sudeley failed to produce documents proving ownership had ever been transferred from Hussein. Sudeley appealed the ruling, but word came last week that the appeals court, in Aix-en-Provence, confirmed the decision and has additionally ordered Sudeley to pay about $25,000 to Iraq.
No report yet on what the lavishly appointed Ocean Breeze, which has been at the dock in Nice, will be used for, though my guess is that she won’t become a presidential yacht for the current Iraqi government. Why? Because in recent years, money and other assets of Hussein’s and his regime have been transferred to the U.N.-administered Development Fund for Iraq (DFI). The DFI was created to safeguard funds for reconstruction. Also, the lawyers in this case have told reporters previously that they were trying to recover assets of the Iraqi people unlawfully transferred abroad.
Should further developments in this saga occur (and when governments and courts are involved, they very well might), I will post updates accordingly. But for now, it seems settled.
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