The U.K. took the additional step late Friday of banning all private Russian aircraft from the nation’s airspace. However, most of the billionaires have registered their jets in other jurisdictions, raising questions about the measure’s effectiveness.
Meanwhile, public backlash is mounting against Abramovich due to his Chelsea FC ownership. Sports investors and private equity firms, including some from the U.S., have began to draw up potential takeover offers for the football club in case sanctions force the Russian billionaire to sell, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News. Chelsea has already fielded an enquiry this month, one of the people said.
One of Abramovich’s yachts, the Solaris, is in Barcelona, while the other, the Eclipse, is in Saint Martin in the Caribbean.
Russian billionaires crave the legitimacy afforded from places frequented by high-net-worth individuals, such as New York, London and Singapore, said Raj Bhala, a professor at the University of Kansas Law School who specializes in international trade.
“To then be denied that access or to be shunned from those sorts of places does hurt them,” he said. “I wouldn’t underestimate that.”
Family Risk
If the U.S. imposes sanctions on Russia’s ultra-wealthy individuals, penalties could extend to family members as well, said Rachel Fiorill, a lawyer for Paul Weiss and former enforcement section chief at the Treasury Department.
If sanctions were a risk, “you would want to remove all of your assets from the United States,” she said in an interview. “That would include financial assets as well as physical assets.”
A broadside against Russia’s billionaire class isn’t so simple for most countries. Neither is penalizing a head of state, though the U.S. plans to join the European Union and the U.K. in sanctioning Putin, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News on Friday, with the announcement of the symbolic step expected soon.
Meanwhile, Putin is rolling out a domestic response to sanctions that will initially focus on assisting lenders hit with penalties, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News, which may soften any economic blow in the coming weeks. The country’s richest lost $39 billion on Thursday alone, according to the Bloomberg wealth index.
Still, many of the billionaires are enjoying global travels. At least four of their superyachts remained anchored in Barcelona. Two were last parked along the Florida coast, in Miami and Palm Beach.
--With assistance from Alex Sazonov, Neil Callanan, Claire Ballentine, Harry Wilson, Jill R. Shah and Sophie Alexander.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.