Things are looking bad for Heesen Yachts from Oss. The luxury yacht builder must quickly get rid of her Russian owner Vagit Alekperov to avoid sanctions, but that became a bit more difficult on Thursday afternoon after summary proceedings in the court of Amsterdam.
What exactly is that? Heesen Yachts is owned by the wealthy Russian, but wants to get rid of him. Alekperov is seen as a friend of Putin and so there are serious sanctions against the company. To speed things up, Heesen wanted to transfer all the shares of the Russian into a new foundation.
But an Amsterdam notary’s office does not want to cooperate, because it can be seen as evading the sanction rules. In order to push through the plan, the company from Oss instituted summary proceedings. But that did not have the desired result on Thursday. The court in Amsterdam agreed with the notary’s office.
Sanctions list
And so Heesen Yachts is not yet getting rid of the Russian owner. In fact, he has been on a British and Australian sanctions list for some time. As a result, Heesen has not been welcome at large yacht shows for some time and important parts are no longer supplied from, for example, Great Britain.
There is a good chance that Alekperov will soon also be on an EU sanctions list. If he still owns Heesen Yachts, that would mean a huge problem for the Osse yacht builder.
Bankruptcy
According to the company itself, bankruptcy is inevitable. When it does come to that, a thousand people will be on the street. Suppliers would also be the victims.
The judge said Thursday that those concerns are justified. Nevertheless, the notary’s office would have acted carefully and rightly not have gone along with the transfer of Alekperov’s shares.
Heesen built this enormous yacht, among other things. At the beginning of this year it was in the news because it could not pass under bridges.