It is starting to be a worrying trend as more and more yachts are seized. Remember Bernard Madoff’s Bull seized in France, or Allen Stanford’s Sea Eagle seized by the US Government and sold at auction. Flavio Briatore’s Force Blue was also seized for a short period by Italian coast guards last summer…

This week it was the turn of Boris Berezovsky, the famous Russian billionaire. According to a number of French and international newspapers, two of his yachts were seized on the Côte d’Azur a couple of days ago. This procedure was done on the request of Russian authorities who are pursuing Boris Berezovsky for fraud.

One of them is none other than the famous Thunder B, the 50m Oceanfast designed by Jon Bannenberg and launched in 1998. This yacht was for sale for many years and was estimated at more than 15 million Euros in 2008.

No information was revealed about the second yacht seized, but it seems to be the fast open boat called Lightning built by Sunseeker and used as the main tender to Thunder B.

Thunder B and her tender Lightning (Photo: M.R.Y.)