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Cape Town will soon host the yacht of Alexei Mordachov, a Russian billionaire subject to international sanctions. The luxury yacht is expected to arrive around November 9, but not without controversy, since the Mayor’s Office is led by the opposition Democratic Alliance party, which supports Ukraine, while the South African government continues to show its neutrality.
With our correspondent in Johannesburg, Romain Chanson.
“In our city, there is no place for Putin’s accomplices in war,” Geordin Hill-Lewis, the mayor of Cape Town, said in a tweet. He wrote to Naledi Pandor, Minister of International Relations, asking her to block access to the 142-meter long yacht “Nord”, whose price is exorbitant: 500 million dollars.
I have asked Minister Pandor to block the entry of a R9 billion superyacht, owned and sailed by sanctioned Russian oligarch Alexey Mordashov, to Cape Town’s port.
There is no place in our city for accomplices to, and enablers of, Putin’s war. https://t.co/yTqZGs1Eka pic.twitter.com/MAxOFf267t
— Geordin Hill-Lewis (@geordinhl) October 24, 2022
It belongs to Alexei Mordachev, the third richest man in Russia. After the invasion of Ukraine, this businessman was sanctioned by the European Union, the United States and the United Kingdom. But these sanctions are not binding, said the spokesman for the South African presidency.
position of neutrality
Pretoria defends a position of neutrality in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, with a small bias towards Moscow, which is an old ally of the African National Congress (ANC), the party in power.
This friendship is denounced by the Democratic Alliance (DA), the main opposition party. At the start of the war, the Cape Town City Hall was lit up in Ukrainian colors to symbolize their support.
Your mayor is now worried about the reputation of South Africa. The country, already known for its laxity in the face of money laundering and corruption, would now be a haven for sanctioned people.
