Ownership tussle over boat built for Saddam

David Sapsted, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: June 24. 2008 10:14PM UAE / June 24. 2008 6:14PM GMT

LONDON // It is one of the most luxurious yachts in the world – 82 metres long with swimming pools, sumptuous lounges, a mini-submarine and, if western press reports are to be believed, its own anti-aircraft missile system.

Plus, it has had only one careful owner: Saddam Hussein.

At least, that is what the current Iraqi government maintains, arguing that by right, the boat should be theirs. But the saga of the ownership of the yacht, now known as the Ocean Breeze, is so complex that a French court is having to decide whether Saddam’s successors in Baghdad really do have title, or whether the ship actually belongs to a Cayman-registered company partly owned by King Abdullah II of Jordan.

So far, the only ownership document presented to courts in Nice and Aix-en-Provence has been one from Lloyd’s of London, dating more than 25 years and registering it in the name of Saddam Hussein.

The yacht started to make waves late last year when Nigel Burgess, a prestigious London ship brokerage company, put the vessel up for sale under the name Ocean Breeze. Subsequently, it emerged that Mr Burgess was selling the ship on behalf of Studeley Ltd, a Cayman-registered company 25 per cent owned by King Abdullah.

It also emerged that Ocean Breeze was the yacht’s latest name. Until a year ago, it was called the Al Yamamah and was moored in the Red Sea port of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. When it was launched in 1981, though, it bore the name Qadissiyat Saddam.

The Iraqi dictator, who was hanged in Dec 2006, had ordered the 2,282-tonne vessel from Helsingoer Vaerft, a Danish boat builder, in 1981.

It came with all the fixtures and fittings suited to a billionaire lifestyle: a helicopter pad, several salons with large-screen TVs, pools, saunas, gold-plated plumbing, mahogany and marble fixtures, and a prayer room.

Aside from the master suite with its canopied double bed, there was accommodation for up to 26 other guests in nine double and four twin rooms, plus cabins for a crew of 35. It had a range of about 110,000km.

According to a report in the French daily newspaper Le Figaro – and repeated elsewhere in the western media – it also had a missile system, now disarmed, to defend against an air attack. However, marine experts are sceptical about this, doubting the ship had the space to accommodate such a system.

Unfortunately, by the time the Qadissiyat Saddam – a name linking the-then president with the Arab Muslim army’s epic battle against Sassanian Persia in 630AD – arrived in the Gulf, Iraq and Iran were at war.

It is not known if Saddam ever boarded the ship nor, indeed, whether it stayed long in Basra, its registered home port. Certainly, though, in 1986 it left the Gulf for good after Saddam became concerned it would fall victim to an Iranian strike.

The Saudi royal family agreed to Saddam’s request to look after the ship and it sailed to Jeddah, where it remained with a 12-strong Greek crew for almost 20 years. It rarely left its dock, according to some reports, but sailed to Greece every two years for a service and refits. The ship was renamed Al Yamamah after the Iraq invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

According to some sources, the Saudis handed over the vessel to Jordan’s King Abdullah last year, but there is considerable confusion surrounding exactly when and how.

When it appeared last September at the Monaco Yacht Show it caused excitement in the boating world because it had been seen so rarely. It was also noted that its funnel had been painted blue to put it in the same livery as the Prince Abdulaziz, one of the largest yachts in the world and owned by the Saudi royal family.

Pictures taken at the time show the ship was still called Al Yamamah and, according to one report from Monaco, it was actually sold during the yacht show. When it berthed at Nice for the first time in November, it had been renamed Ocean Breeze.

It still had a 12-man Greek crew and, by then, it had been placed in the hands of the British brokers who were seeking offers in the region of US$35 million (Dh128.5m), less than one-quarter of the price it would cost to build today.

The Iraqis, however, had been chasing a paper trail over the ship’s ownership for the previous four years as part of efforts to seize property and assets that Saddam had acquired abroad. Last year, for example, they successfully took court action to gain possession of a villa he owned in Cannes.

In January, the Iraqis obtained an injunction from the commercial court in Nice to prevent the sale of the Ocean Breeze and it was impounded by French authorities pending the outcome of legal action to ascertain ownership.

The vessel, now in the harbour of St Jean, near Nice, was boarded by police and bailiffs, who found the Lloyd’s document giving Saddam Hussein’s name as the owner.

Ardavan Amir-Aslani, a partner in a Paris law firm specialising in commercial law, is representing the Iraqis as the case moves ponderously through the French legal system. He said he was asked to take on the case because the government in Baghdad believed that the vessel “may belong to Saddam’s entourage”.

“The yacht was ordered and paid for by the Iraqi government at the beginning. That is certain,” he said. “Iraq is basically trying to recover the money of the Iraqi people that was unlawfully transferred abroad.”

According to Mr Amir-Aslani, one of the few people allowed to board the ship since it was impounded, it is “extremely luxurious”.

Just who will be able to take advantage of all that luxury remains to be seen. On Monday, the court in Nice postponed a hearing in the case until November.

dsapsted@thenational.ae