The Iraqi super-yacht affair: The yacht that Saddam built

It's the yacht that puts the hyphen in 'dictator-ship': an 82-metre, £18m pleasure palace with heliport, gold taps, missile system and one dead, deposed, former owner. But whose is it now? By John Lichfield

Thursday, 14 February 2008

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For sale: charming 82-metre yacht with its own hospital and swimming pools, mosque, missile-defence system and mini-submarine. One careful owner. Would suit paranoid dictator or filthy-rich businessman trying to keep an ex-wife at bay. A snip at €24m (£18m).

There is one catch. The sale of the Ocean Breeze, formerly the Qadisiyah Saddam, may not be a simple affair. The yacht, now moored among other billionaires' vessels in the harbour at Nice on the French Mediterranean, once belonged to the late Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein.

A shadowy company based in the Cayman Islands is trying to sell the mahogany-and-marble festooned floating palace on behalf of persons unknown. The cash-strapped Iraqi government, engaged in a relentless pursuit of Saddam's hidden billions, has just won an important legal battle in the Nice commercial court. The sale of the Ocean Breeze has been frozen under French law until its ownership is established.

The craft, built in Denmark in 1981, is being sold by the London-based luxury-yacht broker Nigel Burgess. Nothing on the Burgess company's website – www.nigelburgess.com – links the Ocean Breeze to Saddam. The site displays pictures of its opulent living rooms with their giant TV screens, and the master bedroom with its double-canopied bed dripping with gilt.

It describes the yacht as an 82m (269ft), 2,282-ton, twin-screw vessel with one master bedroom, nine further double bedrooms, four twins and 13 singles. "Moored: west Mediterranean. Price on application", reads the advertisement.

There is no mention on the site of the mini-submarine launch pod, the anti-aircraft missile-defence system or the fully-equipped clinic, complete with operating theatre. There is no mention of the mosque and the gold taps and the mahogany and marble interiors. There is no mention of the bulletproof windows and the several swimming pools and saunas.

The Burgess company says that ownership squabbles over luxury yachts are commonplace. As far as it is concerned, it is selling the vessel for its legal owner, whom the company chooses not to name.

The yacht has, in the past 18 years, been reported to be in the possession of first the Saudi and then the Jordanian royal families. According to French sources, the alleged owner is a front company, Sudley Limited, based at Georgetown in Grand Cayman. According to the Iraqi government, the real owners are the people of Iraq.

"Like all the rest of Saddam Hussein's wealth hidden abroad, we want to reclaim this boat to sell it and return the proceeds to the Iraqi government," an Iraqi official said. "We are not going to let go."

The Baghdad authorities have been tracking the yacht's movements around the Gulf and the Mediterranean for the past four years. Soon after the Ocean Breeze put into the port of Nice last November, a lawyer acting for the Iraqi authorities, Maître Ardavan Amir-Aslani, struck legal gold.

At his request, French police and a court bailiff boarded the yacht. A British crew member is said to have told the police that the vessel was a "royal yacht" and they had no right to come aboard. The police insisted. In the bowels of the boat, they found a document issued by Lloyd's of London, the insurance brokers, stating that the Qadisiyah Saddam belonged to the government of Iraq.

It was this document that persuaded the Nice tribunal de commerce to freeze the sale of the boat. No one representing the alleged owners in the Cayman Islands has since come forward to dispute the Iraqi claim – or the freeze on the sale.

The precise movements of the Ocean Breeze since the fall of Saddam – and even before – are something of a puzzle. There is no record that the Iraqi dictator ever set foot on her decks, or slept in her immense, canopied master bed.

The Qadisiyah Saddam, built by the Danish shipyard Helsingor Vaerft, was named after an Arab victory over the Persians in the 7th century. It was intended as a sister ship for Saddam's other yacht, the Al Mansur ("The Victor", blown up in Basra harbour by US bombers during the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003.

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-...am-built-782040.html