Suspected Fabergé Egg Found on Yacht Seized from Russian Oligarch
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U.S. authorities think they may have found a Fabergé egg on board a yacht owned by a Russian oligarch. U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco shared last week at the Aspen Security Forum that the justice department's "KleptoCapture" task force, an interagency law enforcement task force dedicated to hold Russian oligarchs accountable, has found "some really interesting things" on seized vessels lately.
She continued, "We recovered a Fabergé—or alleged Fabergé egg—on one of these [yachts] so it just gets more and more interesting."
Though Monaco didn't specify which yacht the bejeweled trinket was found on, she did say the boat is currently docked in San Diego, after arriving from Fiji. Therefore, all signs point to it being a $300 million yacht known as the Amadea,a boat believed to be owned by sanctioned Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov, which Fijian authorities seized last month and handed over to the U.S. It arrived in San Diego just a few weeks ago.
"We’re working with our law enforcement counterparts around the world to conduct searches on these yachts to make sure we have the authority and can go to a court, seize them and then forfeit the proceeds," Monaco added.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a multitude of assets owned by Russian oligarchs have been seized by the U.S. and European nations—including numerous yachts, a Diego Rivera painting, French Riviera mansions, and more.
The U.S. did not release any photos of the alleged Fabergé egg, leading experts to doubt Monaco's claims. Of the 50 eggs originally made by Fabergé, 43 are accounted for today. The seven that are unaccounted for have been missing for over a century.
"The likelihood that it’s real is pretty small, I think, probably," Tony Faber, author of Fabergé’s Eggs: The Extraordinary Story of the Masterpieces That Outlived an Empire, told CNN. "There are 50 of these eggs made, and they are fabulous—these wonderful examples of creativity, of luxury, these links to the decadent Romanovs and their court, but there are only 50 of them, and we know where 43 of them are. I don’t think that it’s likely to be one of those 43, so then we’re down to the seven missing ones, that have been basically missing since the revolution."
Fabergé dealer Andre Ruzhnikov agreed with Faber's assessment. He told The Art Newspaper, "There is not a single Fabergé egg that can be bought on the market today. There haven’t been Imperial Fabergé eggs on the market for 18 years, since the sale of the [Malcolm Forbes Fabergé] collection to [Viktor] Vekselberg in 2004." In addition, Ruzhnikov added that Kerimov is not known as an art collector.
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