Former Google CEO buys abandoned Alfa Nero superyacht for $67.6 million

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt bought the Alfa Nero superyacht that was ditched in Antigua in March 2022 after Russian troops invaded Ukraine.

The billionaire “won the auction this morning in a fully transparent process,” buying the vessel for $67.6 million, according to Sir Ronald Sanders, Antigua’s ambassador to the US, Bloomberg reports.

The 267-foot vessel, complete with a baby grand piano and a swimming pool that turns into a helipad, was abandoned in Antigua’s Falmouth Harbour after the US Treasury sanctioned Russian fertilizer billionaire Andrey Guryev. The department last year said he bought the Alfa Nero in 2014 for $120 million — which he denies.

Schmidt’s foundation didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The Alfa Nero was auctioned Friday even after Guryev’s daughter filed a last-minute injunction claiming the yacht was hers, Antigua Port Manager Darwin Telemaque said in an interview.

Some of the proceeds will cover maintenance and other bills that the Alfa Nero has piled up while in the harbour, with crew expenses alone running $112,000 a month. Telemaque said the sale price would cover “all liabilities.”

Since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, the US and its allies have imposed sanctions on many of the country’s wealthiest people, causing more than two dozen superyachts worth about $4 billion to be frozen in ports around the world.

Schmidt, who served as Google’s chief executive for about a decade, has an estimated net worth of $25 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Two years ago he was named chair of the Broad Institute, a research organization based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.