Yacht to get manager soon
Chief caretaker needed to maintain Equanimity’s value, says lawyer
PORT KLANG: A ship manager will be hired to look after Equanimity and the crew, says a lawyer representing 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) and the Government.
Jeremy Joseph said there must be measures to protect the value of the US$250mil (RM1bil) superyacht that is now docked at the Boustead Cruise Centre in Pulau Indah, Port Klang.
“Special care has to be taken to preserve that value as much as possible so that when we eventually put the vessel up for sale, we can fetch the highest possible price,” he told reporters here yesterday.
Joseph attended a two-hour meeting with representatives from the marine department, the police, the navy and Boustead to discuss safety and security issues about the vessel.
1MDB has laid claim to Equanimity, saying that it was purchased using fraudulently misappropriated funds by its former director, officers and advisers.
Joseph said they were in the process of getting quotations for a qualified and competent ship manager from several companies, although the sheriff of the Admiralty Court would make a final decision on this.
He said a ship manager would take care of the cleaning needs and ensure the documentation of the ship is updated, among other things.
Meanwhile, Oystein Senneseth, the captain of Equanimity, said his crew was pleased to bring the superyacht back to Malaysia.
Senneseth, who is from Bergen, Norway, said the crew was relaxed now compared to before when there were armed policemen on board.
“After a while they got more used to it and settled (down),” he told reporters briefly.
The 18 multinational crew members have been working on the superyacht for three weeks.
Senneseth said the Malaysian Government and the authorities had been nice and helpful.
The Dutch-made superyacht, which purportedly belonged to fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho, also known as Jho Low, docked at the centre at about 1pm on Tuesday after leaving Batam, Indonesia.
The vessel was seized in Bali in February at the request of US authorities as part of a multibillion-dollar corruption investigation launched by the US Department of Justice related to 1MDB.
However, a Jakarta court in April ruled in favour of the owners after they applied for a court motion to declare the seizure illegal.
In July, Indonesian police seized the yacht again following a formal request for legal assistance from the United States.
Reuters reported that the decision by the Indonesian Government to hand over the superyacht to Malaysia was reached following a personal request by Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who had visited Indonesia in June.
Dr Mahathir on Monday thanked Indonesia for its cooperation and said that if Low could prove he had purchased the luxury vessel with his own money, he could then get it back.