Superyacht Ice docks in Trinidad

(Trinidad Guardian) Ice, a large pri­vate yacht, docked in Port-of-Spain on Fri­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the web­site www.marine­traf­fic.com, which tracks the move­ment of ships, the ves­sel sailed from Bar­ba­dos to T&T.

The su­pery­acht Ice is be­lieved to be the same one built in the Ger­man ship­yard Lürssen, chris­tened in 2005 and sold to the Russ­ian bil­lion­aire Suleiman Ke­r­i­mov.

In 2015 the Ice was sold to vice pres­i­dent of Equa­to­r­i­al Guinea Teodoro Ngue­ma Obiang Mangue, son of the Pres­i­dent of Equa­to­r­i­al Guinea.

Ke­r­i­mov sold Ice which was worth $150 mil­lion (over €130 mil­lion) to Dara Lim­it­ed for use by Mangue who op­er­ates the yacht through his per­son­al as­sis­tant Switzer­land’s Cé­dric B’s Mar­shall Is­lands-based com­pa­ny KOA As­set Man­age­ment Ltd.

Ac­cord­ing to the BBC, ear­li­er this week, an ap­peal court in France had fined Equa­to­r­i­al Guinea’s vice-pres­i­dent €30m (US $33 mil­lion; £25 mil­lion) for us­ing pub­lic mon­ey to fund his lav­ish lifestyle.

Mangue, 50, had chal­lenged his 2017 con­vic­tion for em­bez­zle­ment, but the court gave him a heav­ier sen­tence by re­fus­ing to sus­pend the fine.

The 90-me­tre yacht is val­ued at $150 mil­lion (over 130 mil­lion eu­ros), with sev­en suites that can ac­com­mo­date 14 guests. Ice has a large swim­ming pool on the main deck (stern) in ad­di­tion to the jacuzzi on the sun deck.

It al­so car­ries a small he­li­copter, the Eu­ro­copter EC 135 and the ves­sel can reach a speed of 18 knots. The Ice won Su­pery­acht of the Year at the 2006 World Su­per Yacht Awards.

Guardian Me­dia could not con­firm if the Ice is still owned by Mangue.

On Sat­ur­day cu­ri­ous on­look­ers were tak­ing pho­tos and ad­mir­ing the lux­u­ry ves­sel.

A Guardian re­porter and pho­tog­ra­ph­er ap­proached one of the em­ploy­ees on the ship to ask for more de­tails as to why the yacht was in T&T, but the em­ploy­ee said that the cap­tain was on lunch and would not be able to speak to the me­dia.