THIS SEEMS ENTIRELY IN CHARACTER FOR OUR RULERS: Taxpayers Stuck Paying the Bills for Oligarchs’ Seized Yachts and Mansions: Assets taken from sanctioned Russian billionaires are costly to maintain as legal hurdles hold up sales; $28,000 a week to keep mold out of the Alfa Nero.

Since Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, dozens of governments launched an unprecedented effort to pressure Putin to end the war by going after his well-heeled cronies. The Russian Elites, Proxies, and Oligarchs Task Force, a multinational government group that coordinates on sanctions, reported in March that an estimated $58 billion of oligarchs’ assets, including yachts, mansions and investments, have been frozen or blocked because of their owners’ links to the Kremlin. . . .

So far, the grand total from the assets delivered to Ukraine by the U.S. is just $5.4 million, the U.S. said. The U.K. hasn’t turned any frozen assets into funds. Neither has the European Union. . . .

In practical terms, it is often taxpayers who are on the hook for eye-watering bills to maintain a fleet of high-end yachts and mansions that no one is allowed to use while sanctions remain in place. . . . As a rule of thumb, big yachts cost around 10% of their value a year to maintain, said Benjamin Maltby, a lawyer at Keystone Law
, which specializes in advising on megayachts. Their hulls need to be regularly scraped and air-conditioning units run nearly round the clock. The crew also needs paying. So does insurance and rent in marinas.

They have lost the use of their yachts, but on the other hand they’re sticking someone else with the bills for upkeep.