By Alasdair Pal

NEW DELHI (Reuters), -A minimum five superyachts owned Russian billionaires were anchored and cruising in Maldives on Wednesday by ship tracking data. Maldives was an Indian Ocean island country that doesn’t have extradition agreements with the United States.

Following the imposition by the West of harsh sanctions against Russia as a reprisal for the invasion of Ukraine, the vessels arrived at the archipelago off Sri Lanka’s coast.

Forbes published late Wednesday’s report that Germany had taken over the megayacht of Russian billionaire Alisher Ustanov in Hamburg.

On Monday, Usmanov appeared on the list of billionaires who will be subject to sanctions by the European Union. Based on three people in the yacht industry, a Forbes report said that Usmanov’s 512-foot yacht Dilbar was confiscated by German authorities.

Reuters reached out to German authorities but they did not respond immediately. Forbes stated that representatives from Usmanov didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Oleg Deripaska was the founder and CEO of Rusal Aluminium. The Clio superyacht was annexed to the United States by Oleg. It was anchor off the Capital Male, MarineTraffic reports.

Alexander Abramov was co-founder and owner of Evraz Steel. He arrived at Titan on February 28.

The data revealed that three more yachts belonging to Russian billionaires could be seen in Maldives on Wednesday. The 88-metre (280.8 ft) Nirvana is owned by Vladimir Potanin. Many vessels were seen last year anchoring in Middle Eastern port earlier in the calendar.

An official spokesperson from the Maldives’ government declined to comment on a request.

The United States stated that it would take tough measures to seize the property of sanctioned Russians.

“This coming week, we will launch a multilateral Transatlantic task force to identify, hunt down, and freeze the assets of sanctioned Russian companies and oligarchs – their yachts, their mansions, and any other ill-gotten gains that we can find and freeze under the law,” the White House said in a tweet on Sunday.

Washington issued sanctions in 2018 against Deripaska as well as other important Russians due to their links with Vladimir Putin.