- The respected 14-year-old channel posted a short video clip it said one of its subscribers had captured while flying between two Maldives islands.
- When the Nord left Hong Kong, it had filed its destination as Cape Town. The city's government said it should be barred, while the national government said it would not implement Nato sanctions.
- Now, it seems, Cape Town won't be caught in a political storm around the craft, at least not yet.
The Nord, a R9 billion superyacht that stands to be seized in certain ports because it is believed to be owned by sanctioned Russian oligarch Alexey Mordashov, has been recorded in the Maldives, YouTube channel eSysman SuperYachts reported on Sunday.
The channel posted a short video clip of an easily-identifiable Nord shot from a plane it said had been flying between two islands in the Maldives.
The video had been captured by one its subscribers and the details had been verified, said the channel, which has been around for 14 years and has nearly 230,000 subscribers.
Others had previously suggested the Nord may be headed to the Maldives, and previous sightings – without photographic or video evidence – of the yacht in the Maldives had been reported.
When the superyacht left Hong Kong on 20 October, its automatic identification systems (AIS) was set to identify its destination as Cape Town, and it had been expected there mid last week. Around 26 October, the yacht's transponder went offline near ear Banda Aceh in Indonesia.
The Nord has a record of hanging out in the Maldives, most recently in December 2021 and January 2022, before Russia invaded Ukraine.
The mayor of Cape Town Geordin Hill-Lewis, and the city-ruling DA had opposed the docking of the Nord in Cape Town, and there had been fears of protests or more direct action at its arrival. President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office, however, held that South Africa had no obligation to act on sanctions by the likes of the European Union and the USA.