By Robert A Emmanuel
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been announced as the new owner of the superyacht Alfa Nero after his US$67.6 million was revealed to have been the highest bid.
The auction which began at 10am yesterday was threatened to be scuppered by a last-minute attempt by the former owners to tie up the sale in the courts.
However, the emergency injunction application was rejected by the court, as a letter by the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court’s Deputy Chief Registrar to the legal representative for the former owners revealed.
Antigua and Barbuda Port Manager Darwin Telemaque was evidently jovial at the news, which allowed the sale to continue without any issues.
Moving on from the legal issue, the auction process itself went smoothly, as was explained to reporters present by the panel of observers.
The 68-year-old CEO, worth US$20.5 billion and co-founder of Innovation Endeavors, a venture capital firm that has invested in Uber, SoFi, and Zymergen according to Forbes, will now have seven days to pay the money into the Treasury Department.
Telemaque said the government will assist the new owners as much as possible to ensure the 267ft vessel gets back on the open seas, fully staffed.
“We are pleased that we now have an owner, and the owner is now tasked with taking on all of the responsibilities to get the vessel ready and moving and, hopefully, they can do it quick enough,” the Port Manager said.
Observer media reached out to a representative of the Schmidt Family Foundation who declined to comment.
One of the major concerns for the Port Authority has been the potential environmental risks that the vessel posed to Falmouth Harbour where it has been moored for over a year.
Telemaque said the former owners gave the authorities no choice but to take this action, having practically abandoned the superyacht since March 2022.
“If we had other means to execute on removal of that threat, we probably would have used them. This is the only mechanism that we could have put in place to effect that, and so now that the vessel will be moving, the risk is abated,” he said.
“We want to welcome it back and be here as often as it needs to be but we want it to be here with a full crew, fully operational, engaging the local community…but not in the state where it was where no one could take care of it,” he added.
The vessel was valued by the government at US$115 million, with a minimum sale price of US$60 million which only two of the three bids validly submitted exceeded.
Telemaque revealed that the other two bids in the auction were US$66 million and US$25 million.
Telemaque thanked the three observers for their assistance in ensuring full transparency in the bidding process.
He also thanked the Antigua Yacht Club and its proprietor Carlo Falcone for their support while the boat was unable to be serviced.
“Had he not fuelled the ship for as long as he did no one else would have, and the reason why that vessel is in the pristine condition that it was in was because he sustained it and…that was a bullet that we dodged,” Telemaque added.