Moscow, April 22 – RAPSI, Vladimir Yaduta. A British court upheld an appeal from businessman Boris Berezovsky against an earlier ruling ordering Berezovsky to pay 7.2 million euro in commissions to Edmiston & Co for selling his yacht Darius.

The documents available to the Russian Legal Information Agency (RAPSI) state that on October 7, 2004, a German company Fr. Luerssen Werft Gmbh and Berezovsky’s company Petersham Holdings Ltd. (Petersham) registered in the Cayman Islands signed a contract on the construction of the yacht Darius worth 148.54 million euro. However, later Berezovsky, due to financial difficulties, decided to sell the yacht, which was still under construction, and held a meeting to that effect with Nicholas Edmiston from Edmiston & Co, one of Europe’s leading yacht brokers.

Edmiston priced the yacht at 300 million euro and said that he would charge a 2.5% commission. Berezovsky’s condition was that the yacht could not be sold to a client from Russia.

Through Merle Wood & Associates Inc (MWA), a yacht broker in the United States and another defendant in the lawsuit along with Edmiston, the information about Berezovsky’s yacht sale reached Abdulla Al Futtaim, a businessman from the UAE, who showed an interested in the yacht. The deal between Petersham and Paragon International Ltd. was expected to be closed in October 2008.

The dispute over the commission was heard at the High Court in London. Upon the court’s order, Edmiston was awarded 7.2 million euro.

However, the court satisfied an appeal from Berezovsky and reduced the commission payments to 6 million euro due to the fact that the yacht was sold for 240 million euro rather than 300 million, as was initially planned.