Venezuelan brothers facing federal probe launch legal battle to retake helm of Miami mega-yacht

A glossy 98-foot blue-and-white yacht looks a bit out of place next to the modest boats docked in front of a rundown apartment building on the Miami River near the 12th Avenue Bridge.

For starters, how did the twin-engine Leonardo II, built in Italy and registered in Czechoslovakia, end up there? And more important, who legally owns the luxury vessel with a master bedroom, full bar and Jacuzzi?

Those questions are at the core of a Miami federal lawsuit filed by a Panamanian company, Violet Advisors, S.A, which is owned by two wealthy Venezuelan brothers, Luis and Ignacio Oberto, who live in the Carillon high-rise condo overlooking Miami Beach.

The brothers say they paid $2 million for the mega-yacht in 2013 and brought it to South Florida, where they claim it was stolen in March from a residential dock in North Miami Beach and moved to its current location on the Miami River.

What makes their legal move to recover the vessel so mystifying is that the Obertos are under investigation by federal authorities in South Florida for their alleged roles in a vast bribery and money-laundering racket in Venezuela, dating back to the same period when the brothers bought the yacht, according to law enforcement sources familiar with the probe.

The feds are investigating the Oberto brothers’ alleged embezzlement of $3.5 billion from Venezuela, where they are suspected of making loans to the national oil company and washing the payments through a favorable government exchange system before transferring the windfall to Swiss and U.S. banks, according to Justice Department documents obtained by the Miami Herald. Several of the brothers’ Swiss bank accounts are in the name of Violet Advisors, the same company that claims to own the yacht on the Miami River.

A lawyer who filed the federal suit to recover the boat said he is “not authorized” to speak about the case publicly. “No comment,” West Palm Beach attorney Christopher Mills told the Herald last week.

The Oberto brothers’ criminal defense attorneys in Miami, Ed Shohat and David O. Markus, also declined to comment, saying they are not involved in the civil case.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office is also not talking, though federal prosecutors and agents with Homeland Security Investigations might be interested in seizing the brothers’ yacht if an indictment is filed against them later this year.

Whatever becomes of the criminal probe, the civil dispute over the fancy yacht — now known by the maritime call sign, The Round — is expected to be messy. Last week, U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno rejected a motion by the Oberto brothers’ company, Violet Advisors, to impound the vessel. He said Violet’s lawyers made “serious accusations” of fraud, but has not notified the defendants of the lawsuit or given them the opportunity to respond.

The suit, filed in late April, names both the yacht itself and several people as defendants, including Excellent Auto Group, a Hialeah company that says it has acquired rightful ownership of the vessel. The suit asserts that the “defendants gained possession and control of the yacht under false pretenses with fraudulent ownership documentation and acted in concert with one another to convert the yacht for their unlawful purposes.”

Excellent Auto Group’s defense attorney, William Norris, said the suit has not been served on his client. “Upon proper notice, our client will vigorously defend its claimed ownership of the yacht,” Norris said.

Court records suggest that Excellent Auto Group bought the yacht with a pair of blown engines for $200,000 from Violet Advisors in 2015, but Violet’s lawyers say the bill of sale was fabricated.

The Oberto brothers, scions of a wealthy banking family in Venezuela, assert that they are the sole shareholders of Violet Advisors and that they never sold the boat or authorized anyone else to do so. The suit says Violet Advisors purchased the yacht in Europe in 2013 and had the vessel transported to Palm Beach later that year. The brothers say they obtained a “certificate of British registry” from the Cayman Islands verifying that Violet Advisors owned the yacht and held the title. In 2019, they moved it to a residence on the water in North Miami Beach, where it remained docked until March 23.

On that day, the suit says, Excellent Auto Group’s president, Alberto Alcivar, and the company’s lawyer, Lance Joseph, went to the North Miami Beach residence at 16430 NE 35th Ave. and informed the home owner, Leo Andrea, that the yacht docked in the back “had been recently sold by Violet Advisors to [Excellent Auto Group] and was subject to immediate seizure.”

“Joseph explained that he was a licensed Florida attorney and warned Mr. Andrea ‘not to interfere’ as the yacht had been lawfully purchased under Florida law,” according to the suit. “To support this contention, Joseph showed Mr. Andrea a ‘stack of papers’ he claimed proved the validity of the transaction,” which were described in the suit as “manufactured sales documents.”

Later that evening, Alcivar and three others returned to Andrea’s residence and boarded the yacht at the rear of the property, the suit says. Andrea called the North Miami Beach Police Department and an officer was dispatched to the residence. The suit accuses Alcivar of presenting “manufactured loan documents” that had been provided by Joseph “to legitimize the alleged transaction.”

The police officer took no action and allowed the “yacht to be moved under cover of darkness” to its current location on the Miami River, the suit says. It’s tied up at the dock in front of the Bermuda House Apartments, 1160 NW North River Dr., a two-story building owned by Rio Mio, LLC in Hialeah. The landlord is renting dock space to Excellent Auto Group, which is doing repairs on the yacht.

Joseph, who is named as a defendant in the suit, said he did nothing wrong and was merely helping his client, Excellent Auto Group, obtain the yacht from the North Miami Beach residence. “The accusations made against me in the complaint are totally false,” he said Friday.

Alcivar, who heads Excellent Auto Group, and his lawyer could not be reached for comment.

This story was originally published May 4, 2020 at 6:00 AM.