Since its acquisition in 2020, László Szíjj’s new luxury yacht, Seagull MRD, has been cruising the Mediterranean, mainly along the coast of Italy. Its routes have repeatedly crossed popular holiday destinations with the famous private jet of the Hungarian government elite, OE-LEM. In Naples, near Nice and in Olbia in Sardinia, the two luxury vehicles have been on the same route in recent weeks – in this article, we collected all the summer destinations of OE-LEM and Seagull MRD.
At the end of July we reported that the Maltese offshore company of politically well-aligned businessman László Szíjj, L&L Charter Ltd., registered a new luxury yacht last year alongside the famous Lady MRD. The 49.9-metre Seagull MRD was built in 2020 in Livorno, Italy, at Benetti’s factory, and is part of the company’s Custom family of custom-built yachts for the highest-paying buyers.
Another Maltese-registered yacht has been acquired by the Hungarian government elite. The 50-metre luxury yacht, the Seagull MRD was built…
Relatively little information about the Seagull MRD is available on the internet: the nearly 50-metre yacht weighs 499 tonnes, has a steel and aluminium hull and 3 decks. It is not known how many cabins it has, how many guests it can accommodate, how many crew members will be on board, nor is its price publicly available. However, a yacht of similar size and also of the Custom type, built in 2018, changed was sold last year for €30.2 million (about 10.5 billionHUF) – the brand new Seagull MRD is probably more expensive.
A sparkling start last summer
According to Maltese shipping records, L&L Charter registered the Seagull MRD in the country on 24 August 2020 on a provisional basis. We have obtained all of the yacht’s itineraries to date, and they show that the Seagull MRD made its first voyage on the day after the registration, on 25 August 2020, when it departed Livorno (the city where the Benetti factory is located) for the Maltese capital, Valetta, arriving on the 27th.
However, according to a Facebook post by Navis Marine, a boat dealership in Croatia, L&LCharter bought it almost two months earlier. Indeed, Navis Marine posted photos of the launch of the Seagull MRD on 3 July 2020. Although the post refers to the yachts at its project (FB 704), the published photos already show the name Seagull on the ship.
Tempesta, an Italian company that manufactures exclusive ship windows and doors has also referred to the luxury yacht under the project name FB 704 last summer. And in the article about Tempesta’s 2020 results, László Szíjj’s yacht is now listed as Seagull MRD in the company’s Top 5 from last year.
Seagull MRD: cruise in Italy
After its first trip to Malta, Seagull MRD sailed to Italy at the end of August last year, spending a few days in the port of Mergellina (a district of Naples) and then a week in the waters of Olbia, Sardinia, in early September. From there it went to Cannes, France, and after a few days spent 2 days in the nearby port of Saint-Tropez. Then it was back to Cannes, followed by neighbouring Antibes, and then on 29 September the Seagull MRD sailed to Livorno, and didn’t move for just over six months.
In mid-June 2021, the season started and the yacht visited several popular tourist destinations during the summer – some of them several times. Until early July, it visited the ports of Mergellina, Capri, Positano, Marina di Cassado and Castellammare di Stabia.
In July, Seagull MRD sailed to Arechi (a district of Salerno), Ischia, Olbia (which is on the Italian island, Sardinia), Bonifacio (the French island of Corsica, near Sardinia), Porto dell’Etna, Syracuse (on the island of Sicily), Panarea, Punta Lingua, Salina, Lipari (small islands near Sicily) and then returned to Olbia.
A port for yachts on the island of Sardinia (photo: Pixabay.com)
OE-LEM: shuttle between Naples and Monaco
As we reported in 2020, the Austrian private jet, close to the Hungarian government elite was mainly flying between Budapest and the Adriatic last summer, and “met” Lady MRD yacht several times on the Croatian coast. Lady MRD is also owned by László Szíjj László and has been used by the Hungarian oligarch Lőrinc Mészáros, but has been up for sale for some time: it is currently advertised for €14.9 million (around HUF 5.2 billion).
Despite the coronavirus pandemic, the private jet has not rested this autumn either: it has been to Zurich, Nice, Rijeka and Venice, even though the Hungarian Foreign Ministry has not recommended anyone to travel abroad since the beginning of September last year.
At the end of 2020, it flew to the Maldives, from where it returned to Budapest only in January this year. But despite the pandemic, it did not stay at the airport of the Hungarian capital: in February it visited Croatia and Dubai, and in the middle of the month went to the Maldives again. In early March, Viktor Orbán asked Hungarians not to travel to exotic holiday destinations. Despite the warning from the PM himself, the OE-LEM flew to Dubai again in mid-March. On its return, it took László Szijj to Zurich, the Swiss city famous for its banks, on a business trip.
The private jet then flew to Split, Croatia, at the end of March and to Zagreb and Osijek in April. OE-LEM, the football team NK Osijek, which is owned by László Szíjjj and Lőrinc Mészáros, was in town just as NK Osijek was playing Dinamo Zagreb, the Zagreb football team, in the local stadium.
Then it continued its trip to Seville and Malaga in Spain at the end of May, Zurich at the beginning of June, and in the middle of the month, as with Seagull MRD, the holiday season kicked off. In June, OE-LEM visited Milan and made several stops at Monaco and Naples airports.
In July, it visited Naples and Monaco, but the private jet has also been to Olbia in Sardinia, Figari in neighbouring Corsica, Turku in Finland, Antalya in Turkey, Goleniów in Poland, Catania in Italy and Vienna. In August, the OE-LEM made several trips to Olbia, Monaco and Naples, but also made stops in Athens and Rijeka.
The diagram below shows the Seagull MRD and OE-LEM trips from summer 2020:
Meetings in Sardinia and Naples
Comparing the journeys of the two luxury vehicles, it appears that they were several times in the same place or in airports/ports very close to each other.
In September 2020, for example, there were three occasions when the OE-LEM was in Nice and the Seagull MRD in nearby Cannes. Several times in June this year, the OE-LEM sailed to Naples when the yacht was in the port of Mergellina or anchored in the nearby ports of Capri and Positano.
The luxury vehicles also met once in Naples in early July, and then crossed paths several times during the rest of the month in Sardinia, Corsica and on the island of Sicily. Here you can see when OE-LEM and Seagull MRD were in the same place or very close to each other:
Translated by Zita Szopkó. The original, Hungarian version of this article was written by Katalin Erdélyi and can be found here. The data visualisations were created by Krisztián Szabó.
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