President Biden warned Putin’s inner circle that the US and its European allies will ‘find and seize your yachts, your luxury apartments, your private jets’.

He added: ‘We are coming for your ill-begotten gains.’

Vekselberg was born in Soviet Ukraine bfore leaving to study in Moscow, where he joined a small elite of shrewd business men who built vast empires during the privatisation of Russian industries in the 1990s.

A generation of oligarchs emerged after the collapse of the USSR saw state assets sold in rigged auctions for a fraction of their true value to well-connected insiders, who now depend on Putin’s favour and iron-fisted rule to protect their wealth.

Mr Vekselberg has been regularly pictured alongside Putin through his decades in the Moscow elite (Picture: AFP)

 Provided by Metro Mr Vekselberg has been regularly pictured alongside Putin through his decades in the Moscow elite (Picture: AFP

Vekselberg’s congolomerate, Renova Group, now holds the largest stake in United Co. Rusal, Russia’s biggest aluminium producer, among other investments. He has yet to comment publicly on the seizure.

A number of superyachts linked to Russian oligarchs have already been seized by Spanish, French and Italian authorities.

They include the 215-foot, €27 million ‘Lady M’, belonging to oil mogul Gennady Timchenko, which was impounded in the port of San Remo last month.

British detectives detained a £38 million yacht owned by an unnamed Russian businessman in Canary Wharf in London last week, saying its owner was ‘deliberately well hidden’ through tactics including bearing the wrong flags.