The California Central District Court has ordered the Jho Low-linked superyacht Equanimity to be turned over to the US government and be brought to the US.

Judge Dale S Fischer said the vessel’s claimants are to hand over custody and control and parties involved in the case should reach an agreement on how to bring the vessel to the US.

However, the order is stayed for 30 days to allow time for the claimants to challenge the ruling, she said in her written judgement dated yesterday.

The judgement followed the US Department of Justice’s (DOJ) application on March 27 to take protective custody of the vessel, claiming that the crew are beholden Equanimity’s beneficial owner Low Taek Jho or Jho Low and cannot be trusted to bring the vessel to the US even under a court order.

In her written judgement sighted by Malaysiakini, Fischer noted that the vessel’s claimants had put forward several legal arguments against the application but said, “none were persuasive”.

Among others, she said her court order would not violate Indonesian sovereignty despite the claimants’ arguments to the contrary.

This is because the South Jakarta District Court had already instructed the Indonesian police to return the vessel to its claimants, after the latter seized it off the coast of Bali on Feb 28.

“The order would require the claimants to turn over the yacht without seizure by the US government in Indonesian waters. Claimants can comply with that order, or not, depending on which consequences they prefer.

“This is not a matter of the US government forcibly seizing property within a foreign country without the proper authority from that country’s government. Orders requiring repatriation of assets are not uncommon, and they are not thought to invade the sovereignty of the country in which the assets were being held.

“Having decided that it has the authority to enter an order requiring claimants to turn the yacht over the US government, the court sees no reason to depart from the opinion expressed in its April 2, 2018 order.

“The yacht should be brought to the US and the government is competent to do so with the caveats and instructions noted in that order,” she said.

Previously, Bloomberg had reported that the Equanimity’s claimants intended to appeal against Fischer’s ruling.

The DOJ is seizing the Equanimity as part of a series of 1MDB-related civil forfeiture suits. It claimed that the US$250 million vessel was bought with money misappropriated from 1MDB and subsequently channelled through the US financial system.

It claimed that the vessel is beneficially owned by the Penang-born financier Jho Low through a series of intermediaries including its registered owner Equanimity (Caymans) Ltd.

The DOJ and Equanimity Ltd had agreed to sell the vessel while the case is still pending in court but differed on where and how the sale should be conducted.

Low, for the record, had claimed that the allegations against him are politically motivated while 1MDB insisted that all its money is accounted for.

According to the ship tracking service MarineTraffic, Equanimity was last seen anchored off the coast of Lombok, Indonesia.