It’s two days before the Monaco Grand Prix in early June, and Abbas Sajwani emerges from a golden elevator onto the main deck of his 348-foot superyacht, Amadea, in a white linen shirt and gray pants. He’s anchored the vessel—which he bought from the U.S. government at a secret auction last September, after it was seized from alleged Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov three years earlier—just off the coast of the postcard-sized principality, as many billionaires do during the summer.
Walking past the intricately inlaid teak walls, a bar carved out of marble from the Greek island of Thassos and a hand-painted baby grand piano—custom-made for the yacht by centuries-old, Paris-based piano maker Pleyel—he sits on a cream-colored couch, framed by the Mediterranean and the Monaco skyline. But the 27-year-old Dubai real estate scion is eager to talk about his real estate firm AHS Properties’ latest acquisition. “We bought the Shangri-La [Dubai] at the end of May for $300 million,” he says, adjusting his rimless glasses. “That shows you my personal conviction and faith in the Dubai market.”
Decking the Decks: The superyacht’s salon features intricate teak walls, a bar carved out of marble from Greece, and a hand-painted baby grand piano—custom-made by the centuries-old, Paris-based piano maker Pleyel.
Michel Champouret
The son of billionaire real estate tycoon Hussain Sajwani—who’s known as the “Donald of Dubai” and is a longtime friend of President Trump—he has forged his own path in the emirate’s rollercoaster real estate market. While his father’s DAMAC has built more than 50,000 luxury units and has another 50,000-plus under construction, Abbas’ AHS Properties, which he founded in 2021, has targeted the ultra-luxury sector. After initially buying and renovating villas in Dubai’s posh Emirates Hills and Palm Jumeirah, he then started snapping up land along the Dubai Water Canal to build luxury residential towers, which now make up most of his portfolio. On top of his yachts and collection of mansions, it’s the basis of his estimated $1.9 billion fortune.
Like many real estate developers, Sajwani prefers to think about his trophy purchases in terms of location and scarcity. The Amadea is a perfect example: “When I was looking to buy a boat, it wasn’t one box I needed to tick,” he adds. “It was 10 boxes, and Amadea, for me, ticked most of them.”
Ups And Downs: For passengers who don’t want to use the stairs between decks, ‘Amadea’ has a gold elevator.
Michel Champouret
Built in 2017 by the storied German shipyard Lürssen, Sajwani’s floating palace has six decks, including one with a glass “winter garden” designed to evoke an orangerie, with an outdoor hot tub. There is a cinema lounge with an adjacent firepit; a 10-meter infinity pool with a swim-up bar; and all the usual trappings of a superyacht, from a spa and beauty salon to a gym and helipad. (During Forbes’ visit, the helipad had been converted into a pickleball court—an idea that Sajwani notes had been copied by several neighboring vessels.)
Even among the more than two dozen yachts navigating the Mediterranean in summer, Amadea stands out with its art deco-style albatross on its bow. It was allegedly built, according to the U.S. government, for Suleiman Kerimov, a Russian gold magnate and member of the country’s upper house of parliament whom the U.S. had sanctioned in 2018. Two years later, during a brief period when the yacht was on the market, Sajwani toured Amadea and fell in love with it. “I love the boat’s interior, I love the style,” he says. “I think it’s beautiful.”
Making A Splash: ‘Amadea’ has a 10-meter infinity pool on its aft deck with a swim-up bar.
Michel Champouret
Sajwani ended up buying a different yacht—the 216-foot AHS, first built in 2005 and rechristened after his initials—but he never forgot the Amadea. Eventually, he got his chance to own it. On May 5, 2022, about 10 weeks after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the FBI and Fijian authorities seized the Amadea in the port city of Lautoka. The yacht had left Mexico 18 days earlier but was unable to flee the long arm of Uncle Sam. It was then sailed to San Diego, and in October 2023, the Department Justice filed a civil forfeiture case to formally seize it from Kerimov, before setting up the auction last September.
Dink Fast: The yacht’s helipad has been temporarily converted into a pickleball court.
Michel Champouret
Valued at $300 million when it was seized, the yacht was kept in good condition thanks to U.S. taxpayers, who shelled out some $36 million for its upkeep while it was stuck in San Diego. Through a stroke of luck, Sajwani prevailed: His undisclosed winning bid was only $1 million above the next-highest. (He claims he then rejected an offer from a buyer to purchase it for much more, in the hundreds of millions. He currently has his other boat, AHS, on the market for $50 million.)
Sajwani purchased Amadea (now worth an estimated $250 million) at a considerable discount—and he doesn’t plan to make major changes. “90% of the interior, when I bought it, I was more than happy with. But as a whole, we haven’t changed much,” he says. “We’re not going to go into a refit.”
Aboard the main deck, Sajwani stops to point out his favorite elements and why it’s his room of choice for business meetings and entertaining formal guests. “What’s beautiful here is the level of detail,” he says, pointing to the leather books embedded in the teak walls. “From the books on the wall—how they made it look like a library—to the woodwork, the level of detail is second to none.”
Following in the footsteps of his father, Dubai’s richest person with an estimated $15.3 billion fortune, the younger Sajwani knows a deal when he sees one. Born in 1999, he started investing in Dubai’s stock market as a teenager with a $100,000 gift from his father. By 2016, he had converted that money into a smattering of small businesses—an Internet café and a car wash—before the Covid-19 pandemic put an end to those ventures.
That’s when he started investing in U.S. equities, and in two firms in particular: shopping mall real estate investment trust Simon Property Group and luxury fashion giant Capri Holdings, which owns Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo among other brands. On top of the $5 million Sajwani claims he invested, he also piled on leverage. Both stocks soared by more than 100% from May 2020 to May 2021, and by the time he sold his positions in the spring of 2021, he says he netted $25 million, a 5x return.
During that same period, he also made his first real estate investment, buying a villa in Dubai’s Emirates Hills neighborhood for $11 million at auction, putting up $4 million and financing the rest. Sajwani used bank loans to renovate the home, and then repeated the same playbook in Palm Jumeirah, the palm-tree-shaped man-made archipelago that’s home to several billionaires, including Mukesh Ambani, the richest person in Asia. By 2022, Sajwani had sold all the villas and deployed his profits into a plot of land along the Dubai Water Canal—an artificial waterway lined with hotels and retail—which he then developed into One Canal, a 9-story luxury residential tower.
In 2025, he expanded beyond luxury towers when his firm spent $120 million to buy the long-vacant “Big Ben Tower,” a 1,076-foot office skyscraper designed to mimic the London landmark. He’s now working to remove the faux-clock face and convert the building into a luxury office tower.
Water Work: Sajwani runs his real estate business from the ‘Amadea’— summers in the south of France and winters in St. Barths.
AHS Properties
That all seemed like a good bet when Dubai’s real estate market was booming. From 2021 to 2025, the emirate outpaced New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, London and Miami to become the city with the world’s most valuable luxury residential market, with more $10 million-plus homes sold last year than anywhere else on Earth. Then the Iran war broke out.
So far, transaction volume has fallen by nearly 30% in the second quarter compared to last year, per real estate brokerage Savills, although average prices per square foot have remained stable. But Sajwani isn’t concerned: “The Dubai market is still very healthy, there’s a lot of demand,” he says. “People are still staying and moving [there]. The restaurants are busy, the residents are out.”
A sign of his confidence is his recent acquisition of the Shangri-La, a Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star property with 302 hotel rooms, 126 apartments plus office space located on Dubai’s main thoroughfare, Sheikh Zayed Road. “When you look at that street, that corridor of Dubai, you barely have any empty land,” he says. “The price point is only going to go one way, because everything is built and you have a lot of investors who want to be there.”
Sajwani is also planning a massive new mixed-use project named AHS City, to be located near the Shangri-La. Set to include Dubai’s largest office complex plus luxury apartments, a boutique hotel, a 200,000-square-foot spa and a 200,000-square-foot food hall, Sajwani is targeting a 2030 opening date.
When he’s not in Dubai, Sajwani runs his real estate business from the Amadea— summers keep him in the south of France while in winter, the yacht heads to St. Barths in the Caribbean.
Sea And Be Seen: “Many people say that they go on a boat for a holiday,” Sajwani tells Forbes. “For me, it’s not the case. It’s more of a place to live.”
Michel Champouret
“Many people say that they go on a boat for a holiday. For me, it’s not the case. It’s more of a place to live,” he says. “My routine on the boat is as if I’m in Dubai. On weekdays, I wake up, I have my meetings, my Zoom calls, and then on the weekends I enjoy it more. It’s a change of scenery, it’s more of a home than a holiday home.”
During Grand Prix weekend in Monaco, Sajwani is more focused on Amadea’s amenities than what’s happening on the F1 course. “The pool is used a lot, and one of my favorite places is the spa,” he says. Equipped with a sauna, hammam, massage room, chromotherapy dip pool and a sea terrace with a mosaic-lined swimming pool opening directly onto the ocean, it has plenty to keep him and his guests entertained.
For all its opulence, Amadea isn’t even Sajwani’s most recent luxury purchase. That title belongs to the Holme, a 40-bedroom neoclassical estate on the inner circle of Regent’s Park in London, which he reportedly just purchased for $260 million. And if he somehow runs out of space for guests on the Amadea, he’ll surely be covered on land.
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