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Leading Dubai trainer Satish Seemar has had his licence suspended by the Emirates Racing Authority.
This is due to one of his former clients being on the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control List. The client in question is Ramzan Kadyrov, the President of Chechnya.
Kadyrov has a large number of horses of all types especially thoroughbreds. While always controversial his runners have raced all over the world but some jurisdictions haven't always been willing to have his horses run.
Zazou and Dashing Home were two horses Kadyrov had with Waldemar HIckst when in 2014 the EU put a ban on Kadyrov's horses running, leaving Hickst having to support two expensive non-competing horses.
In 2009 Mourilyan and Backable came to Australia with the aim in running in the Melbourne Cup and the Mackinnon. They had been transferred to Dubai-based South African trainer Herman Brown. There was something of an outcry with scaremongering along the lines of "money laundering opportunity". Mourilyan ran third and Backable was injured before the Mackinnon and did not race in Australia. Brown also took over the training of Gitano Hernando which Kadyrov had purchased from Team Valor for $4 million with the aim of running in the Dubai World Cup. Brown returned to South African and gave up training horses to pursue professional golf on the Seniors' Tour.
In 2011 the US State Department urged the racing authorities in New York and Kentucky not to permit Kadyrov to race Sweet Ducky who was one of the favourites for the Kentucky Derby.
Seemar trained North American for Kadyrov for racing in Dubai from 2016 through to March 2021 when presumably he was retired and according to Seemar has been exported from the UAE.
Other than Seemar and Brown, fellow Dubai trainer Doug Watson trained Meandre and Dux Scholar for Kadyrov with both horses having a trip to Singapore. Czech trainer Arslangirej Savujev also looked after the Kadyrov horses based in the Czech Republic which had originally been the base for European operations with Kadyrov horses running in Germany and other EU jurisdictions until the ban came.
Seemar was added to the OFAC sanctions list by the US Department of the Treasury on December 10, 2020 and was described as a "prominent member of Kadyrov's network" .
Seemar's Zabeel Stables will be in the capable hands of Buphat Seemar, his assistant trainer until the matter is resolved.
It seems like a case of taking a sledgehammer to crack a peanut considering the horse is no longer in Seemar's yard.
Kadyrov is very well connected in the racing world and had received gifts of horses from the later Sheik Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum and King Abdullah of Jordan.
