A frozen asset is not a free asset. Every yacht on this list has a crew to pay, a berth to rent, insurance to renew and a hull that grows weed. Somebody covers that, and it is almost never the person whose name went onto the sanctions list. American taxpayers have spent about $36 million keeping one yacht alive and roughly $14 million on another that has not moved since 2022. Italy pays around $11.5 million a year to guard a sailing yacht it cannot sell. Antigua spent $9 million on a boat whose crew simply walked off, then sold it for a third of its build cost. The same arithmetic runs through the parked jets, the empty hotels and the mansions nobody could afford to heat. What follows are 28 named assets ordered by peak value, with what each was worth, who the relevant governments say owned it, why it was taken or abandoned, and exactly where it sits in September 2026.
Ryugyong Hotel, a 105 Floor Tower Reported at $750 Million That Never Sold a Room
Construction started in Pyongyang in 1987 on a 330 metre concrete pyramid with 105 floors, still the tallest building in North Korea. Work stopped in 1992 when Soviet support collapsed, and the shell stood windowless for sixteen years. Egypt’s Orascom clad the exterior in glass between 2008 and 2011, and in 2018 an LED array was fixed to one face so the building could broadcast slogans and the national flag. North Korea has never published a construction figure; the roughly $750 million estimate that circulates comes from outside analysts, as does the claim that it swallowed a meaningful share of national output. By 2024 the government was reported to be hunting for a foreign casino operator willing to finish it in exchange for a cut of gambling revenue. As of September 2026 the interior is unfinished and no guest has ever checked in.