For sale: Luxury pleasure boat. One careful owner. Low mileage. Reason for sale - owner was executed during revolution. Would suit megalomaniac dictator. Price £15,000 o.n.o. Serious buyers only apply to: Romanian government.
Notices like this may be the last hope of shifting Romania's most visible white elephant, the hefty yacht owned by its former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Yesterday it went under the auctioneer's hammer for the fourth time in Bucharest - and found no buyer.
"I don't know why it won't sell. It is a fine boat," complains Mr Aurel Vlaicu (50), the bureaucrat who has been landed with the job of trying to shift it. "It's roomy inside. It had to be big enough so that he could stand inside and wave his arms around and give orders. It would suit a certain kind of businessman."
With the tenth anniversary of the killing of Ceausescu now two weeks away, and with a rise in support for the former tyrant, the government is anxious to off-load reminders of his rule.
Previous auctions this year have got rid of the black limo given to the dictator by the late US president Mr Richard Nixon, etente, the English winter coat presented by the late Kim Il Sung, a fellow tyrant, and furniture, ornaments and paintings.
"The vessel is in good condition," says Mr Vlaicu of the yacht, which sits in Lake Snagov. "Two conference rooms, nice style, white plastic and wood. It is in good condition because he didn't use it much. He wasn't really interested in yachts, except as part of a dictator's paraphernalia."
After four attempts, Mr Vlaicu says he will try something different. "We are going to the Boat Show next year in Britain, and maybe some in Europe too - we can't take the boat but we've got a video display."
His problems don't end with the boat. Only 2,000 of the 8,000 Ceausescu items under the hammer have been sold. "The problem is he did not have taste, he had the taste of a Romanian peasant," he says.