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EagleSpeak: Faking Ship Identities to Avoid Sanctions and More
Bloomberg reports here
The island nation of Palau says a tanker that recently loaded Venezuelan crude was using a false signal to disguise its identity, potentially putting the Pacific country in the crosshairs of U.S. sanctions.
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“It appears that this vessel is claiming to be registered with the Palau International Ship Registry. This claim is false,” Palau’s ministry of state said in the note to Venezuela’s foreign affairs ministry. “It therefore appears that the vessel is using a falsified AIS signal in order to mask its true identity.” The letter was delivered to several Venezuelan embassies, including the one in Tokyo, says Steven Kanai, a special assistant to Palau’s president on international maritime matters and foreign relations.
The tanker that loaded in Venezuela was using a practice known as “spoofing,” where vessels send a signal with another ship’s registration number under the maritime industry’s Automatic Identification System, according to London-based ship tracker Windward Ltd. If so, it would represent a new tactic in the cat-and-mouse maneuvers deployed by companies trading oil with Venezuela in defiance of U.S. sanctions.
Over the past six months, the names of 13 vessels that are registered as broken-up appeared in Venezuelan crude-loading programs seen by Bloomberg. The Ndros, though, was the only one among those names to appear off the coast of Venezuela by satellite signal.
Cont...
Bloomberg reports here
The island nation of Palau says a tanker that recently loaded Venezuelan crude was using a false signal to disguise its identity, potentially putting the Pacific country in the crosshairs of U.S. sanctions.
***
“It appears that this vessel is claiming to be registered with the Palau International Ship Registry. This claim is false,” Palau’s ministry of state said in the note to Venezuela’s foreign affairs ministry. “It therefore appears that the vessel is using a falsified AIS signal in order to mask its true identity.” The letter was delivered to several Venezuelan embassies, including the one in Tokyo, says Steven Kanai, a special assistant to Palau’s president on international maritime matters and foreign relations.
The tanker that loaded in Venezuela was using a practice known as “spoofing,” where vessels send a signal with another ship’s registration number under the maritime industry’s Automatic Identification System, according to London-based ship tracker Windward Ltd. If so, it would represent a new tactic in the cat-and-mouse maneuvers deployed by companies trading oil with Venezuela in defiance of U.S. sanctions.
Over the past six months, the names of 13 vessels that are registered as broken-up appeared in Venezuelan crude-loading programs seen by Bloomberg. The Ndros, though, was the only one among those names to appear off the coast of Venezuela by satellite signal.
Cont...
