Tanker grabbed by Iran has sanctions-busting background

Image: FARS News Agency

This morning, the United Kingdom Maritime Trades Office reported that a vessel had been boarded, when 50 miles northeast of Sohar, Oman by 4-5 armed unauthorized boarders wearing black masks and black military style uniforms. The identity of the masked boarders was soon known. The tanker was grabbed by Iran. Multiple state controlled Iranian news sources said that the vessel had been seized by the Iranian Navy under a court order. And the tanker grabbed by Iran, the St. Nikolas, operated by Athens-based Empire Navigation, is the former Suez Rajan.

In September of last year, the U.S. Department of Justice announced “the successful disruption of a multimillion-dollar shipment of crude oil by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a designated foreign terrorist organization, that was bound for another country” in “the first-ever criminal resolution involving a company that violated sanctions by facilitating the illicit sale and transport of Iranian oil and comes in concert with a successful seizure of over 980,000 barrels of contraband crude oil.” That oil had been on board the Suez Rajan.

Empire Navigation said, at that time, that, acting as manager of the Suez Rajan, it had “resolved a violation of U.S. sanctions with the U.S. Department of Justice through a Deferred Prosecution Agreement.”

“In January-February 2022, M/T Suez Rajan loaded oil through ship-to-ship transfers near Singapore while the vessel was on time charter to an independent and unrelated third party. The U.S. government determined that the vessel received sanctioned Iranian oil and the company does not dispute this fact,” said the company. “This violation of U.S. sanctions occurred because the true origin of the oil was well disguised, and the company’s comprehensive sanctions compliance and due diligence procedures failed to detect the problem.”

Empire Navigation, noted that it had “agreed to transport the cargo from its location near Singapore to Houston at its own great expense, so that the U.S. Department of Justice could pursue its forfeiture claim against the cargo. Now that the cargo has been offloaded, the M/T Suez Rajan is again free to trade.”

Evidently, Iran had a different idea about “free to trade” and the St. Nikolas (ex-Suez Rajan) has joined the rather long series of tankers grabbed by Iran in retaliation against U.S. sanctions.