6
Iranians box clever
The US authorities are failing to keep shippers informed of the names of blacklisted Iranian containerships, says an anti- nuclear proliferation watchdog. The Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control said that the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) has carried out a major ship renaming programme in a bid to keep one step of the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which has threatened to punish US firms that knowingly use its ships. It has published a blacklist of 123 IRISL ships, but as it has not kept up with the changes, “it is being circumvented by Iran with relatively little effort,” says Wisconsin Project research associate, Matt Godsey. The renaming programme
took place after the US blacklisted IRISL, saying that it had been supplying Iran’s nuclear weapons programmes. IRISL dropped ‘Iran’ from the names of 40 vessels and also renamed 40 other ships. In theory it should be possible to find the true identify of
any commercial ship through its unique IMO (International Maritime Organization) number. However, says Mr Godsey, these numbers do not always appear on cargo documents, such as letters of credit, and any company that screens a vessel against Treasury’s sanctions list without checking the IMO number could be taking part in an illegal transaction. Ownership of IRISL itself also
appears to have been transferred to Hafiz Danya Shipping (HDS) although Mr Godsey said “it is hard to figure out what the difference is as the new owners all appear to operate the same liner services and ships.” IRISL itself has also transferred
nominal ownership of its ships to shell companies, mainly in Malta, Germany, and Hong Kong. IRISL (Malta)’s offices also hosts ten other companies, many of them bearing the name of peaceful English Home Counties towns, including Newhaven Shipping Company, Lancing Shipping and Oxted Shipping Company, each of them the new registered
owner of an IRISL vessel, says the Wisconsin Project. The same pattern was followed at IRISL’s German branch, it adds. The line has also transferred management of half the sanctioned vessels to Tehran-based Soroush Sarzamin Asatir, it says. The Wisconsin Project
has published a table of the blacklisted vessels, including their IMO numbers, using data from the Germanischer Lloyd and Det Norske Veritas vessel registers as well as other sources, although it warns that the information is “highly likely to change.” (
www.iranwatch. org/enforcementnotebook/
irislreport.htm) Despite the US sanctions
– which could theoretically hit non-US companies doing business in the States - IRISL remains popular among Mediterranean shippers and other operators sometimes grumble that the Iranians often try to undercut them. Malta Freeport is one of its main transhipment hubs, and its boxes were much in evidence on a recent FBJ visit to the island.
NEWS
Hopes that the US authorities would promptly settle their case against Kuwaiti-based forwarder Agility were dashed on 12 April when the US authorities filed a new indictment against the Kuwaiti-based project freight forwarder. The US government existing
extended its
indictment to include two other affiliates, US-based Agility DGS Holdings Inc and Kuwait-based Agility DGS Logistics Services. It said this was in order to deal with a legal technicality. The previous day, on 11
April, Agility had warned that it could not guarantee reaching a settlement with the US government over fraud charges when it published its financial results. T h e K uwa i t - b a s e d
internat ional projec t forwarder had been hoping to resolve an indictment accusing it of overcharging the US Army on supply contracts in the Middle East and had
delayed publication of its results and suspended trading in its shares on 1 April, amid speculation that a settlement was imminent. Press
speculation
suggested that Agility could pay a fine of between $300m and $750m or twice the amount it overcharged the US Government. On 15 April, it was replaced
by Dubai-based Anham on a $2.1 billion contract to provide food and support services to the US military in Kuwait, Iraq and Jordan initially for 18 months but extendable to six years. DLA has however asked
Agility to
maintain its operation for the next six months to ensure continuity.
Agility
president and CEO Dan Mongeon said in a statement: “The news is disappointing, but not unexpected. For several months,
ISSUE 1 2010
No end in sight for Agility
the company has been planning and adjusting for the potential loss of Prime Vendor revenue as the result of our ongoing legal dispute with the Justice Department and the drawdown and withdrawal of US forces from Iraq by 2011.” Agility is also unable to bid for future US contracts. When Agility did publish
its delayed results, it said that it had made no provision for the lawsuit and showed a 22% increase in fourth-quarter net profit of $141.7 million, towards the upper end of market expectations.
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