The number of ships flying false flags brazenly around the world’s shipping lanes continues to rise exponentially, with seemingly very little that regulators can do to clamp down on the scourge.
Data from S&P Global as of a week ago shows there are now more than 370 vessels flying false or fraudulent flags, with 85% of them being tankers. As of the start of this year, there were 223 vessels flying false flags, according to an investigation by the UK government.
Frustratingly for regulators, many of these ships operate in full visibility, such as the Fina A tanker, or the Bayaze D bulk carrier, pictured (above) recently transiting the Bosporus by ship spotter Yörük Işık. Both ships are flying the flag of Timor-Leste, even though this country has no ship registry with the government in Dili alerting the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) to this criminal operation earlier in the year.
Speaking on Windward’s TradeSense podcast last week, Professor George Theocharidis of the World Maritime University, a co-author of the IMO’s report on fraudulent flag registries, said today’s global legal framework was inadequate to tackle the issue of fraudulent registers.
Windward, an Israeli maritime analytics platform, has identified around 1,900 ships as part of the dark fleet. Windward data shows that 40% of Iran-trading tankers and 30% of Russia-trading tankers in the dark fleet are now using fraudulent registries, signalling false flags or whose flag status is unknown.
Fraudulent registries linked to these trades by the IMO include Aruba, Benin, Curaçao, Guinea, Guyana, Eswatini, Malawi, Timor-Leste, and St Maarten. Other ships falsely transmit that they are flagged with legitimate registries.
“The unprecedented scale and prevalence of falsely flagged ships – numbers have doubled in less than 12 months – is now a significant threat to the regulatory integrity of global seaborne trade and undermines the foundations of the world’s maritime economic system,” Windward stated in a recent report.
Windward has started a series on X called Windward’s Ship of the Day, highlighting deceptive shipping practices one dark fleet vessel at a time.
The Ocean Pearl, a 2009-built, EU and UK-sanctioned aframax crude oil tanker, was recently scrutinised by Windward. The vessel has been primarily used over the past two months to ship Russian crude from the eastern port of Kozmino to refineries in China.
Ocean Pearl was sanctioned by the UK on May 9 and the EU on July 19. On August 8, Ocean Pearl switched its Maritime Mobile Service Identity (MMSI) number from one associated with Palau, where it was previously flagged, to a fictitious one and started transmitting Mozambique as its flag. The IMO’s database shows that Mozambique does not have an international flag registry.
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Mr Sam Chambers