Comoros takes action against ‘shadow fleet’

The Comoros government has begun purging its international registry, whose flag has been central to the shadow fleet.

The vessels are believed to have evaded sanctions by transporting Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan oil, Splash reports.

According to the Equasis database, 62 tankers, three gas carriers and one tugboat are currently declared to be falsely flagged to the Comoros. According to Israeli maritime analytics firm Windward, as of September 14, all but one of the ships falsely flagged to the Comoros were subject to US, EU or UK sanctions and were trading with Russia, Iran or Venezuela.

A study by Windward in August found that 38% of the sanctioned tonnage of the shadow fleet was flagged to the Comoros. Gambia, Cameroon and Sierra Leone followed. 57% of the authorized tonnage was under a false flag or the flag was unknown.

According to Clarksons Research, as of August 1 this year, the Comoros had the 25th largest shipping registry in the world, with 615 vessels on its books, and its registered fleet had grown by 274% this year.

In July, the European Union and the United Kingdom imposed sanctions on Intershipping Services, a UAE-based company that manages the registries of the flags of the Comoros and Gabon, another African flag closely linked to the transport of Russian oil.

Both Gabon and the Comoros have long attracted the attention of port state control authorities. The Comoros in particular has become synonymous with high-risk behavior at sea. They are blacklisted by the Paris Memorandum of Understanding, have a red flag from the US Coast Guard and, according to the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), are consistently in the top rankings for crew abandonment. USM previously reported that fraudsters have created dozens of fake maritime administrations to cover up the transportation of sanctioned vessels.