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Tehran's Ghost Fleet
| Claudia Rosett strikes again. Great investigative piece looking at how Iran, with China's canoodling, is getting around western sanctions. Long piece so just the first two paragraphs here, but of course you'll RTWT. |
This June, a merchant ship flying the Hong Kong flag and sailing under the name of the Atlantic called at the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas—the southern end of a trade corridor to the U.S., advertised as "the fastest route to the heart of North America." That might be unremarkable, except the Atlantic, formerly called the Dreamland, and before that the Iran Saeidi, belongs to a curious network of 19 bulk carriers, all flagged out of Hong Kong and all blacklisted by the U.S. Treasury for their links to Iran.
According to a recent transcript of Hong Kong's Marine Department Shipping Register, the Atlantic is owned by a Hong Kong-registered company called Harvest Supreme Limited. Scratch the surface and Harvest Supreme tracks back to an Iranian address, as do 18 other obscure and interlinked Hong Kong ship-owning companies with names such as Grand Trinity Limited and Sparkle Brilliant Development Limited. These are the hallmarks of the global shell game with which Iran continues to dodge U.S. and United Nations sanctions.
Posted by: Steve White 2011-08-29 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=328857 |
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