USA blacklists Iran ships registered under Malta ‘front’ companies

The United States Treasury Department has blacklisted five front companies and more than 90 ship names, a number of which belong to Malta-registered companies that Iran’s national maritime carrier has been using to evade international sanctions.

The measures were announced this morning as the US took a critical step to come up to speed with Iran’s game of hide-and-seek to stash the blacklisted vessels of its national shipping line IRISL, by transferring them to Malta companies under new names.

Last week, the UN Security Council adopted the toughest sanctions ever imposed on the Iranian government. The United States has followed up these sanctions by updating the entries for 71 already-blocked IRISL vessels.

Malta is at the centre of a network of shell companies which the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) is using to stash its vessels. Some 20 companies are registered at various Maltese addresses, including the Sliema address where shipping agent Royal-Med is located. Royal-Med (see pictures below) is the shipping agent for a private, Iranian company – the Hafiz Darya Shipping Lines (HDS) – which has taken over IRISL’s container business since October 2009 after the US and UK slapped it with a trading ban, over its alleged role in supplying Iran’s suspect nuclear weapons programme.

HDS has now been blacklisted under the new sanctions. HDS is the ship manager of the various Malta-flagged ships that previously belonged to IRISL. Most of these ships belong to shell companies that have been registered in Malta. Additionally, their names have changed from their Iranian appellations into English-sounding names.

For example, the M/V Iran Kerman has now changed to Silver Craft, and is owned by Kerman Shipping, registered at 143/1, Tower Road, Sliema – the address of Royal-Med. This ship has now been blacklisted again by the US Treasury.

“Since being designated, IRISL has increasingly relied upon a series of front companies and has engaged in deceptive behavior – such as falsifying shipping documents and renaming ships – to assist it in overcoming the impact of sanctions and increased scrutiny of its behavior. IRISL has also been involved in Iranian attempts to transfer arms-related material,” Tim Geithner, the US treasury secretary said today.

“IRISL established the front company, Hafiz Darya Shipping Company (HDS), in 2009, to conduct its containerized shipping operations under the HDS Lines brand name. HDS has retained some IRISL officers as corporate members,” Geithner said.

He said the treasury department would “continue to expose Iran’s efforts to evade international sanctions… we need to have in place a concerted, international approach. This is not something the United States can do alone. We need other countries to move with us. So alongside our efforts to build international support for new sanctions, we have been working behind the scenes, building international support among finance ministers, for additional actions to prevent abuse of the global financial system by Iran. We expect to see additional actions announced by other governments soon.”