Iran says last seized cargo ship released in Malta

Irisl vessels were impounded at ports around the world late last year after European banks called in loans to the company. Reuters said three ships held in Singapore were released in January and the fourth, seized in Hong Kong, was released in February. The last vessel was held in Malta.

The Maltese government has formally adopted EU sanctions against various branches and subsidiaries of Irisl, which has used a network of front companies in Malta to evade international sanctions.

There are at least 42 Irisl-owned companies which own ships formerly belonging to Irisl. Instead they use the services of the Maltese-owned Royal-Med Shipping Agency, in Sliema, which is the agent for the private Iranian company  Hafiz Darya Shipping Lines (HDS). HDS was created in 2009 shortly after the US and UK hit Irisl with trading bans over its alleged role in supplying Iran’s nuclear weapons programme.

An EU Council Regulation froze the funds and economic resources of Irisl’s interests in Malta, and prohibited the loading and unloading of cargo on vessels owned or chartered by Irisl at the Malta Freeport.

Mansour Eslami, the director of Irisl (Malta) Limited, is one of five company directors designated by the US sanctions. He has never commented on the sanctions when called personally on his mobile phone, and has so far not answered to questions sent to him by mail.

Royal-Med Shippng, a Maltese-owned firm, is the central node of the Irisl network, where it acts as the agent for a private, Iranian company – the Hafiz Darya Shipping Lines (HDS) – created after the sanctions to take over Irisl’s container business.

When Irisl’s ships were blacklisted by the US and the UK, the vessels were transferred to ghost companies in Malta, and their ship names changed from their Iranian appellations into innocuous English-sounding names.

So 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. Whereas before the new sanctions, running a compliance check on a transaction involving one of these ships would have raised several red flags, the new ship names allowed the same transactions to appear clean.