NO RUSSIAN VESSELS WITH ESWATINI FLAG - GOVT

MBABANE – Government disputes allegations that there are sanctioned Russian vessels sailing under the flag of Eswatini.

South African online publication, News 24, reported that there were five sanctioned ships from Russia which were now bearing the country’s flag. The publication claimed that five of the Hennesea tankers were operating with new identities and all of them were now sailing under the flag of Eswatini. According to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), Seagoing vessels are obliged by maritime law to fly a flag of a country of registration and stateless vessels are not protected by international law. It was reported that this came after the IMO issued a warning in April regarding flags it identified as fraudulent. It was said IMO raised specific concerns over flags purportedly administered on behalf of Guyana and Eswatini, respectively.
Following the allegations that five sanctioned ships were sailing with Eswatini flag, the Principal Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Public Works and Transport, Thulani Mkhaliphi, said: “This is fake news.

Knowledge

“Those who have positive knowledge of such happening anywhere in the world let them share that information with us and we will deal with it decisively.” The PS supposed that there were bogus reporters with their own motives. Mkhaliphi said he had checked with Eswatini’s partners that were assisting the country to develop the maritime sector and they had denied knowledge of such. The PS reiterated that if there was anyone who had verifiable information on such misbehaviour, irrespective of who was responsible, the Eswatini Government would deal with the issue decisively. Mkhaliphi cast doubt on the allegations as he said despite that there had been various reports of the allegations insinuating that the Eswatini flag was being used by sanctioned vessels, credible pictures of the ships sailing with the Eswatini flag were yet to be seen.

He said in the various articles, published by foreign media, they only showed the flag of the country without the ships. Mkhaliphi said the country was not yet a member of IMO and as such, the organisation could not assist the kingdom for now. “Until we are their members, we cannot get much of assistance,” he said. Mkhaliphi was responding to the question on whether the country had opted to seek assistance from the IMO in establishing the sanctioned vessels purported to be sailing with Eswatini flag. The South African publication reported that since October, 40 ships involved in Russia’s oil trade were added to the United States Treasury’s list of designated entities, mostly for breaching a price cap that was meant to restrict the Kremlin’s access to petrodollars.

Imposed

The sanctions and price cap, according to News 24, that were imposed on Russia, have been criticised for being too easy for Moscow to work around, given how large the country’s crude flows have remained. However, the inactivity of the fleet shows that when measures are taken against individual vessels, they can be effective. In the article by News 24, it was purported that the five sanctioned vessels sailing with Eswatini flag, had in recent months, changed their names. It was reported that the Apus vessel had altered its name to HS Arge, while the Avril had altered its name to HS Atlantica. It was also purported that the Bettle vessel had altered its name to Uze, while the Kruger vessel had changed its name to Osperous. The last ship was said to have assumed the name Peria after dumping its original name of Pictor.

Sanctioned

The publication reported that the tanker names were often changed after being sanctioned in order to distance the vessels from listings on sanctions databases. It was reported that they remained traceable by unique numeric identifiers assigned to them that did not change. News 24 reported that dozens of tankers remained stuck months after being sanctioned by the US Treasury Department and claimed it was a signal of the US’s scope to disrupt Moscow’s petroleum supply chain if it chose to. Meanwhile, on April 22, 2024, it was reported that having struggled with Guyana, India’s Aryavart Corporation then created the Eswatini Maritime Affairs and International Ship Registry as a private company in Singapore late last year, registering ships to Eswatini. The IMO, it was reported, has since listed a number of vessels that paid to flag with the country as ‘False Eswatini’. The report by Splash 247 stated that the Indian backers of the Eswatini flag had also been in landlocked Laos recently, where they were in discussions to create another shipping registry.

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