Report: Maduro getting help to evade sanctions

MIAMI — As U.S. sanctions scare away the world’s largest shippers from Venezuela’s oil industry, new players are willing to brave the heightened risks and help keep socialist leader Nicolas Maduro afloat, according to a new report.

In the first year since the Trump administration imposed crushing economic sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry, port calls to Venezuela plunged by 46%, according to C4ADS and IBI Consultants, two Washington-based think tanks focused on national security issues that authored the report.

But while overall tanker activity is down, less-scrupulous carriers are filling the void, the report said.

Relying on data from tracking systems that are mandatory on tankers, C4ADS identified 214 vessels that visited Venezuela in the year after sanctions were imposed, but not in the previous 12 months. Collectively, those ships accounted for 33% of the country’s maritime traffic since the U.S. banned Americans from doing business with Venezuela’s oil sector on Jan. 28, 2019.

As the Trump administration has sought to deprive Maduro of easy cash from Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, it has sanctioned more than 50 vessels. It has also issued new guidelines urging the maritime industry to beef up its vigilance for sanctionsbusting activity on the high seas.

Some ship captains and their employers have responded by turning off their transponders and “going dark” for weeks to hide tankers brimming with crude. The ships then frequently unload their hidden cargo on the high seas in risky ship-toship transfers, making it harder for authorities to track their ultimate destination.

While U.S. sanctions “succeeded in reducing the aggregate volume of recorded port calls in Venezuela, persistent dark voyage activity, the continued importance of particular routes, and the entry of new players showed the limits of enforcement,” the report said.