Oil tanker sought by U.S. now in Iran
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — An oil tanker sought by the U.S. over allegedly circumventing sanctions on Iran was hijacked July 5 off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, a seafarers organization said Wednesday.
Satellite photos showed the vessel in Iranian waters Tuesday, and two of its sailors remained in the Iranian capital.
It wasn’t immediately clear what happened aboard the Dominica-flagged MT Gulf Sky, though its reported hijacking comes after months of tensions between Iran and the U.S.
David Hammond, the CEO of the United Kingdom-based group Human Rights at Sea, said he took a witness statement from the captain of the MT Gulf Sky, confirming the ship had been hijacked.
Hammond said that 26 of the Indian sailors on board had made it back to India, while two remained in Tehran.
“We are delighted to hear that the crew are safe and well, which has been our fundamental concern from the outset,” Hammond said.
TankerTrackers.com, a website tracking the oil trade at sea, said it saw the vessel in satellite photos Tuesday in Iranian waters off Hormuz Island. Hormuz Island, near the port city of Bandar Abbas, is 120 miles north of Khorfakkan, a city on the eastern coast of the United Arab Emirates where the vessel had been for months.
The Emirati government, the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi and the U.S. Navy’s Bahrain-based 5th Fleet did not respond to requests for comment. Iranian state media did not immediately report on the vessel and Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In May, the U.S. Justice Department filed criminal charges against two Iranians, accusing them of trying to launder $12 million to purchase the tanker, then named the MT Nautica, through a series of front companies.
Court documents allege the scheme involved the Quds Force of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, as well as Iran’s national oil and tanker companies. The two men charged remain at large.
“Because a U.S. bank froze the funds related to the sale of the vessel, the seller never received payment,” the Justice Department said. “As a result, the seller instituted a civil action in the UAE to recover the vessel.”
That civil action was believed to still be pending, raising questions of how the tanker sailed away from the Emirates after being seized by authorities there.