WHEN a tanker that has been kicked out of respectable registries can move with apparent ease between fictional flags and digital identities of long-ago scrapped ghost ships, there is a problem.

Not a fictional problem. A real life, tangible problem that relates to a real ship performing really dangerous operations with zero accountability and, apparently, no means to stop it.

The current gold rush in fake flags preys on governments ill-equipped even to know their sovereign status is being abused by sanctioned tankers lifting oil on the other side of the world.

If an ostracised tanker wishes to identify as belonging to an entirely fictitious flag state, then it is mere matter of reassigned digits to achieve such a rebirth in the eyes of those watching on screens.

By the time the right officials have worked out what a shipping registry is and put in an incredulous call to Interpol, the fraudsters have moved on. How they came to be and who was complicit with whom ceases to be an issue.

But what started as a cat-and-mouse game of tracking these sham registries has become an international issue with no apparent solution.

Sanctions created the economic conditions for the shadow fleet to thrive. The illegal infrastructure that has shot up around it is gaining traction, and now supports a growing fleet of digitally translucent ships that nobody seems to know how to deal with.

The International Maritime Organization has been grappling with this for years, to little effect.

Fraudsters are nimbler than the groaning bureaucracy of international regulation.

Databases rarely reflect the current iteration of the latest fake identities and even if they did, the shell companies behind those numbers are untraceable.

For the past few years, Western governments have set about leaning on insurers, registries and class in a bid to dissuade them from dealing with the subject of their sanctions. The natural conclusion of that process has been the creation of an amorphous shadow fleet and shadow industry behind it. But the consequence of all that has fundamentally undermined the worryingly fragile regulatory framework upon which shipping relies.

Fraudulent flags are the symptom of a much wider problem that needs to be addressed.

Richard Meade
Editor-in-chief, Lloyd’s List

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