Mozambique joins rapidly growing fake flag roster for sanctioned tonnage
- Sanctioned tankers have started to move to new fraudulent ship registries including Mozambique and Angola
- Latest additions to the fake register market are all linked to the Marinegov.net fraud linking at least 30 fake sites
- The IMO is removing fake sites from its database where it finds them, but flag hopping is outpacing the attempts to update information
The IMO’s database features 432 fraudulently registered ships but the real figure is growing more quickly than the regulator’s attempts to document the problem
MOZAMBIQUE has become the latest fraudulent ship register of choice for sanctioned tankers as flag hopping between fake flags continues to accelerate and grow in volume.
At least six sanctioned tankers have signalled a flag change to Mozambique over the past few weeks, with five of them moving from other fraudulent flag operations.
At least three International Maritime Organization identity numbers for ships that have previously been scrapped have also appeared with a Mozambique register signal over the same period.
While the Mozambique flag is used by five government-owned patrol vessels and several tugs and fishing vessels, the government does not operate a commercial ship registry.
A website purporting to be the Mozambique Maritime Authority is thought to be part of the Marinegov.net group of fraudulent websites uncovered by Lloyd’s List in July.
Over 30 fake flag registers and crew certification scam websites are all linked back to the same Marinegov.net domain, indicating that they are part of connected operation.
The Mozambique website is directly linked to another fraudulent website operating under the name of the non-existent Maritime Directorate of the Czech Republic, which in turn is hosted by the Marinegov.net nexus of websites.
Until late last week the fake website details were still being listed as the official contact point for the Mozambique government in the IMO’s database.
While those details have now been removed after the IMO secretariat contacted the Mozambique government, several other fraudulent government details remain live in the database with new frauds being regularly added.
The IMO database is updated weekly via a feed from the commercial operator of the IMO’s numbering system, S&P Global, however individual member states are responsible for inputting the correct contact details.
In the past week a fraudulent Tanzanian operation has been removed, but a new fake operation for the Maldives has been added.
Fraudulent details for Togo, Hungary and Tunisia remain unchanged in the database.
The IMO’s database now contains 432 fraudulently registered ships, but this number is thought to only represent a fraction of the growing number of ships using fake flags for increasingly brief periods of time.
The velocity of changes between flags, signalled by a change in the first three digits of a ship’s unique identifying Maritime Mobile Service Identity number, means that the true number of fake flagged ships is not accurately represented in databases.
Mozambique is just one of several newer fake flag operations that are accelerating intake as sanctioned ships switch between registers at speed.
Angola, another Marinegov.net site, is also showing a recent uptick in vessels briefly broadcasting an Angolan flag MMSI number.
As with other fake flag websites there are multiple iterations of the Angolan Ship Register domain name, with one of the domains under construction currently displaying the website of an Ohio-based Mexican restaurant.
Several of the vessels now moving to Mozambique and Angola also have fake certificates of registration for several other flags, suggesting that ships are now using multiple fraudulent identities and switching between them at pace.
The recent proliferation of fake flag websites has created a fluid market for ships to shop around for new identities and the recent pattern of registrations shows that once a flag has reached a certain volume and market visibility, ships start rapidly switching to new flags.
The length of time it takes the IMO to remove fake website details from its database may also be linked to the longevity of fraudulent flag operations.
Seasearcher sanctioned ships list: Pacific Runner (IMO: 9285859), Ocean Pearl (IMO: 9436018), Lily (IMO: 9294331), Cecila (IMO: 9247792), Hannah (IMO: 9261619), Navigator Ridge (IMO: 9321689), Birthv (IMO: 9165932), North (IMO: 9252979) and Hoen (IMO: 9188788)
