A Chinese state-owned firm in Hong Kong has been helping Iranian ships get around U.S. sanctions

Tehran’s Ghost Fleet

By Claudia Rosett (Bio and Archives)  Monday, August 29, 2011 | Print friendly | Subscribe | Email Us

This June, a merchant ship flying the Hong Kong flag and sailing under the name of the Atlantic called at the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas—the southern end of a trade corridor to the U.S., advertised as “the fastest route to the heart of North America.” That might be unremarkable, except the Atlantic, formerly called the Dreamland, and before that the Iran Saeidi, belongs to a curious network of 19 bulk carriers, all flagged out of Hong Kong and all blacklisted by the U.S. Treasury for their links to Iran.

According to a recent transcript of Hong Kong’s Marine Department Shipping Register, the Atlantic is owned by a Hong Kong-registered company called Harvest Supreme Limited. Scratch the surface and Harvest Supreme tracks back to an Iranian address, as do 18 other obscure and interlinked Hong Kong ship-owning companies with names such as Grand Trinity Limited and Sparkle Brilliant Development Limited. These are the hallmarks of the global shell game with which Iran continues to dodge U.S. and United Nations sanctions.

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This shell game began around 2008, when the U.S. imposed sanctions on Iran’s state shipping company, the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, or IRISL, for its role in provisioning Iran’s rogue missile and nuclear programs. The U.S. Treasury also blacklisted a slew of IRISL affiliates and 123 of its ships, including all 19 of these merchant ships now flagged to Hong Kong, making it potentially a crime under U.S. law to do business with them. Treasury also began pressuring players outside U.S. jurisdiction to shun Iran’s proliferators, or risk being cut off from commerce with the U.S.

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