Greek Ship owners violate US sanction

Greek Ship owners violates (SIC) US sanction
October 23, 2020 https://dailytimes.com.pk/681086/greek-ship-owners-violates-us-sanction/

WASHINGTON/ATHENS: A Greek shipping executive and his business partner are under the scanner for their role in shipment of oil from Venezuela to Rio Haina, Dominican Republic, in breach of the sanctions imposed by the United States of America (USA). Investigating agencies are considering whether shipping executive Vasilis Bacolitsas and oil trader Marios Illiopolous are involved in possible breach of Office Of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) laws in Venezuela – in regards to the control of international trade with foreign countries under the US scrutiny.

The suspicions have been triggered over the highly documented travel activities of four Greek tankers – the Mt. Aurora Borealis, the Mt. Mercury, the Mt. Ragnar renamed St Marcella & the Cape Bella V. – owned by the Edge Maritime company registered out of Piraeus and being represented by Greek Shipping executive Vasilis Bacolitsas.

They are known for doing business with Beaconsfield investments and Beaconsfield commodities. Beaconsfield has not paid for some cargoes to Venezuelan state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) and now both companies are blacklisted with PDVSA and under scrutiny from the Americans.

Marios Illiopolous is know for orchestrating a plan for men posing as pirates to attack and set fire to his own tanker in an elaborate fraud to seek $77m in insurance money scam. A London judge had found in October 2019 that Marios Iliopoulos, in 2011, lured the ship’s master and chief engineer, as well as seven Yemeni coast guards, into a conspiracy off the coast of Yemen.

The judgment completely dismissed a claim by Suez Fortune Investments, a company linked to Iliopoulos, and its Greek bank to force a syndicate of insurers to pay out. After the forensic investigators found complete evidence of Marios Illiopolous’s involvement in the $77m fraud of putting his own loss-making oil tanker on fire, he decided not to appear in the court to give evidence.

The vessel tracking website www.marinetraffic.com shows that the Cape Bella V. And St. Marcella – ships registered to Edge Maritime – the company Vassilis Bacolitsas represents – were confirmed ferrying between Venezuelan ports and Rio Hana, Dominican Republic. Others ships linked with Vassilis Bacolitsas – such as the St. Marcella – have also been confirmed ferrying between Venezuelan ports and Rio Hana, Dominican Republic.

Investigators are concerned about such activities in Venezuela, which has been one of the most monitored nations since Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian regime triggered an OFAC crackdown on its PdVSA department, which controls the country’s foreign trade of oil.

An investigation shows that Marios Illiopolous from Sea Jets is a part owner of these vessels.

Vassilis Bacolitsas is understood to be using his mother’s company and name to buy vessels fronting the company Edge Maritime which belongs to Marios Iliopoulos (the owner of Sea Jet ferries, Greece). Vasilis Bacolitsas appears as the front man as ship owner and operator of Sea Pioneer Shipping Corporation which acquired three suezmax tankers and one kamsarmax bulk carrier: MT Cape Baxley, MT Cape Bellavista, MT SCF Altai and MV Fidelity. Investigators believe that the Cape Bellavista is waiting to load Venezulan oil with Beaconsfield or possibly a new entity that Beaconsfield is collaborating.

US investigators are worried over the elusive quest of the Office Of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) internationally, especially in regards to the control of international trade with foreign countries under U.S. scrutiny.
What prevents most of these important governing bodies from enacting complete legal regulations is the ignorant or perhaps even witting support of financial institutions who back actors in their transgressions of regulations, an investigator familiar with the situation said.

In January 2019, US Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin determined that the PdVSA would be subject to US sanctions. All property and interests in property of PdVSA subject to US jurisdiction would be blocked, the only exceptions coming little more than a year later when in April 2020, OFAC began to allow transactions necessary for the maintenance of “essential operations” or the “wind down of operations” through December 1, 2020.

In this singular amendment, the US Treasury sanctioned two subsidiaries of the Russian state-controlled Rosneft Oil Company for facilitating Venezuelan oil exports and four shipping companies for transporting Venezuelan oil.
Deutsche Bank, for instance, was fined $631 million dollars for their involvement in previous schemes that transgressed international regulatory policy that were connected to money laundering.

Investigators looking into matter wonder that with such troubling consequences for the parties involved, why would there be such overt, easily traceable violations of OFAC law?

In London in October 2019, the court had heard that Iliopoulos, who had bought eight tankers between 2004 and 2008, initiated the fraud scheme because the vessel started losing money after the freight market collapsed in 2008.
“Iliopoulos had a motive to want the vessel to be damaged by fire, namely, the making of a fraudulent claim for the total loss of the vessel in the sum of some $77m which, if successful, would solve the serious financial difficulties in which he and his companies were at the time,” the court had heard.

In his judgment, the judge cast doubt on Iliopoulos’s reliability, he failed to testify in these hearings and also tried to conceal relevant files.

Just a year later in 2020, Iliopoulos and his business dealing are under scrutiny again – at a larger international scale. However when we contacted the executives they rejected all the allegations.