When the shadow fleet ship Marathon, also known as Udaya, sailed through Denmark on June 10, the navy was present. The patrol vessel Freja sailed at high speed almost right up to the side of the tanker before Freja suddenly turned around.
Data from the French government database Equasis showed that the oil tanker is sailing without a flag and is therefore stateless. It is otherwise mandatory under international maritime law and in a large number of conventions, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, to have a flag state.
In addition, Marathon is sanctioned in the EU for transporting sanctioned oil and at the same time displaying “irregular and high-risk behavior”. The authorities were seconds away from stopping the ship, as Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen (M) recently said that Denmark was considering doing, but for some reason did not.
Now the Danish Maritime Authority informs Danwatch that they were cheated by Marathon.
“Upon a call from the Defence Command, the ship UDAYA/MARATHON stated that it was sailing under the Comoros. However, in our follow-up with the Comoros, we have since been informed that the ship is not registered in the Comoros register,” the authority writes.
Ship again on its way to Danish waters
On Wednesday 18 June, Marathon is now back in the Danish straits and is at full speed towards the Great Belt. Danwatch has therefore asked the Danish Maritime Authority whether they intend to stop the ship this time, which would in that case be the first time that Danish authorities have intervened so harshly against the Russian shadow fleet.
It has not yet been possible to get an answer.
When Danwatch last described stateless oil tankers in Denmark, it was about the 31-year-old gas tanker Falcon. Here, professor of maritime law at the University of Southern Denmark, Kristina Siig, said that this type of ship is something that “the authorities are focused on”.
“There is reason to worry that there is no control over the safety and condition of the ship. It is the flag state that must ensure that someone checks the condition of the ship and its certificates”, she said.
After Danwatch described the case of Falcon, which allegedly claims to be flagged in Cameroon, the Danish Maritime Authority has tried to get Cameroon to confirm that they have registered Falcon. The agency now states that it has not yet been possible to confirm that the Falcon is sailing under any flag.
The tanker Marathon or Udaya is a crude oil tanker with the capacity to sail with almost 100,000 tons of oil in its cargo.
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