Ahead
of this week’s meeting of its legal committee, the secretariat at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has
warned about two shipping registries it deems are fraudulent.
Flags
being administered allegedly on behalf of Guyana and Eswatini have come in for
criticism.
Despite
the government of Guyana warning the IMO about the operation of what it claimed
is a fraudulent registry under the domain name www.imsag.org, the IMO has warned in a circular that the
registry continues operating notwithstanding the termination of the contract
between the Maritime Administration Department of Guyana and the Aryavart
Corporation, its subsidiaries Nautilus Register and the International Maritime
Safety Agency for Guyana (IMSAG), including issuing of fraudulent
certificates of registration and authorising recognised organisations.
Having
struggled with Guyana, India’s Aryavart Corporation then created the Eswatini
Maritime Affairs and International Ship Registry as a private company in
Singapore late last year, registering ships to the landlocked southern African
kingdom formerly known as Swaziland. The
IMO has since listed a number of vessels that paid to flag with the African nation
as ‘False Eswatini’.
The
Indian backers of the Eswatini flag have also been in landlocked Laos recently,
where they are in discussions to create another shipping registry.
Like Eswanti, Laos is not a member
state of the IMO.
Other landlocked shipping registries to have
made headlines over the years include Mongolia, Bolivia and the 2021 creation
of the San Marino Ship Register
Corruption
can take any form to act and false acts cannot be it seems totally eliminated.