France has warned that a tiny volcanic island in the South Pacific inhabited only by seabirds has emerged as the location for a new fraudulent ship register.
The Maritime Administration of Matthew Island (MAMI) and a privately run Caribbean registry were named by French and Dutch officials in a submission to the International Maritime Organization.
The comments come as countries push for a crackdown on the abuse of the flag-state system. Ship registering is aimed at ensuring legal, safe global shipping, but abuses have increased with the rise of flag-hopping and the expansion of shadow fleets hauling sanctioned cargoes, according to experts.
The two European countries called for new mandatory standards governing the registering of ships to “combat the emergence of unregulated private companies usurping the authority of flag state authorities”.
Private players have sought to take advantage of the upheaval in global shipping to tap into the multimillion-dollar ship registry business.
The MAMI website describes itself as an experienced, privately managed provider of shipping services on behalf of the island, the sovereignty of which is disputed between France and Vanuatu.
The two European nations behind the submission said they would provide further information to the IMO but described MAMI as a “fraudulent register”. MAMI does not have any ships registered, according to the IMO database.
“Matthew Island occasionally draws researchers but remains largely inaccessible to tourists due to its remoteness and volcanic activity,” the registry website says.
The island was named after an associate of Thomas Gilbert, an English mariner who sighted the island in 1788.
The MAMI website — which has no functioning link allowing shipowners to sign up to the registry — is similar in appearance to the purported Caribbean registry of Sint Maarten, an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, said the Dutch and French document.
The Dutch delegation told the IMO legal committee last year that it had seen fraudulent Sint Maarten documents including seafarer competency and training papers.
“Sint Maarten, however, has no flag registry and does not issue any of these documents,” the Dutch delegate told the committee.
TradeWinds has sought to contact both registries. MAMI has a telephone contact in Thailand that was not connecting.
Calls to the purported Sint Maarten registry — MSTA-International Maritime Registries & Regulatory Inc — connected to an out-of-hours service for a California ear clinic. MAMI references International Maritime Registries & Regulatory Inc on its website.
Less than two years ago, the IMO warned of a grave problem in ensuring safe and legal shipping with more than 100 falsely flagged ships — but the problem has since escalated.
The global regulator’s database now lists some 277 ships as being falsely flagged.
The abuse of the system has seen ships using forged documents to suggest they are flagged with a bona fide registry, or vessels using one of the increasing number of fictitious registries that fail to carry out checks on ships and their owners.
The IMO’s legal committee is due to discuss the issue later this month after a paper compiled by major flag states and shipping nations warned that the number of cases “poses a real threat to the reputation of the worldwide shipping community and flag states”.
IMO secretary general Arsenio Dominguez met representatives of about 25 African flag states in Tanzania over two days in November to urge them to properly police their ships.(Copyright)
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