Shipowner must shoulder $7.7m piracy payout, UK’s top court told

Gunvor has told the UK’s highest court that a shipowner and its insurers should shoulder the entire burden of a $7.7m ransom paid to Somali pirates to secure the release of a product tanker in 2011.

The dispute being heard at the Supreme Court centres on the seizure by pirates of the 72,800-dwt MV Polar (built 2005) in October 2010 in the Gulf of Aden while carrying fuel oil from St Petersburg in Russia to Singapore.