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A rotating selection from the paid serviceTransatlantic sanctions lists drift apart as Washington targets Iran, Europe Russia
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On film
Built from Mariel dataOn 21 October the US Treasury blacklisted seven ships managed from one office in Piraeus, under its Iran sanctions, along with their manager, Roxette Maritime, and the Panama law firm Karnakis and Karnakis.
Equasis, the ship-safety database, lists Roxette as safety manager of 19 ships. Twelve of them are on no sanctions list. Eleven are owned by companies at the Panama City address Washington gives for the law firm, and six have been inspected in Iranian ports since Roxette took over their safety management.
Washington, Roxette and Karnakis and Karnakis were approached for comment. None has replied.
Subscribers can read the full story: Tip of the iceberg? US Iran sanctions skip a dozen sister ships
Tip of the iceberg?
Washington blacklisted seven ships run from one Piraeus office. Twelve sister ships from the same office, six of them inspected in Iranian ports, are on no sanctions list. Built from the Mariel database.
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Mariel is our own shadow-fleet database. It follows ships, the companies behind them and the sanctions lists, ship by ship and date by date, so a single query can show what happened to a fleet before and after a listing.
A typical piece of Mariel work: an operator is sanctioned, and Mariel traces where each of its ships went next, under which new manager, at which address, and which ports they called at afterwards.
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- When a ship operator is sanctioned, where do its ships go next?
- Which listed ships were still calling at European ports after the listing?
- Who managed, flagged and classed a ship before anyone listed it?
- Which companies share an office with a sanctioned one?
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All past issues →Maritime Watch Monitor — Issue 29, 3 November 2026
An IMO number is supposed to outlive every change of name, flag and owner, and to end with the ship. Three numbers have not. Equasis lists the Kapten Caroq, the Auro and the Iria as scrapped, yet inspectors at Dongjiakou…
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