The United States Treasury Department on Tuesday imposed sanctions against a Maltese individual, Adrian Baldacchino, and two Maltese registered companies, Maraner Holdings Limited and Royal-Med Shipping Agency Ltd., in connection with US restrictions on Iran’s shipping line.
A US Embassy official told The Times Business in this particular case those being sanctioned were seen to be acting on behalf of Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL)-related entitie. The US has claimed that the shipping line is supporting Iran’s nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction programmes and is already subject to both UN and EU sanctions.
The sanctions were announced on the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) website and are governed by Executive Order 13382. Under this Executive Order the sanctions cover persons – including legal persons such as businesses – which are “determined to be owned or controlled by, or acting or purporting to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked.”
Executive Order 13382, signed into law by US President George Bush on June 28, 2005, is entitled “Blocking Property of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferators and the supporters.”
WIKILEAKS CABLE SHOWS US PRESSURE ON MALTA
The United States in 2009 urged the Maltese government to tell law firms to be vigilant over transactions involving Iranian shipping line IRISL and its affiliates, a Wikileaks cable shows.
The US alleged that the shipping line is violating UN and US sanctions on the transport of weapons.
The cable was written in May 2009 in the State Department. It makes reference to a meeting in Washington in April 2009 between the Treasury Under-secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Stuart Levey, and Alan Caruana, an official at the Maltese Finance Ministry, where these issues were discussed.
The cable says that Mr Caruana was receptive to the US message and shared a document containing shipping statistics for IRISL in 2008.
Caruana is reported to have indicated that the Maltese governemnt had 'pushed away' Iranian business.
He is also quoted as saying that the US and Malta had 'a good policy of sharing information and a strong relationship' with the US embassy.
US concerns stemmed from the fact that the IRISL had taken action to conceal the true identity of its vessels in an attempt to maintain access to capital and avoid scrutiny by foreign governments.
As part of its actions IRISL began to reflag and rename its ships, removing its logo from the vessels and setting up new management companies abroad to hide ownership and involvement.
The cable noted that some Iranian ships sailing under the Maltese shipping flag were renamed for the second time in a year. IRISL had also registered new companies in Malta and Hong Kong.
As of mid February 2009, Maltese law firm Ganado and Associates terminated all aspects of its professional relationship with IRISL, citing as reasons, compliance with UN and US sanctions as well as Maltese anti-money laundering laws, the cable said.
IRISL alleged replaced Ganado and Associates with Fenech and Fenech.