Maritime compliance

The Venezuelan oil industry, which once served as the country’s major financial resource, is now under additional pressure. Sanctions imposed on the country severely limited its ability to trade the crude oil on which it relied for economic growth. As a result, more and more Venezuelan oil tankers were found to be violating sanctions.  Normally…

Maintaining business velocity and customer satisfaction while meeting regulator due diligence expectations is a growing challenge Know Your Vessel –  KYV, screening processes lacking cargo information are exposing companies to sanctions compliance risks Independent sources of cargo information have become indispensable to see through deceptive shipping practices such as false shipping documents and AIS manipulation…

The interwoven global tanker trade – A Venezuela case study This case study brings together Windward intelligence and Vortexa data on maritime risk factors, ship-to-ship (STS) meetings, dark movements, vessel specifics and cargo flows to examine the risk posed to the global maritime fleet of association with the Venezuelan oil trade. We illustrate that sanctions do…

Movies have taught us that, when looking to achieve an investigative breakthrough and capture a bad-guy, it is necessary to track their phones. Movies have also taught us that the bad guys know that, and they often adapt their ways, trying to throw the good-guys off their tail.  The ocean is no different than a…

Regulators’ focus on maritime trade and shipping for sanctions is intensifying. On July 27, 2020, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI), the body responsible to ensure that financial sanctions are properly understood, implemented and enforced in the UK, has issued new guidance aiming at the maritime sector.  Implications: Why does this matter? This document…

Every year, the UN Security Council Panel of Experts on North Korea publishes an update on the DPRK, the impact of sanctions and the increasingly sophisticated ways Pyongyang evades them. The most remarkable case we’ve ever encountered – involving almost every deceptive shipping practice in the book – is that of the SU RI BONG….

This blog post is based on a review of global shipping for sanctions exposure. You can download the full review below. Growing trade sanctions make it increasingly difficult for companies operating in the maritime ecosystem to know which vessels are safe for business. Vessels violating sanctions are constantly being added to sanctions lists. But there…

In part II of this series on AIS, we’ll focus on the three simple signals for efficiently filtering through the noise of AIS transmission data to find the real risks. As we’ve seen in part 1 of this series, performing Vessel Due Diligence by screening AIS transmission gaps can protect companies from inadvertently doing business…

When one number hides two identities it’s key to know what you’re looking at to make the right business decision. Using AI, Maritime expertise and experience, below is the curious case of how one vessel appeared to be in two oceans at the same time. A Panamanian-flagged oil tanker goes dark off the coast of…

Vessels moving through the vastness of the oceans expose their counterparties to myriad risks. Ships can be involved in sanctions evasions, the trafficking of arms, narcotics, and people, and other illicit activities. To mitigate the risks of transacting with such vessels, organizations are turning to ship tracking services to assess the ship’s movements for red…

It is, according to industry bible, TradeWinds, shipping’s “Huawei” moment – the point when one of the biggest names in the business falls foul of U.S. sanctions, sending shockwaves across the world’s trading and shipping companies. This latest action – against subsidiaries of Chinese shipping giant COSCO – is the first of its kind, and…

Last week, the U.S. Treasury designated a Taiwanese shipping network engaged in Ship-to-Ship (STS) transfers with North Korean vessels. They were smuggling fuel into the DPRK. The designations applied to two Taiwanese individuals and three shipping companies; the U.S. also identified the vessel Shang Yuan Bao as blocked property for two incidents of dark STS…