Two Eletson Gas ships have been arrested as a group of banks scour the globe in efforts to foreclose on a 2014 loan.
On 22 October, a judge issued a warrant for the arrest of the 11,918-cbm liquefied ethylene gas carrier Dilos (built 2016) after a group of banks led by Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken filed a lawsuit in the US federal court for the Southern District of Texas.
Three days later, the same group of banks — which includes Citibank, BNP Paribas, Unicredit and NIBC Bank — had its sistership Kithnos (built 2016) arrested in Singapore.
Both were financed by a $245m joint loan that the banks made in 2014 to seven shipowning vehicles backing five ships, with Athens-based Eletson Gas as the guarantor.
Among those shipowning companies were Kithnos Special Maritime Enterprise and Dilos II Special Maritime Enterprise.
The banks argue $117m is outstanding on the loans.
They say Eletson Gas stopped making payments on each of the five ship mortgages as early as October 2019.
They also accuse the company of failing to maintain an adequate credit balance and certain financial ratios as laid out in the agreement and also failing to pay earnings from the ships into predetermined accounts, instead taking the money for themselves.
The banks said the shipowning companies entered into a standstill agreement with them in August 2020, in which they acknowledged they owned the sum, but then failed to make a commitment to pay it moving forward.
Eletson Gas is the second Eletson company to run into financial trouble this year.
In the spring, affiliate Eletson Corp sold off much of its tanker fleet amid a spate of arrests from Chinese leasing companies. The company's website lists 13 tankers still in its stead, most of them smaller vessels.
Eletson Gas is said to share some management staff with Eletson Corp and the two companies are affiliated through Eletson Holdings. They are understood to have different shareholding structures.
Eletson Gas did not return requests for comment from TradeWinds.
In June, a court in India ordered the Eletson Gas-connected 35,500-cbm LPG carrier Anafi (built 2009) release, after the ship was seized by a bunkering company looking to collect on unpaid bills for an Eletson Corp tanker.
Eletson Gas called the move "totally unlawful".
