A feeder containership held in Greece more than a year ago on allegations that it carried explosives to Sudan is being put under the hammer in an auction next month.
The 1,042-teu Mekong Spirit (built 1996) will be the object of an electronic auction on 13 March, according to legal documents obtained by TradeWinds.
The minimum reserve price is at $1.7m. The Polish-built ship will be sold on behalf of creditor Stella Marina LP, a company based in Stirling, Scotland.
Court documents say the ship and its registered owner, Starlio Shipholding, are sitting on a $56.1m preferred mortgage on behalf of a Latvia-based subsidiary of Sweden’s SEB Bank.
No further details on the claim were available.
The vessel has a charged history. The Hellenic Coast Guard detained it as it was crossing Greek waters back in 2017. Officials claimed it violated United Nations and European Union sanctions.
As TradeWinds reported at the time, Switzerland and Spain-based Lumar SA came forward as the owner to claim that the vessel fully complied with all reporting requirements while it was chartered out to Ukraine’s Varamar. The vessels’ Ukrainian captain was jailed for at least six weeks.
Owner Boris Lunoff had said that the cargo was for civil use and fully complied with sanctions.
However, Greek authorities claimed the captain had failed to inform them about the Sudan-bound cargo of mining explosives and hunting/sport rifle cartridges.
There has been no update on the vessel’s fate since.
Lumar bought the Mekong Spirit for about $23.5m in 2006. The company also purchased a similar ship — the 1,138-teu Alkin Kalkavan (renamed MSC Kreta, built 1998) — at around the same time for about $20m.
The Alkin Kalkavan was sold at the end of 2017 to Germany’s Lubeca Marine, reportedly for just $3.6m, which left the Mekong Spirit as the only containership in Lumar’s fleet.
Lumar was previously known as a Ukrainian-controlled heavylift shipowner.
The company did not respond to a request for comment.
