Members of two prominent Russian and Azerbaijani families have emerged as the ultimate beneficial owners behind troubled SAM Shipping.
The bulker owner looks likely to lose three ships to repossession by financier Credit Suisse, and TradeWinds has reported that it has circulated other vessels for sale.
Legal discovery in a case in the Southern District of Texas has shed light on the company’s ownership.
Documents in the seven-month arrest of the 32,600-dwt bulker Sam Eagle (built 2010) at Corpus Christi by Maltese trading bank FIMBank plc show that SAM Shipping was set up in about 2009 with Irina Pomelova and her son, Samed Gurbanov, as shareholders.
Pomelova is the widow of the Azeri-Russian oligarch Aydin Gurbanov, who before his death in 2003 was one of the owners of Russian steel maker Evraz.
Since 2011, their son, Samed Gurbanov — sometimes also spelled Samad Kurbanov — has been married to Arzu Aliyeva, whose father, Ilham Aliyev, has been president of Azerbaijan since 2003.
Family’s role revealed
Published news reports often mention Samed Gurbanov as chairman of the Azerbaijan-Russia Business Council.
Corporate registry documents from Hong Kong and Switzerland produced in the Texas arrest case show the family’s role in SAM Shipping and its precursor companies.
Pomelova and Gurbanov are named as shareholders in the registered owning company of the 52,500-dwt Sam Tiger (renamed Nord, built 2003) when it was mortgaged to Basel-based Credit Suisse in January 2010.
In February 2010, a Swiss corporate registry record shows that Samed Kurbanov (sic) of Moscow had been appointed as a member of the management board of Shipping Asset Management (SAM) SA, as the company was then known.
Sources familiar with the present ownership of the company indicated to TradeWinds that real control is with Pomelova, and that her son is now more directly involved with business interests of his own in Azerbaijan.
Gurbanov is believed to have been born in 1988 and would have been about 21 at the time of the foundation of SAM Shipping, which purchased its first ship in 2009, according to information produced in the Texas case.
TradeWinds has no information that would connect President Aliyev to the operation or financing of the shipping company of which his son-in-law is a co-owner.
In 2016, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, as part of its Panama Papers campaign, published a report on Aliyev and his family, entitled “How Family that Runs Azerbaijan Built an Empire of Hidden Wealth”.
The story exposed the family’s interests in a gold-mining company held through offshore vehicles linked to both of Aliyev’s daughters, but did not mention investments in shipping.
Mortgage-holder and trade creditors
Piraeus-based SAM Shipping has been under legal attack in recent weeks by mortgage-holder Credit Suisse and trade creditors, with the arrest of three ships in Singapore — the 52,500-dwt Nord, 57,200-dwt Sam Wolf (built 2012) and 57,200-dwt Sam Jaguar (built 2013) — and another in Mundra, India, the 57,200-dwt Sam Hawk (built 2013).
The company’s chief executive, Dennis Saevski, has spoken out on the arrests and linked its financial troubles to a matter unrelated to vessel financing.
“We are working hard and are committed to continue to service our clients and other stakeholders during these unprecedented and challenging times,” Saevski told TradeWinds last week.
“Unfortunately, due to the long arrest of the Sam Eagle by FIMBank and the inability to find common ground with the financing bank [Credit Suisse], Sam Jaguar will be taken back by the financing bank.”
The Texas case has seen the production of a large number of documents in an extended discovery process over the complex bill-of-lading dispute between FIMBank and SAM Shipping.
However, there has also been a high level of judicial secrecy.
Recent documents have been placed under an “enduring seal”, ordered by magistrate judge Julie K Hampton at the request of the shipowner’s lawyers, Holman Fenwick Willan. The order extends a December “protective order” requested by both parties, allowing secrecy. Some 106 documents are in the docket under seal.
“It is hard to imagine that any public interest can be satisfied from access to documents regarding a commercial dispute between a Maltese bank and a Panamanian shipowner,” Thomas Nork of Holman Fenwick Willan wrote in asking for the protective order.
By “Panamanian shipowner”, Nork was referring to SPV Sam Eagle Inc, one of the registered owning companies affiliated with SAM Shipping.
