A single-decker general cargoship in the fleet of embattled Azeri-Turkish shipowner Mubariz Mansimov will be sold in an e-auction in Greece next month, court documents show.

The 6,900-dwt Nakhchivan (built 2005) is worth about $3.4m, according to estimates by VesselsValue. Greek authorities, however, have set the minimal reserve price at a much lower $567,000.

This is probably due to the vessel’s poor condition. The Nakhchivan’s documents feature the ship as equipped with two Wartsila 6L20 engines, but Greek arrest officers said in a report that they found one of them disassembled and the other entirely missing.

Any amounts recouped will thus cover only a tiny fraction of the $27m that Mansimov company Palmali Holdings reportedly owes Hamburg Commercial Bank. The lender, the successor of HSH Nordbank, financed the acquisition of six Palmali ships in 2006.

The six open-hatch single-deckers were all built between 2005 and 2007.

TradeWinds reported as early as in April that the German lender was moving to seize the sextet.

In June, Palmali said that it had agreed with an unnamed German financial institution to sell six dry cargo vessels “as part of a restructuring process" following the downturn in the dry cargo market.

Azeri-Turkish shipowner Mubariz Mansimov was arrested in Turkey earlier this year. Photo: Palmali Holdings

Portfoliomanagement, the state-owned “bad bank” set up in 2016 to deal with HSH Nordbank’s shipping loan portfolio of €4.3bn, took legal action in Greece to arrest the Nakhchivan against its registered owner, Palmali Voyager Two Shipping.

Vessel tracking sites show the vessel as moored at Greece’s Perama ship-repair zone near Piraeus since at least June. The Nakhchivan has been with Palmali Voyager since Russia's Volgogradskiy Shipbuilding delivered it as a newbuilding.

'Defense with my head high'

Mansimov has faced a string of blows this year. Chief among them was his arrest in Turkey earlier this year over alleged links to an outlawed organisation headed by Fethullah Gulen — an opponent of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Mansimov has vehemently denied any link to Gulen and has hired Cherie Blair, the wife of a former British prime minister, to defend him. According to his messages on Instagram, he is understood to be currently facing trial in Turkey.

“Despite everything, I have full faith in the law, I have made my defense with my head high and I believe that at the end of the trial the supreme Turkish court will break the conspiracy and decide my acquittal,” Mansimov said.

Palmali said in its June press release that it was “continuing to trade and operate as it has [previously] done”, despite the arrest of its founder.

In other bad news for the owner earlier this month, Palmali lost a $49.5m arbitration dispute in London against Azerbaijan oil company Socar.

In October, Russian lender Sberbank bought 46 of the company’s tankers and tank barges for $60m on its own account, after failing to find any other buyers for them.

Palmali was declared bankrupt in Russia in 2018, with creditors' claims there exceeding RUB 25bn ($329m), including about RUB 13bn demanded by Sberbank, to which the Palmali LLC fleet was pledged.