An idle car carrier will be auctioned off again this week after a May sales agreement was challenged by another bidder.

The 4,585-ceu City of Antwerp (built 1988) will go under the hammer on 29 June, according to broker Eggar Forrester.

The company told TradeWinds that the ship, lying in Antwerp, was bought at auction on 30 May, but during the 10-day grace period, another party challenged the offer.

A live auction will now take place.

TradeWinds has previously reported that the vessel is the last remaining in the fleet of Abou Mehri Lines (AML), controlled by Lebanese shipowner Merhi Abou Merhi.

In May, the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac) removed sanctions against him and his shipping group, which also includes Abou Merhi Cruises (AMC).

AML and its owner were sanctioned in late 2015 when they were deemed by Ofac to be specially designated narcotics traffickers in accordance with the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act.

Abou Merhi was alleged to have ties to a maritime network linked to Lebanese-Colombian drug trafficker and money launderer Ayman Saied Joumaa, and the Joumaa criminal organisation, which Ofac claims has ties to Hezbollah.

These allegations were fiercely refuted by Abou Merhi, who immediately put together a legal defence team consisting of Erich Ferrari of Ferrari & Associates, Robert Teig of Teig Law Corp and Charles Larson of LS2 Group, in a bid to have the allegations dismissed.

In February 2016, the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia confirmed after further investigation that no wrongdoing on the part of Abou Merhi could be found, nor were there any discernible links between the owner, his shipping company and any criminal network.

However, it would take more than a year for the US Department of the Treasury, which Ofac is a part of, to make a final determination that there was no basis upon which to target Abou Merhi and AML for sanctions.

The sanctions took a tough toll on Abou Merhi’s shipping businesses. AML, which prior to being sanctioned operated a fleet of seven ro-ro vessels and pure car carriers on services from Europe to West Africa and the Mediterranean, and that ground to a halt.

Unable to trade, most of the ships were sold or scrapped, leaving only City of Antwerp under its ownership.

AML, in a previous written statement to TradeWinds, said the company’s main objective for the remainder of this year and the coming year was to set its business back on track.