Four tankers in the fleet of UK-controlled Saint James Shipping are in distress, with provisions running short and crew unpaid for months, according to masters, managers and unions.
Lender EnTrust Global is repossessing the fleet and the American Club has cancelled its protection and indemnity cover.
After months with wages unpaid, the crews are now considered abandoned under the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC), International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) legal consultant John Wood told TradeWinds.
The union is urging owners, managers, charterers, insurers, courts and financiers to step up to aid the distressed crews. It is also advising captains not to discharge cargo under charterers’ or owners’ orders until crew are paid and provisioned.
The crew abandonments come amid efforts to repossess the 18,041-dwt Aeon (built 2012), 17,475-dwt Ariana (built 2016), 11,479-dwt Sol (built 2007) and 13,554-dwt Lua (built 2010) by Kroll Trustee Services on behalf of alternative lender EnTrust Global.
Other legal claims are underway by bunkerers, crews and manager Global Radiance Ship Management.
In a message to owners, brokers and the ITF headed “May Day, May Day, May Day,” Captain Asad bin Sayeed of the product tanker Sol, which is under arrest at Hazira in India, wrote: “My staff are turning crazy by lack of nourishment. This is inhumane on the part of the worthy court to hold the vessel and the crew under such conditions. Supply drinking water and food.”
An official of the shipowner responded only: “We have already sent you an e-mail about the arrangements, please respond to that e-mail.”
Crew members on the Sol were owed some $113,000 as of the end of June.
Crew of another vessel — the Aeon — are owed more than $187,000 for April, May and June. That ship is under charter to Cargill International and under arrest in Mumbai by the mortgage-holder interests.
Referring to the Aeon, Wood — in a message he provided to TradeWinds — told Saint James Shipping: “Whilst the crew have a duty to continue to work normally in maintaining the safety and seaworthiness of the vessel, they would be fully justified in withdrawing their labour in relation to the vessel’s commercial operations.”
Wood said less information is available about the Lua, now in a dry dock in the Dominican Republic, and the Ariana, which is drifting off Yemen following a possible main engine failure.
Wood said Singapore-based, Pakistani-linked manager Global Radiance Ship Management is taking part in efforts to get crews paid.
Meanwhile, P&I cover has been withdrawn for the entire Saint James Shipping fleet.
American Club chief operating officer Vincent Solarino told TradeWinds that the cover on four Saint James Shipping vessels was cancelled on 8 June. But the club will honour its obligations to fund repatriations and up to four months of back wages.
“We will act in accordance with the International Group position on MLC assistance to abandoned crew,” he said.
Ship-to-ship transfer
As TradeWinds reported in March, US sanctions enforcers have alleged that a former Saint James Shipping vessel — the 106,131-dwt Arina (built 1999, now scrapped) — received crude oil from an Iranian vessel in a ship-to-ship transfer last November.
Information on the owning interests behind the ships has been ambiguous, but mortgage documents that TradeWinds has seen now show the ships passed from the control of Greece’s Eurotank Maritime Management to that of UK-based Saint James Shipping in May 2020, after the owner defaulted and payments were rescheduled.
The documents show that the lender on a four-ship, $34m facility covering the vessels is New York-based EnTrust Global through its Blue Ocean Onshore Fund.
Wood said Saint James Shipping is connected to the management of another arrested ship that it does not own — the 46,921-dwt Victor 1 (built 2004). That vessel, now under arrest in Singapore amid a dispute with bareboat charterer Ceto Shipping, is owned by Greece’s Delfi according to data provider IHS Markit, with technical management in the hands of Saint James Shipping.
Documents from UK Companies House connect Saint James Shipping to Sam Tariverdi, a Grenadian citizen of Iranian background based in London, and London-based Panagiotis Postantzis.
Glyfada-based Eurotank Maritime Management, headed by managing director Konstantinos Moumousis, is unrelated to a similarly named compatriot shipowner, Eurotankers.
Saint James Shipping, Eurotank Maritime and lender EnTrust Global were contacted for comment on the crew abandonment cases but did not immediately respond.
