The disputed theft of a ship has cast a spotlight on the complexities of doing business across legal jurisdictions as shipping steps into the digital age.
Singapore’s Britoil Offshore Services and Egypt’s Ships & Boats Oil Services are locked in what appears to be an intractable dispute over the sale of the 4,200-bhp anchor-handling tug Sea King Elgedida (ex-Britoil 57, built 2003) in 2020, which the seller claims is going nowhere in the Egyptian courts.
The dispute focuses on a missing online payment that is alleged to have been hacked, and the legal validity of digital documents that are increasingly being adopted by shipping companies but not universally accepted by legal courts.
In court documents filed in Egyptian courts and seen by TradeWinds, Britoil alleges that Alexandria-based Ships & Boats faked signatures and stamps to claim that it was the owner of the Sea King Elgedida when changing its flag and class.
Britoil chief financial officer David Palmer said that Ships & Boats, an established player in the Egyptian offshore sector that bareboat chartered the vessel at $1,000 per day, offered to buy it after defaulting on hire payments for six months.
Ships & Boats founder and owner Gomaa Mohamed denied that any hire payment problems occurred.
A sale price was agreed and as with the original charterparty contract, the memorandum of agreement documents were exchanged via electronic means.
A deposit was lodged by the buyer and a closing date for the deal was scheduled. On that day the money never arrived in Britoil’s bank account.
Both companies said their email accounts had been hacked by a scammer and that by changing a few digits, the money was diverted into a bank account in Malaysia.
Each had their own theory of who was behind the hacking.
Gomaa told TradeWinds that investigations by the Malaysian bank holding the account eventually revealed that although the account was registered under the name Britoil, the address provided by the account holder allowed them to track down its real owner, a woman who works as a street cleaner.
Palmer claimed Ships & Boats still continued to insist the money had been sent and the deal concluded.
Forgery allegations
In June 2020, Ships & Boats switched the registration of the Sea King Elgedida from Singapore to Palau, and class from ABS to RINA.
“They did this by presenting an unnotarised bill of sale to the Palau Ship Registry when registering the ship,” Palmer said.
Palau issues conditional registrations while allowing a new owner up to six months to present a notarised bill of sale.
Palmer claimed that the unnotarised bill of sale was a forgery.
“We hired court-approved handwriting experts who determined that the signature of our managing director David Hill was forged, and a different rubber stamp was used,” he said.
Palau, when presented with evidence of the alleged forgery, cancelled the ship's registration, and RINA pulled its class.
Gomaa gave an alternative explanation. He said the signed bill of sale was not a forgery. Britoil had couriered it over, he claimed.
“Why should I lie? I’m worth $150m. If I want a ship, I can buy it. I don’t need to steal it,” he said.
