What the Eventin did before Germany seized it

On 10 January 2025 the tanker Eventin lost power in a storm off the German island of Rügen and began to drift. She was carrying roughly 99,000 tonnes of Russian crude. German rescue services towed her into the roadstead off Sassnitz, where tugs held her in position and customs officers came aboard. She has not traded since.

Two months later her registry entry changed. The registered owner became "reported sold — undisclosed interest." In April the ISM manager, the company legally answerable for her safe operation, became "unknown." A laden tanker sits under seizure in a European anchorage and the record no longer names anyone who owns her.

The ship, and the case

Eventin is designated by five governments: the European Union in February 2025, then Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada. Ukraine's War and Sanctions register also lists her. That register is an advisory identification maintained by an intelligence directorate, not a binding designation, and we count it separately — a distinction that matters if anything here is ever relied on.

Germany holds the hull, and a customs confiscation dispute over the cargo is before the Federal Fiscal Court. That is a civil proceeding, not a criminal trial.

The seizure also draws a hard line through the data. German authorities assigned the vessel a German MMSI, and everything she has transmitted since 10 January 2025 reflects being in German custody rather than anything she chose. So the reconstruction below rests only on what she did before that date.

Dark at the load port

Her recent voyages loaded in one place. She called at Ust-Luga, Russia, on 12 August 2024, 25 October 2024, and 6 January 2025 — each time declaring her destination only as "to be advised."

In the approaches to that port, on 30 December 2024, she stopped transmitting for about 68 hours and reappeared within roughly one nautical mile of where she went silent. A vessel that goes quiet and comes back where it started was not out of range; it was sitting still.

The corroboration is what makes that reading hold. Through the same window, three or more other hulls in the same waters were transmitting normally. The receivers were working. Coverage was not the explanation.

Two further gaps sit at the other end of the trade, off Visakhapatnam on India's east coast, in September 2024 — about 38 and 32 hours.

Who stands behind her

The registry says "undisclosed." The sanctions record says more.

The EU listing and OpenSanctions identify the registered owner as Laliya Shipping Corp, the commercial manager as Vaigai Lines Inc, and an interested party as Algae Ship Charter FZCO. Vaigai Lines is designated by the United Kingdom. Algae Ship Charter is designated by both the United States and the United Kingdom. Laliya appears on Ukraine's advisory register, and we label it as such.

Those sources place the wider structure alongside Fractal Marine DMCC, a UAE company sanctioned by the United Kingdom, and describe the network as controlled through the Shamkhani shipping interests.

The sequence is worth reading in order. Fractal Marine was sanctioned, challenged its designation, lost, and then re-signed its fleet to other companies. The "reported sold, undisclosed interest" entered against this hull on 11 March 2025 fits that pattern. We present the structure as sourced fact. Whether it amounts to continued control by a designated party is a determination for the recipient's own counsel, not for us.

The vessel she met — and what we will not call it

On 25 October 2024 AIS places Eventin in company with another tanker: IMO 9297553, then named Montego, since renamed Monte 1. The United Kingdom designated that hull in June 2025, eight months later. It is also the same hull recorded independently as a counterparty in our Smyrtos reconstruction — two case files, built from two vessels' own transmissions, meeting at the same third ship.

We are not calling it a ship-to-ship transfer.

The two hulls were in company for about four hours, on the same date Eventin called at Ust-Luga. Roughly 100,000 tonnes of crude does not move in four hours; the transfer we reconstructed in the Smyrtos case ran about forty-two. Four hours at a loading terminal is far better explained by two tankers working the same port than by a cargo transfer at sea.

So the finding is a network link, dated and sourced, and nothing more. The temptation to call it a transfer is exactly the kind of over-reach that makes a file worthless the first time someone checks it.

What the record does not show

Eventin's AIS history contains 62 gaps. Most are satellite or terrestrial coverage limits, and we do not treat them as evasion; only a minority survive kinematic validation as genuine stationary events.

Two of those sit inside the detention. One is the January 2025 engine failure — a total power loss takes AIS down with everything else, so there is nothing there to detect. The other is a stationary period in German coastal waters months later, while the ship was being held. A detained vessel at anchor that stops transmitting is a vessel at anchor, not a vessel hiding.

The same discipline applies to her flag. Our AIS recorded her broadcasting a German flag while the registry recorded none — which, read carelessly, looks like flag fraud. It isn't. She was in German custody, under a German-assigned MMSI. The innocent explanation was the correct one.

We include these because a screen that flags every silence is worth nothing. The discrimination is the product. On this hull, the determinative facts are the designation and the ownership record — not the transmission gaps.

Method

This is a factual reconstruction from the vessels' own AIS transmissions, anchored to the IMO number — the one identifier that survives a name or flag change. Designations are drawn from primary authority lists; advisory registers are labelled as advisory, never as designations. Where a satellite radar pass exists over a position of interest we use it, and where none was acquired we record that rather than inferring from silence. The detection method itself is proprietary and is not described here.

We report what the vessels did and what the record says. What it means is for the reader, the court, or the reader's own counsel to determine.

Use

This reconstruction and video are free to use, but you must credit AIS Dark.

The full case file is free too. It carries the dated designation timeline, the complete ownership chain, the co-presence record, and a per-claim evidence grade for every finding above. Enter an email below and we'll send it over.

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As of 30 July 2026. Case AISD-9308065.