A French court convicted this tanker of one false flag. The record shows three.
On 2 July 2026 a French court fined the owner of the tanker Tagor one million euros. A The French Navy had intercepted it on 31 May in the North Atlantic, en route from Murmansk to Cameroon. It pleaded guilty to sailing under a false flag and to refusing to obey orders, according to prosecutors and the Maritime Prefecture of the Atlantic. B The owner paid the fine and undertook to obtain a legitimate flag registration before the ship returned to service. The Tagor was released, reported bound for Istanbul.
The court ruled on one false flag. The registry record shows three.
It is not an unusual ship. An investigation by Follow the Money and partners counted more than 500 shadow-fleet tankers sailing under a flag no registry confirms, roughly a third of the fleet. Under Article 110 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, a vessel without valid nationality may be boarded by any state. That is the power France used here.
A short video walks through the reconstruction.
Data table
| Event | Date | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Last transmission | 2026-05-25 | 68.9°N 10.7°E |
| Seized | 2026-05-31 | UNCLOS Art. 110 |
| Reacquired | 2026-06-02 | 1,329 nm away |
Three flags in nine months
The vessel's flag history, as recorded by IHS Maritime and published through Equasis, reads as follows for the period since August 2025:
| Flag of record | From |
|---|---|
| Not Known | 1 August 2025 |
| Guinea — annotated False | 1 September 2025 |
| Madagascar — annotated False | 1 March 2026 |
| Cameroon — annotated False | 1 June 2026 |
Each of the last three carries the annotation False — the record does not confirm the state named as the flag of registry. The Cameroon entry is the one the French court ruled on. It was the third in the sequence, not an isolated lapse, and the pattern sat in a public database before the interception.
1 August 2025 — “Not Known”
The flag of record drops to unlisted — no state named at all. The baseline the next three entries depart from.
1 September 2025 — Guinea, annotated False
Six months under a flag the registry itself flags as unconfirmed — the longest of the three false entries.
1 March 2026 — Madagascar, annotated False
Three months. The pattern is now a rotation, not an incident.
1 June 2026 — Cameroon, annotated False
The flag the French court ruled on. Third in the sequence, not an isolated lapse — and already flagged as unconfirmed in the public record before the interception. Duration shown is to our 22 July 2026 capture date; the entry was still open.
Data table
| Label | Value |
|---|---|
| Not Known | 31 days |
| Guinea — False | 181 days |
| Madagascar — False | 92 days |
| Cameroon — False (ongoing) | 51 days |
For a compliance officer that is the practical point. A flag check returning "Cameroon" and stopping there gives a true answer to the wrong question. The record itself carried the qualifier.
The identifiers do not agree either
The vessel is designated by five authorities, and separately identified by a sixth, according to the primary authority listings collated by OpenSanctions: A
| Authority | Listed |
|---|---|
| United States (OFAC) | 30 July 2025 |
| European Union | 24 October 2025 |
| Switzerland (SECO) | 13 December 2025 |
| United Kingdom (FCDO) | 24 February 2026 |
| Canada | 16 June 2026 |
| Ukraine (GUR) — advisory identification, not a binding designation | 9 June 2026 |
30 July 2025 — OFAC
The first designation. The same date the registry record shows the ISM manager dropping to UNKNOWN and Lloyd's Register withdrawing class — see “The day the paperwork went dark.”
24 October 2025 — European Union
Three months after OFAC. A second, independent authority reaches the same hull.
13 December 2025 — Switzerland
SECO follows the EU listing by seven weeks.
24 February 2026 — United Kingdom
The fourth binding designation in seven months.
9 June 2026 — Ukraine (advisory)
An advisory identification, not a binding designation — recorded separately, never counted alongside the five binding listings.
16 June 2026 — Canada
The fifth binding designation, a week after Ukraine's advisory listing and eleven months after OFAC's original action — five authorities, one hull.
Data table
| Date | Label | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 30 Jul 2025 | United States (OFAC) | Binding designation |
| 24 Oct 2025 | European Union | Binding designation |
| 13 Dec 2025 | Switzerland (SECO) | Binding designation |
| 24 Feb 2026 | United Kingdom (FCDO) | Binding designation |
| 9 Jun 2026 | Ukraine (GUR) — advisory | Advisory (not binding) |
| 16 Jun 2026 | Canada | Binding designation |
Data table
| Authority | Date | Status |
|---|---|---|
| US OFAC | 2025-07-30 | Binding designation |
| EU | 2025-10-24 | Binding designation |
| CH SECO | 2025-12-13 | Binding designation |
| UK FCDO | 2026-02-24 | Binding designation |
| CA | 2026-06-16 | Binding designation |
| UA GUR | 2026-06-09 | Advisory (not binding) |
The American listing is worth pausing on. It sits under the Iran sanctions programme, not the Russia one — yet the voyage France interdicted ran from Murmansk. One hull, designated under an Iran programme, sailing out of a Russian oil port.
Then there is the number the ship actually transmits. The sanctions record carries MMSI 352002249. The first three digits are the Maritime Identification Digits, which encode the flag state under the ITU's allocation table: 352 is Panama, matching the flag it wore until 2025. But the vessel now broadcasts MMSI 613442790, and 613 is Cameroon.
So a screening system keyed on MMSI, checked against the sanctions record, does not match the ship on the water. The sanctions entry also still lists its flag as Panama. Two public records, both correct when written, now describing a vessel that has moved on from both. A
Data table
| Field | Broadcast | Sanctions record |
|---|---|---|
| MMSI | 613442790 | 352002249 |
| MID | 613 | 352 |
| Flag | Cameroon | Panama |
Only one identifier survives all of it. The IMO number — 9282481 — has been constant since it was built in 2005 as a 114,809-tonne crude tanker, through four names, seven flags and eleven managers. That is the entire argument for anchoring on it.
Twenty years, four names, and a long way down
The same record holds the vessel's history. Read in order, it is the clearest illustration we have of what a shadow-fleet hull is: not a category of ship, but a destination a ship arrives at.
| Name | From | Manager of record | Flag |
|---|---|---|---|
| British Gannet | March 2005 | BP Shipping | Isle of Man |
| Piper | December 2018 | Anglo-Eastern Tanker Management | Marshall Islands |
| Priapus | December 2022 | Fractal Marine DMCC | Panama |
| Tagor | July 2024 | Algae Ship Charter FZCO, then Zulu Ships Management | Not Known, then three false flags |
March 2005 — BP Shipping
Built as a 114,809-tonne crude tanker, classed by Lloyd's Register, flagged Isle of Man. A mainstream major-oil-company tanker at the start of this record.
December 2018 — Anglo-Eastern Tanker Management
Passes to a mainstream third-party manager, reflagged Marshall Islands. Still an ordinary commercial tanker.
December 2022 — Fractal Marine DMCC
A UAE company, since sanctioned by the United Kingdom, becomes commercial manager. Reflagged Panama. The eleven-day Greece detention (20 deficiencies) falls in this period.
June 2024 — Algae Ship Charter FZCO
Designated by both the United States and the United Kingdom. The same company also appears in the Eventin's ownership chain — one of three shared companies across the two case files.
December 2024 — Zulu Ships Management
Commercial manager since, with Tarabya Logistics Ltd as ISM manager — the same month the safety management certificate was withdrawn, seven months before OFAC's designation and the paperwork collapse that followed it.
Data table
| Date | Label | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Mar 2005 | BP Shipping (Isle of Man) | Binding designation |
| Dec 2018 | Anglo-Eastern (Marshall Islands) | Binding designation |
| Dec 2022 | Fractal Marine DMCC (Panama) | Binding designation |
| Jun 2024 | Algae Ship Charter FZCO | Binding designation |
| Dec 2024 | Zulu Ships Management + Tarabya (ISM) | Binding designation |
Data table
| Type | Value | From | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | British Gannet | 2005-03 | |
| Name | Piper | 2018-12 | |
| Name | Priapus | 2022-12 | |
| Name | TAGOR | 2024-07 | |
| Flag | Guinea | 2025-09 | Flagged false |
| Flag | Madagascar | 2026-03 | Flagged false |
| Flag | Cameroon | 2026-06 | Flagged false |
It began as a BP tanker on the Isle of Man register, classed by Lloyd's Register and managed by BP Shipping. In 2018 it passed to Anglo-Eastern, a mainstream third-party manager, under the Marshall Islands flag. In December 2022 the commercial manager of record became Fractal Marine DMCC, a UAE company since sanctioned by the United Kingdom. In June 2024 it became Algae Ship Charter FZCO, designated by both the United States and the United Kingdom. From December 2024 the commercial manager has been Zulu Ships Management, with Tarabya Logistics Ltd as ISM manager.
The day the paperwork went dark
Then three things happened at once. The record dates all of them to 30 July 2025 — the same day the United States designated the vessel.
| On 30 July 2025 | Change |
|---|---|
| Registered owner | became Zulu Ships Management |
| ISM manager | became UNKNOWN |
| Lloyd's Register class | withdrawn, "by society for other reasons" |
The ISM manager is the company legally answerable for a ship's safe operation. On the day the designation landed, that entry stopped naming anyone, the ownership moved to the manager, and the classification society ended a relationship that had run since 2005. The safety management certificate had already been withdrawn in December 2024.
A year later the vessel was still trading, and the record still names no ISM manager.
What a port state found
The paperwork is one half. Inspectors are the other.
In December 2023 the Tagor was detained for eleven days at Kalilimenes, Greece, under a Paris MoU expanded inspection, with twenty deficiencies. The grounds for detention were not administrative. They included the propulsion main engine and auxiliary engines recorded as not as required, fire detection and fire-protection maintenance not as required, fire-fighting equipment inoperative, emergency lighting inoperative, lifeboats not properly maintained, and fire and abandon-ship drills recorded as lacking control.
That detention fell during the Fractal Marine period. It is worth setting against the inspection record from earlier in the vessel's life: a decade of routine port state control calls in Australia, the United States, Spain and Italy, passing without detention.
The geography of those inspections tells its own story. Through 2018 they cluster in Fremantle, Kwinana, Brisbane, Long Beach and Portland, Maine. From 2019 they are Vostochny and Taman — Russian Pacific and Black Sea. The most recent on record is Vostochny, July 2025.
It was already dark when the navy found it
The documentary record is one half. The vessel's own transmissions are the other, and for this voyage the two can be laid directly against each other. The positions below come from satellite and terrestrial AIS covering 1 May to 30 July 2026.
It was broadcasting from the Kola Bay, off Murmansk, at the start of May. It worked its way north-east into the Barents Sea, then turned west. On 25 May it stopped transmitting in the Norwegian Sea, at 68.9°N 10.7°E. A
The French Navy seized it six days later, on 31 May, roughly 400 nautical miles west of the tip of Brittany — a joint operation with the United Kingdom conducted under Article 110 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the right of visit used to verify a vessel's nationality. The boarding team examined the ship's papers and confirmed the flag was irregular. A report went to the public prosecutor in Brest, and the tanker was escorted to an anchorage.
It transmitted again on 2 June, the day it arrived in Douarnenez Bay — 1,329 nautical miles from where it had gone quiet. The great-circle distance between those two points is about 1,334 miles. The silence covers the interception and the passage under escort.
The sequence is the finding. The transponder went quiet on 25 May; the interception was on 31 May. The vessel was not silenced by the boarding — it was already dark when the navy found it, and had been for six days, while under way in the North Atlantic. A
One honest limit: satellite AIS coverage is not continuous, so a gap of this length cannot be proved deliberate from our data alone. C What can be stated is that the vessel stopped transmitting six days before it was intercepted, that it was under way rather than stationary throughout, and that the boarding found it flying a flag its registry does not confirm. The guilty plea covered refusing to obey orders as well as the false flag. B
It then lay in Douarnenez Bay, transmitting almost nothing, until the court ruled on 2 July.
Where it is now
After release it ran south — past Portugal, through the Strait of Gibraltar, across the Mediterranean. On 24 July it arrived off Port Said, at the Mediterranean mouth of the Suez Canal, and stopped.
It has not moved since. Our data runs to 30 July and it is still there, holding position to within a tenth of a nautical mile, having gone dark twice while stationary — fifteen hours, then forty-one.
On release it was reported bound for Istanbul. Port Said is not on the way to Istanbul. It is, however, one of the world's larger bunkering anchorages, so there are ordinary reasons to stop there. We are not claiming a diversion. We are recording that a vessel released on an undertaking about its flag has spent a week stationary at a canal entrance, dark for stretches, and has not gone where it said it was going.
The companies that connect two case files
Algae Ship Charter FZCO is not only Tagor's former commercial manager. It also appears in the ownership chain of the Eventin, the tanker Germany seized off Rügen and is now pursuing through its Federal Fiscal Court — the subject of our previous reconstruction. Fractal Marine DMCC and Wanta Shipping appear in both records too.
Two vessels, two jurisdictions, two separate enforcement actions, and three shared companies behind them. That link is visible only if you read the dated management history rather than the current registration.
What to watch next
The Tagor's owner told a French court it would obtain a legitimate flag registration before returning the ship to service. That is a specific, dated, checkable undertaking.
Our capture of the registry record is dated 22 July 2026, three weeks after the release. At that point the flag of record was still Cameroon, still annotated false. Three weeks is short — registry data lags, and a legitimate reflag may simply not have reached the record yet. We are not asserting the undertaking was broken. We are noting that it is testable, and that the answer will appear in the same public field this article has been reading throughout.
That is the method in one sentence: a vessel's current registration is a claim, and its history is the check on that claim.
Evidence and confidence
Every finding above traces to a primary record, a corroborating report, or a limit we are stating plainly rather than glossing over.
| Claim — evidence basis | Grade |
|---|---|
| Five binding designations — OFAC, EU, CH, UK, CA (30 Jul 2025 → 16 Jun 2026) | A |
| French court, 2 Jul 2026 — €1,000,000 fine; guilty plea: false flag + refusing orders | A |
| Transmission ceased 25 May at 68.9°N 10.7°E, under way; resumed 2 Jun, 1,329 nm away | A |
| Dark six days before the boarding — AIS onset (25 May) preceded interception (31 May) | A |
| Refusal to obey orders — corroborated by the guilty plea, not the interception account alone | B |
| Deliberateness of the 25 May silence — not resolvable from position data alone | C |
What would prove this wrong
Four specific, checkable ways this reconstruction could be wrong or overstated:
- The 25–31 May silence was a coverage gap, not a deliberate one. If other vessels transiting the same stretch of the Norwegian Sea in that window also show gaps in the AIS record, the "already dark when the navy found it" finding weakens to "the corpus lost the vessel," not "the vessel went dark." We have not run that check for this specific box and week; it is the single strongest test of the finding.
- The 30 July 2025 paperwork changes weren't a same-day reaction. The registered-owner change, the ISM manager going to UNKNOWN, and the Lloyd's Register withdrawal all carry that date in the record. If any of the three was already in motion before the US designation — administratively dated to 30 July but effective earlier — the "collapsed in a single day" framing overstates a coincidence as a reaction.
- The reflag undertaking may simply not have reached the record yet. Our capture is three weeks after release. A legitimate flag change can lag the public registry by more than that. If a later pull shows a clean flag with no False annotation, the undertaking was kept — this article's capture date does not settle it either way.
- Port Said may be exactly what it looks like. It is a major bunkering anchorage. We named the stop because it doesn't match the stated destination, not because we have evidence of a diversion. A bunker call with no further irregularity would make this a non-finding.
Method
Sources are named where each finding appears. The registry and inspection record was captured on 22 July 2026. Ukraine's listing is an advisory identification, not a binding designation, and is marked as such above.
Two rules govern the transmission gaps. A gap counts only where the record establishes a genuine onset and no known event accounts for it. The case file itemises what that excluded, and why. Distances are straight-line, from a last-seen to a first-seen position, not tracks. The thresholds separating a deliberate silence from a coverage gap are proprietary and are not described here.
The analysis reports what the record states. Whether that amounts to continued control by a designated party is a determination for the reader's own counsel.
Use
This reconstruction is free to use, but you must credit AIS Dark.
The full case file is free too. It carries the complete dated management chain, the five-authority designation timeline, the detention grounds in full, the identifier divergence, and a per-claim evidence grade for every finding above — including what we did not assess. Enter an email below and we'll send it over.
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As of 30 July 2026. Case AISD-9282481.
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