Late last month the Lebanese government detained a vessel offshore Jounieh’s Zouq power plant, one of two power stations in the country reliant on fuel oil imports, in a bid to crack down on corruption. The vessel, ‘Hawk III’, had loaded 260,000 barrels of fuel oil from Russia’s Novorossiysk terminal. AIS data shows the vessel is at anchorage offshore Jounieh, where it has been since 20 August waiting to discharge its cargo.
What raised suspicion was ‘Hawk III’s stopover at Mersin port in Turkey where Kpler data initially showed a small loading (of around only 200 tonnes), which suggests that documents were falsified to show that the cargo was of Turkish origin. In reality the cargo was loaded in Russia, and this caused a stir in the Lebanese media, despite Lebanon not having any sanctions obligations regarding Russian imports. (CONTINUED - 916 WORDS)
