The container ship owned by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) was seized in Malta in November on orders of a local court after the German bank holding the loan for construction of the ship sought the seizure.
Mohammad-Hossain Dajmar, the head of IRISL, announced that the ship was released by the Maltese court March 31 after payment was made.
Three ships seized earlier in Singapore and one seized in Hong Kong were all released earlier this year after IRISL made payments to the banks.
It is assumed that the problem is making payments now that Iran is shut out of so much of the international financial system by the combination of US, UN and EU sanctions.
Each ship was detained for about four months. IRISL has lost income all those months the ships were locked away. IRISL also had to pay the ports where the ships were detained for the maintenance of the vessels.
IRISL has not said whether it will now abandon Malta, a small island nation in the Mediterranean, which was one of the centers of Iran’s efforts to evade sanctions. Malta Today reported that IRISL had created at least 42 companies registered in Malta under assorted names as the legal owners of its ships. IRISL has created ghost owners, ghost operators and ghost management firms to run its ships, which have been re-named and re-flagged in a multi-layered effort to hide their links to IRISL and Iran.
The debts for the five ships were construction loans. It is believed IRISL has had to pay the entire debt to satisfy the banks rather than the normal payback over several years. It isn’t known if the Iranian government has had to come up with the cash to bail out IRISL.