The 19-year-old sailor of the tanker Saint Nicholas kidnapped by the Iranians has returned to Greece

He is now in Greece and close to his people A 19-year-old trainee sailor on board the Greek-owned ship Which was captured and detained by Iranian army forces.

The plane on which the Greek student was on board, accompanied by the Greek ambassador to Iran, landed earlier in Eleftherios Venizelos. the 18 Filipino sailors on board the ship They have not been released yet.

Based on the relevant instructions of Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis, in cooperation with the Ministry of Shipping and Island Policy, and with the actions of the Greek Ambassador in Tehran, Stylianou Gavriel, which were accepted by the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the ship was repatriated. The Greek sailor on the ship became the would-be Saint Nicholas.

The company that operates the ship is Empire Navigation Inc. She reported that she was very happy to announce the release of the youngest member of the captured crew.

What tanker did the Iranians seize?

In February 2022, the Suez Rajan tanker, renamed St. Nicholas, was seen unloading its cargo of Iranian oil from another tanker off the coast of China in violation of US sanctions on Iranian oil exports.

This was revealed by the US organization United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) which includes former diplomats and officials of the security services of the United States and Israel.

Empire Navigation pleaded guilty to smuggling Iranian crude oil and agreed to pay a $2.4 million fine. The United States confiscated about one million barrels of oil from the Suez Rajan tanker.

This issue exacerbated tensions between Washington and Iran.

On October 5, 2023, the company that owned the ship announced:

“Empire Navigation, as operator of the M/T Suez Rajan, has settled a violation of US sanctions with the US Department of Justice through a deferred prosecution agreement. From January to February 2022, the M/T Suez Rajan loaded oil via ship-to-ship transfers to another near Singapore while the vessel was chartered to an independent and unrelated third party.

The US government found that the ship received Iranian oil under sanctions, and the company does not deny this fact. This violation of US sanctions occurred because the true source of the oil was well hidden and because the company's compliance with comprehensive sanctions and due diligence procedures failed to detect the problem.

Empire Navigation management was not aware of the breach at the time it occurred and acted immediately and responsively upon notification and worked with the US Department of Justice to resolve the issue. The one Empire Navigation employee who took actions that facilitated this sanctions violation is no longer with the company.”

Empire Navigation agreed to transport the shipment from Singapore to Houston at its own expense so that the US Department of Justice could pursue its claim to seize the shipment.

As can also be seen from an announcement on the website of the US Department of the Treasury, the company is subject to a three-year monitoring regime and is obliged to report the movements of the tanker Suez Ragan, now St. Nicholas, to the US Department of Justice.

That is why the US government described the seizure of the tanker St. Nicholas as an attack not against the management company but against the United States.

For its part, the Iranian government asserts that it acted on a court order and proceeded to seize the ship in retaliation for the US seizure of Iranian oil.

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