– US DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
The tanker, attacked near Venezuela, is not on the list of ships sanctioned by the US Treasury
MADRID, December 21 (EUROPA PRESS) – The White House assured on Sunday that the raid carried out this afternoon by the US Coast Guard on the oil tanker “Centuries”, near Venezuela, was legal, even if the ship is not on the list of ships sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the Treasury Department.
Deputy White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said the tanker was “transporting oil from sanctioned PDVSA” (Venezuela’s state-owned company Petróleos de Venezuela) and that “it is a false flag vessel that operated as part of the Venezuelan Shadow Fleet to traffic stolen crude oil and finance the narco-terrorist regime” of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Kelly posted this message on X in response to a series of articles from the ‘New York Times’ and the ‘Washington Post’ which questioned the legality of the operation. The “Century”, according to sources in the New York newspaper, belongs to a merchant based in China, specializing in the transfer of crude oil from Venezuela to the Asian giant’s refineries.
In addition, the ship flies the Panamanian flag, unlike the case of the tanker “Skipper”, boarded by the United States on December 10, which had been sanctioned by the Treasury and which, moreover, was sailing under a false Guyanese flag, as indicated by its authorities. To further complicate the situation, official sources confirmed to the New York Times that the Coast Guard did not have a search warrant to enter the Centuries and investigate its cargo, as happened with the Skipper.
In these circumstances, official US sources, on condition of anonymity, explained to the Washington Post that the boarding by the US Coast Guard is actually protected by a maritime law known as the “right of visit”, by which a warship can carry out an inspection on a vessel with the mere suspicion that it is involved in illicit activities.
For all these reasons, the government of Venezuela ended up directly condemning the incursion as a “theft” of its property and a “kidnapping” accompanied by “forced disappearance of its crew, committed by military personnel of the United States of America in international waters”, we read in the press release published by the government of Nicolas Maduro.
Venezuelan authorities have described this new confiscation as “piracy” which, in Caracas’ view, fails to comply with several standards of international law and represents a “flagrant commission” of a “crime”.
The Venezuelan executive “will take all appropriate measures” to ensure that these acts do not go “unpunished”, including by filing a complaint with the United Nations Security Council and other international organizations.
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