Arctic News

[ombugge]

Fake IMO number? Who and what can you thrust these days?

Tanker with false IMO number sails in the Barents Sea

The tanker that on January 16 sailed into the Norwegian part of the Barents Sea was actually the 28-year-old Arcusat. The real IMO number of the ship is 9147447 and its current flag state is Cameroon. It has a gross tonnage of 57148 and it has changed its name 11 times since 2013. Before July 1, 2025 the ship was sailing under the name “Tavian.”

According to an investigation carried out by Lloyd’s List in collaboration with SynMax Intelligence, owners of sanctioned tankers are actively stealing and inventing identities, and deliberately abuse the global ship-tracking system.

The investigation found that sanctioned tankers are systematically hijacking ‘dead’ IMO numbers and live vessel IDs. Some vessels have taken this one step further, sailing under completely invented IMO numbers that do not exist in official registers.