The US ultimatum and EU to stop supporting shipping companies carrying Russian oil has left Kyriakos Mitsotakis with a difficult choice, since most shipowners have close ties to Megaro Maximo.
The government’s request to exempt some Greek shipowners carrying Russian oil from EU and US sanctions appears to have fallen on deaf ears: an analysis by the Washington-based International Institute of Finance (IIF), a US government think tank, accuses the Greek government of “financing Putin’s war”!
In recent weeks, three major Greek shipping companies refused to transport Russian oil under threat of being blacklisted: this is “Minerva Marine”, “Thenamaris”, owned by the Martinos family and TMS Tankers of Ikonomos, which rejected Russian requests to load the vessels. And the groups of Marinakis and Alafouzos received messages and threats from the United States demanding a stop to the transportation of Russian oil.
Already in October, the United States imposed the first sanctions against tanker owners in Turkey and the United Arab Emirates for transporting Russian oil at a price exceeding the limit of $60 per barrel set by Western countries. Three more vessels were subsequently sanctioned.
How did Greek shipowners react: both those who broke contracts and others? They sold their tankers directly to Russia with secret clauses providing for a buyback if sanctions were lifted! Every day, Greek oligarchs-ship owners sell tankers to Putin’s Russian shadow fleet, and the EU turns a blind eye to this, statistics show.
Every day Greek shipping oligarchs sell oil tankers to Putin's shadow fleet. The EU turns a blind eye and does nothing. With every day of EU inaction, Europe is one step closer to rolling the dice on the 2024 US election. This is a terrible policy error in the making for Europe. pic.twitter.com/Otrk3JWilJ
— Robin Brooks (@robin_j_brooks) November 17, 2023
According to an analysis of data from the research center CREA (Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air), in the first month after the embargo was introduced, 689 fuel transshipmentsof which 100 were to EU ports, 250 export deliveries were carried out by European tankers, including 161 by Greek ones.
The share of Greek shipowners is approaching 12 million metric tons, which totals more than 32% of tankers carrying Russian fuel in the period from December 5, 2022 to January 5, 2023.
On the dominance of Greek shipowners in Russian fuel exports after the introduction of sanctions evidenced by the fact that Of the 10 European companies with the largest volumes of shipments from Russian ports, 8 are Greek. They are led by Minerva Marine (Andreas Martinou interests), TMS Tankers (Georgios Ikonomou interests) and Eastern Mediterranean (Thanasis Martinou interests), followed by Thenamaris Ships Management (Nicholas Martinou interests), Sea Trade Marine, Ancora Investment Trust (Vernikos family interests and Paraskis), Marine Trust (Dimitris Prokopiou’s interests), Dynacom and Dynagas (Georgios Prokopiou’s interests).
Fuel transportation from Russian ports is still carried out by shipowners whose interests are connected with the media. In the first month after the embargo was introduced, Avin International (the interests of Vardis Vardinoyannis) made two routes using vessels with a capacity of 270 thousand tons.
On December 29, 2022, a vessel of the Capital Ship Management company (interests of Vangelis Marinakis) with a displacement of 109.9 thousand tons set off along the route from the port of Vysotsk, and a tanker of the KYKLADES MARITIME company (interests of Ioannis Alafouzos) on January 3 carried out a transshipment of Russian fuel onto a ship that started from Russia with destination Turkey.
The above-mentioned shipowners, who are Greek oligarchs (especially the Vardinoyannis, Marinakis and Alafouzis families), have very strong influence on the country’s leadership, since they are not only the largest entrepreneurs in Greece with multi-billion dollar turnover, but also the owners of large television channels, print publications, sports clubs, etc. They also took part in financing the election campaigns of the ruling New Democracy party, which means they are members of Megaro Maximo and have close contacts in the current cabinet.
The creation of financial problems for the above oligarchs for Mitsotakis will be tantamount to a political sentence, since not only the media, but the entire Greek oligarchy, for which Shipping is one of the main sources of profit.
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