Vanuatu Warns of Fake Ship Registry Website Scam

Vanuatu has issued a warning about a fraudulent website falsely posing as the country’s ship registry.

The unauthorized site, operating under the domain registervu.com, reportedly copied material directly from Vanuatu’s official registry website.

Vanuatu is not the only Pacific island nation facing this type of false flag activity. Last month, the government of Tonga released a statement rejecting any claims by foreign vessels to sail under its flag. Authorities noted that Tonga’s international ship registry was shut down in 2002 and that the country does not register foreign vessels operating on international routes.

In a related case last year, the Maritime Administration of Matthew Island was created as a supposed flag state. Matthew Island is a 0.7 square kilometer uninhabited rocky outcrop in the South Pacific, located about 300 kilometers east of New Caledonia and southeast of Vanuatu. While the island is claimed by Vanuatu and regarded by the people of Aneityum as part of their customary land, it is also claimed by France as part of New Caledonia.

According to data from Israeli maritime analytics firm Windward, close to 300 tankers are currently operating under false flags. Windward has identified 18 fraudulent ship registries and reported that 91% of vessels using these registries were already under Western sanctions.

The most commonly used fake registries were Guinea, with 51 ships, followed by the Netherlands Antilles with 45, Guyana with 44, and Aruba with 24.

“False flags weaken the commercial and legal infrastructure that global shipping depends on to function predictably,” Windward stated in a recent update.

Western authorities have recently increased enforcement actions against shadow fleets. Over the past seven weeks, the United States has detained 10 tankers connected to Venezuelan trade, while France boarded a Russian aframax last month in the western Mediterranean after it was found to be sailing under a false flag.