For journalists: verifying a tanker story in an hour

Minute one: get the number

Everything downstream depends on identifying the hull, and the only identifier that survives a rename or a reflag is the IMO number.

If your tip has a name, resolve it here or in a ship-particulars database, and confirm the match against something structural: build year, deadweight, type. If two hulls share the name, stop until you know which one you have. Then check the check digit, because a transposed digit produces a plausible-looking number for a different ship or for no ship at all.

If your tip has a photograph, the name on the hull is a starting point and not proof. Names are painted on and painted over.

Minutes two to fifteen: check every authority separately

There is no global list. Check the US, UK and EU at minimum, and the allied lists if your story touches those jurisdictions.

For each, record four things: whether the hull is listed, on what date, under which instrument, and what the authority said its reason was. The UK publishes a statement of reasons in plain English, the EU prints grounds citing Article 3s(2), and OFAC’s reasoning lives in the press release from the day of the designation rather than in the list entry.

This site does that aggregation for you and links every source, which is what it is for. For anything you are going to publish, click through to the authority’s own page and keep the URL and the timestamp.

Minutes fifteen to thirty: the ownership question

Check whether the owner or operator named by the authority is itself designated, because a vessel with a designated owner is a materially different story from a vessel listed alone.

Then check the shape of the ownership: when the owning company was incorporated, whether the manager changed after the designation, and whether other hulls share those companies. The sister-vessel list on each vessel page here is the fastest way into that, and ownership onions explains what the layers mean.

Do not assert beneficial ownership unless a document says it. “The vessel is owned by X, according to the US Treasury designation of this date” is safe. “The vessel is owned by the oligarch Y” needs a source that says exactly that.

Minutes thirty to forty-five: behaviour claims

If your story involves a transponder gap, a transfer at sea or a route, this is where the risk concentrates.

Ask your data provider whether their gap means “vessel stopped transmitting” or “we received nothing”, because those are different and most platforms cannot distinguish them. Compare the gap with the vessel’s own normal pattern. Look for a second, independent observation: imagery, a port record, a cargo document, a physical sighting.

The safe formulation is that a practice is one authorities have identified as a risk indicator, with a link to the advisory. The unsafe one is that a specific gap proves a specific breach. See AIS: going dark and spoofing.

Minutes forty-five to sixty: write it precisely

Four sentences that repeatedly turn out to be wrong, and their fixes.

“The tanker is sanctioned.” By whom? Name the authority and the date. In this database a large share of hulls are listed by only one of the three main authorities.

“The EU froze the vessel.” Almost always wrong: the EU’s Annex XLII listing is a port and services ban, not an asset freeze, and those vessels are deliberately absent from the EU financial sanctions file. See asset freeze, port ban, services ban.

“The ship was seized.” Detention in port for safety deficiencies, blocking of property, and physical seizure are three different acts under three different powers. See boardings, seizures and detentions.

“It was delisted, so it is cleared.” A removal by one authority leaves the others untouched.

Right of reply

Put the specific, checkable claims to the owner or manager: that this authority listed this hull on this date under this instrument, that the reason published reads as follows, and that the company you have named is the company the authority named.

Those are the claims you can defend, because each is a restatement of a public document. Characterisations of conduct are the ones that generate letters, and they are almost never necessary: the authority’s own stated reason, quoted and attributed, does the work.