00:00Our question was, who is keeping the Shadow Fleet afloat?
00:03So we discovered and we went after the ship owners
00:06who sold vessels into the Russian Shadow Fleet.
00:09That was a project about.
00:11Well, we started with a list of tankers
00:13that we knew were part of the Shadow Fleet.
00:16We compared a lot of data, satellite data, broker reports,
00:25maritime data to get hold of these vessels
00:30and to find their former owners.
00:32There's a lot of data out there,
00:34but you have to combine all that and to analyze that,
00:37and that's what we did.
00:39Well, we started, we have a very good and strong data team,
00:44and our data journalists, they did the first analysis,
00:48and then we shared them with the other outlets,
00:51and then we asked them, well, look in your own country,
00:54which companies were involved,
00:56which companies sold vessels to the Shadow Fleet,
00:59and then we combined all that.
01:02I know that there were, but at the moment I don't remember the names.
01:07We had our partner in Italy, IRPI, an investigative collective,
01:13and they did a lot of work in Italy as well.
01:16It was quite difficult because, well, of course,
01:20we knew that there were sanctions on some vessels,
01:25but because we wanted to know who sold the vessels,
01:30they were sold by shipping companies,
01:32so privately owned companies,
01:34so we didn't have a lot of help of authorities,
01:40and the obstructions were the companies themselves,
01:45who didn't want us to tell these stories, of course.
01:48We looked at, well, it's a bit floating, that Shadow Fleet,
01:54but at the moment when we published the story,
01:56we looked at 600 vessels,
01:59and more than a third of them,
02:02so 230 were sold by Western ship owners,
02:06and they made about $6 billion by selling these vessels,
02:12so that's quite a lot.
02:13When we came up with these results, we thought,
02:16well, there are these sanctions,
02:18and they are working to some extent,
02:20but on the other hand,
02:22there was still this Shadow Fleet,
02:24and that was hardly affected by the sanctions,
02:29and it's still going on,
02:31and that's a way for Russia to avoid the sanctions
02:35and sell oil,
02:36and they need these selling oil for financing their war,
02:43so it is still going on.
02:45I've been working on that for so long,
02:47so the Shadow Fleet is really a term in my mind.
02:51and those are vessels, mostly old oil vessels,
02:57that Russia uses to avoid the European sanctions
02:59and the price cap,
03:01so they are often based in some obscure countries.
03:07They don't have European or the necessary insurance,
03:15so they are not insured,
03:17and they are used to ship that oil across the world
03:26and sell it eventually.
03:29Well, that was an interesting case,
03:31because the people who sold these vessels,
03:33they said it's not illegal,
03:35and the reason for that is
03:37that they didn't sell these vessels to Russia directly,
03:40but they sold it to other companies in other countries,
03:45some kind of obscure companies on the Seychelles,
03:49or in Hong Kong, or in India,
03:51and from there they went into the Russian Shadow Fleet,
03:55but the sellers, the European and Western companies,
03:58they could say,
03:59well, I didn't know about that,
04:01because I think on the one hand
04:03it's a very important topic,
04:05it is a European topic,
04:06because the sanctions are for a big part,
04:12they come from the European Parliament,
04:15and on the other hand,
04:17I think, I thought it was very important
04:19because it is such a big cross-border investigation,
04:22and at Follow the Money we really believe
04:25that this is very important for journalism.
04:29So that's why we're trying to win.
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