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Why is the US still referring to the Marinera tanker as the Bella 1?published at 18:12 GMT<\/p>\nWhy is the US still referring to the Marinera tanker as the Bella 1?published at 18:12 GMT<\/p>\n
18:12 GMT<\/p>\n
by Kayleen Devlin <\/p>\n
When US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the US Coast Guard had boarded two vessels, she referred to the oil tankers as the Sophia and the Bella 1. <\/p>\n
Bella 1, now renamed Marinera, was falsely flying the flag of Guyana last month, which made it stateless. The Russian transport ministry said earlier today that it granted the Marinera “temporary permission” to sail under the Russian flag on 24 December. <\/p>\n
The vessel is currently listed in Russia\u2019s maritime registry, with the port of registration recorded as Sochi, but does not state the start date. MarineTraffic showed the ship’s flag status – which is manually entered by the crew – changed to Russia on 4 January. <\/p>\n
So why has the US called the tanker the Bella 1 instead of its new name? <\/p>\n
Experts told BBC Verify that under UN international maritime law, a stateless vessel can be boarded by authorities. A ship also cannot change its flag during a voyage unless there is a real transfer of ownership or change of registry. <\/p>\n
Dimitris Ampatzidis, a maritime analyst at intelligence firm Kpler said that \u201cif the transfer [to a new flag] is unclear, rushed, or inconsistent, the vessel risks being treated as improperly flagged or effectively \u2018stateless\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fact that the Marinera changed mid-voyage \u201cimplies they may not have done due dilligence\u201d, Richard Meade from shipping firm Lloyd\u2019s List added. “It\u2019s generally accepted as best practice that if you are changing flags you will want to do inspections and administration.\u201d<\/p>\n
David Tannenbaum, director of intelligence firm Blackstone Compliance, told BBC Verify: \u201cRussia appears to be testing the letter of this law by claiming the vessel has a change of registry, however the boarding of the Bella 1 shows the US has taken the position that this change is not legitimate.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why is the US still referring to the Marinera tanker as the Bella 1?published at 18:12 GMT 18:12…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-393820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}