HGP Nightly News – Guyana’s Maritime Administration Department says an oil tanker recently seized by United States authorities in the Indian Ocean was never legally registered in Guyana, and was instead fraudulently operating under the country’s flag.
In a statement issued on April 23, MARAD said it had been advised of the seizure of the oil tanker Majestic X by US forces. According to the department, the vessel was reportedly transporting Iranian oil and had previously been sanctioned by the US Treasury Department in 2024 under the name PHONIX for smuggling Iranian crude in violation of American sanctions on Iran.
MARAD made it clear that the ship is “not registered in Guyana” and said the registration being used is “false and fraudulent.” The department explained that although the vessel’s name had changed, the IMO number remained recorded in international databases as PHONIX. It added that there is no record of either the vessel or the name in Guyana’s registry, and therefore the ship was “fraudulently flying the Guyana flag.”
The agency also used the opportunity to restate that Guyana operates a closed ship registry. That means vessels can only be registered under the Guyana flag if they are owned by Guyanese nationals, residents, CARICOM citizens, or corporate bodies established under the laws of Guyana.
According to MARAD, none of the purported owners of the seized vessel falls into any of those categories. The department said false Guyana registrations have been a recognised problem since 2021, and noted that perpetrators of this type of fraud have targeted several countries, including Guyana, Panama and other regional states.
It also pointed out that the International Maritime Organization publishes a list of vessels falsely flying the flags of member states. MARAD said it has been working with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to share information on these false registrations with the United Nations, maritime states and relevant regional and international maritime bodies.
It added that sanctions imposed by the United States, the United Kingdom and other Western states form part of the broader response to the threat posed by these fraudulent registrations.
The department also expressed concern about what it described as attempts by some local media outlets to circulate unconfirmed and false allegations about the integrity of Guyana’s ship registry, as it sought to distance the country from the seized tanker and reaffirm the legitimacy of its maritime registration system.
