US embassy cables | Malta was unsupportive of random inspections aboard Irisl vessels

The July 2008 cable reveals talks between US embassy officials and the French foreign ministry’s nuclear disarmament officer over “mandatory declarations by port authorities of the arrival or departure of any Iran Air plane or IRISL vessel, and the contents of their cargo.”

According to the cable, French official Michel Briens reported that Malta, Cyprus and Greece – the chief shipping nations in the EU – werew not supportive of random inspections of cargo carried by Irisl vessels.

“It was important to reach out to all of the latter three countries to sensitize them to the dangers involved,” the US economic officer says in his cable.

The Maltese position appears to be consistent with that reported by the United Kingdomin another embassy cable released in July 2008.

Irisl had madethe Malta Freeport its Mediterranean hub in 2003, but since then it has been hit by numerous United Nations sanctions. The Maltese government has formally adopted EU sanctionsagainst various branches and subsidiaries of Irisl, which has used a network of front companies in Malta to evade restrictions on its trade. There are at least 42 Irisl-owned companies which own ships formerly belonging to Irisl. Instead they use the services of the Maltese-owned Royal-Med Shipping Agency, in Sliema, which is the agent for the private Iranian company  Hafiz Darya Shipping Lines(HDS). Almost half of Irisl’s fleet was renamed and registered under the Maltese flag.

In 2009, the Maltese finance ministry was obliging in assisting the US government with all the information it could provide on Irisl and its network of shell companies in Malta. US Treasury under-secretary Stuart Levey met with Alan Caruana, head of secretariat in the finance ministry, who claimed the Maltese government “had pushed away Iranian business, which is not always legal.”

Caruana offered the US chargé d’affaires to assist US authorities in their attempts to find any data that may exist but was not made available to the public. “Caruana mentioned that the US and Malta had a good policy of sharing information and a strong relationship with the US Embassy.”

The cable also reveals that in February 2009, law firm Ganado and Associates terminated all aspects of its professional relationship with IRISL. “The firm cited a number of reasons, to include compliance with UN and US sanctions, as well as Maltese anti-money laundering laws as reasons for terminating its relationship with Irisl.”