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08.08.19 3 FROM PAGE 1 According to port clearance documents from Bandar Abbas on Iran's Gulf coast, one of the vessels, the Agdash departed from the port in March, before heading to the port of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates. Satellite tracking records from May show the other ship, the Agsu, mov- ing off its planned course to Basra in Iraq and heading towards Bandar Abbas, be- fore turning off its tracking device. e itinerary of the Agsu as recorded by MarineTraffic.com shows it leaving Fujairah on course to arrive at the port of Basra on 14 May, but the latest position received from the ship shows it on course for the Bandar Abbas port in southern Iran. e last time the ship sent a signal was on May 13. e ship, which had been scheduled to arrive at Basra one day later, was instead waiting by Hormuz, an Irani- an island in the Gulf. According to the news agency, Palmali Shipping violated the embargo 10 times with one ship and seven with the other while transporting petroleum products. e company's owner Mubariz Man- simov rejected the allegations levelled at him in May and said the ships did not be- long to his company. But documents show that the Agdash, leased by the UAE-based Mawared En- ergy, was invoiced as a time charter by Palmali Shipping. Mawared Energy used the U.S.-based SWIFT system to trans- fer payments for the Agdash to Palmali Shipping's accounts at QNB Finansbank, through the R Shipping brokerage com- pany, owned by Igor Raspopov. According to a report by the OFAC on sanctions against petroleum shipments involving Iran and Syria, a ship named Shah Deniz belonging to Palmali Ship- ping violated the embargo in 2016 to ship oil from Syria. e ship, sailing under the Maltese flag, was sold to another compa- ny and renamed Zarifa Aliyeva after the incident, but the Vesselfinder website's re- cords show photographs of the ship with the name Palmali still written on it. e Palmali shipping company is also connected to the inner circle of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as first revealed by inves- tigative publication e Black Sea and its partners at the EIC network in May this year as part of its reporting on the #Mal- taFiles. rough offshore companies in the Isle of Man and Malta, the Erdoğans secretly owned the Agdash oil tanker worth nearly $25 million. But the MaltaFiles investiga- tion found that the Erdoğans appear to pay nothing towards the Agdash – in- stead it is Mübariz Mansimov, the Turk- ish-Azeri president of Palmali Group, and Sitki Ayan, a childhood friend of Erdoğan, who footed the bill for the tanker. Palmali has over a dozen subsidiaries in Malta. Palmali is one of the biggest players in Russia's river-to-sea cargo market, and has appealed a court decision declaring its Russian business bankrupt, which meant handing its fleet over to lender Sberbank. A Rostov-on-Don court in southern Russia declared the Palmali unit bankrupt for owing $180 million to Sberbank, with almost all of its roughly 50 ships held as collateral with Russia's largest bank. Palmali is also said to owe 1.6 billion roubles ($24 million) to Russia's tax au- thorities. Palmali's owner, Azerbaijani billionaire Mubariz Mansimov, had told Reuters he would challenge the Sberbank ruling. Pal- mali has around 3,500 staff in Russia. e company has handled large volumes of non-pipeline oil and products exports, plying routes between refineries in the Volga region and Black and Azov Seas. One of its main clients is the Novoshakht- insk oil refinery in southern Russia. Sanctions imposed for Moscow's role in Ukraine's crisis have also hit some ship- pers. Mansimov said the sanctions "par- alysed" the firm, which uses the Russian flag on most of its vessels operating in Russia. Azerbaijani shipping magnate denies owning vessels violating embargo Satellite tracking records from May show the Agsu moving off its planned course to Basra in Iraq and heading towards Bandar Abbas, before turning off its tracking device KARL AZZOPARDI THE Malta Tourism Authority has objected to a proposal by the Danish Village in Mellieħa for demountable platforms for sunbeds to be placed at Għadira Bay. Last July, a permit was granted for the Danish Village to expand its footprint and erect 30 new bungalows. e proposal was a scaled down version of a similar one put forward 19 years ago, which would have seen most of the rocky area between the first and second beaches covered by sunbeds. e case officer's report noted that the proposal lay outside the identified tourism development area, where the public use of the beach should be safeguarded With a final decision expect- ed on the 23 August, Mizzi was asked whether he believed that more of the bay should be taken up by private interests. He said that while the proposal was still under discussion, he had been informed that the MTA had made its objections to the pro- posal know. e minister was speaking following a press conference announcing an agreement with operators renting out sunbeds on the beach. Mizzi said that 2,200 sq.m of space on the beach would once again be being made available to the public. He said that fol- lowing discussions with the operators and the MTA, a con- cession allowing operators had been scaled down. "We must find a balance, and now those that want to rent a deckchair can do so, while people who don't want to rent, can also refrain from doing so," Mizzi said. He said the new rules would come into force this week, and will see each operator giving up roughly 340sq.m of space allo- cated to them. MTA opposed to Danish Village being given part of Ghadira coastline, Tourism Minister says Roughly 2,200sq.m of Ghadira beach are to be cleared of sunbeds and umbrellas and returned to the public

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