The US Treasury on November 4 sanctioned an India-based husband and wife it accuses of running fake national ship registries that gave Iran’s shadow fleet of tankers the paperwork to sail. According to Treasury, the network set up websites posing as the official flag registries of countries that had never authorized them, then sold flags, crew certificates and vessel classifications to ships moving Iranian oil.
The action targets Suniel Kumar Sharma, based in Chandigarh, and his wife, Jaspreet Preeti Shahid, along with two associates and nine companies and organizations, according to gCaptain’s account of the Treasury release. Guyana, one of the countries whose name the network allegedly used, publicly welcomed the sanctions the next day. Sharma has denied the US claims, according to Lloyd’s List.
What Treasury alleges
Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Sharma and Shahid under Executive Order 13902, which targets Iran’s petroleum, petrochemical and other sectors. It says the couple “defrauded maritime regulatory administrations in multiple jurisdictions in order to establish false flagging authorities and maritime classification societies.”
The method, as Treasury describes it, is simple. The network “purchases web domains, creating websites that claim to offer a variety of services on behalf of a country that has not authorized it.” Treasury lists claimed flagging services for Aruba, Guyana, Mali, Mozambique, Malawi, Sint Maarten and Timor-Leste, and says earlier schemes used the names of Dominica, Laos, Nicaragua and Eswatini. The release dates the operation back to at least 2014, when it impersonated Dominica.
Named companies include Eswatini Maritime Affairs and International Ship Registry PTE. Ltd., which Treasury says Sharma set up in Singapore in 2023; Oceaniek Technologies India, where Sharma is managing director; and Aryavart Ship Management Private Limited. Two Indian nationals, Ashwani Kumar Dhiman and Ishwinder Singh, are described as nominal directors of Sharma’s businesses. In the same release, Treasury separately sanctioned Fugo Ground Services, a company in Türkiye, for services to Iran’s aviation sector.
Treasury tied the network to specific ships. It says the vessel Ping Shun (International Maritime Organization number 9231901) was flagged through the “Eswatini” registry, and that Lattafa (9245794), Binary Star (9380570) and Vera (9304655) received false flags through registries linked to Oceaniek. A fifth ship, Majestic X, formerly Phonix (9198317), carried a false Guyana flag and was seized by the US Department of War on April 22, 2026, according to the release.
Treasury also warned that “falsely flagged vessels carry no valid protection and indemnity insurance,” and that such ships “could potentially cause billions of dollars in damages” to the economies where they operate. “We know where you are, and we will sanction those who continue supporting the Iranian regime, whether by land, sea, or air,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said. The action is part of “Operation Economic Outcast,” the Iran pressure campaign Bessent announced on August 24. Treasury also issued an alert to the shipping industry on falsely flagged vessels.
A long paper trail
The sanctions are new. The warnings are not. A February 2026 investigation by the open-source research group Bellingcat reported that the International Maritime Organization had issued a circular in June 2018 warning about Sharma and a company called Ascent Navals for operating a registry for Samoa without authorization. Bellingcat reported that Guyana ended a memorandum of understanding with Sharma’s companies around 2021, yet an entity calling itself the International Maritime Safety Agency of Guyana kept issuing certificates. The group downloaded 230 such certificates covering 87 ships, 63 of them oil tankers, with some issued as late as December 2025. It also linked registration forms for a Nicaraguan “registry” to Oceaniek Technologies.
Guyana’s Maritime Administration Department said on November 5 that it “fully supports the actions taken by the United States Department of the Treasury” and that the network had “fraudulently represented vessels as being registered in Guyana.” Maritime Executive reported that Eswatini authorities had already publicly disavowed the Singapore-based registry using their country’s name before the sanctions.
The scale of the problem goes well beyond one couple. In February 2026, ahead of a meeting of its legal committee, the International Maritime Organization identified 529 vessels flying false flags, 74 of them claiming Guyana and 35 claiming Aruba, according to Marine Insight. Windward, a maritime analytics firm, counted 285 falsely flagged tankers across 18 fraudulent registries in 2025, as cited by Bellingcat.
The denial, and what remains unproven
Sharma told the Financial Times, as reported by Bellingcat, that he had set up no more registries and had left the sector. Lloyd’s List reported after the sanctions that he denies the US claims. Bellingcat’s own findings conflict with his account. Bellingcat also wrote that there was “no indication that Sharma or IMSAG knowingly issued flags to criminal actors,” IMSAG being the Guyana-named agency. No response from Shahid, the named companies or the Indian government has been reported.
Readers should keep the distinction clear. A Treasury designation is an administrative action, not a criminal conviction, and Right Side News found no announced criminal charges against Sharma or Shahid. Treasury has not released the underlying evidence, and its release does not say how much Iranian oil moved under the fake flags. Whether the sanctions shut the business down is an open question: the earlier warnings from Guyana, Eswatini and the International Maritime Organization did not, according to Bellingcat and Maritime Executive.
The case shows how Iran’s oil trade survives. Tankers need a flag to enter ports, buy insurance and pass inspections. If the allegations hold, a network based in northern India sold that legitimacy, one website at a time, in the names of countries that never agreed to it.
Sources
- US Department of the Treasury, “Operation Economic Outcast Targets Global Maritime Fraud Network Supporting Iranian Regime” (November 4, 2026): home.treasury.gov
- Guyana Department of Public Information, Maritime Administration Department statement (November 5, 2026): dpi.gov.gy
- Bellingcat, “Shipwrecks, Sham Papers and False Flags: Tracking the Company Behind It All” (February 19, 2026): bellingcat.com
- gCaptain, “U.S. Targets Fraudulent Ship Registries Used by Iran’s Shadow Fleet” (November 4, 2026): gcaptain.com
- Maritime Executive, “US Sanctions False-Flag Network Run from India Used for Iranian Shipping” (November 4, 2026): maritime-executive.com
- Lloyd’s List, “Alleged architect of Iran shadow fleet fake flag network denies US claims”: lloydslist.com (subscription)
- Marine Insight, “IMO Identifies 529 False-Flagged Ships Ahead Of Key Legal Sub-Committee Meeting” (February 2026): marineinsight.com
Image: a tanker under way on the Baltic Sea; not a vessel named in this article. Photo by Joe deSousa (Mustang Joe), via Flickr, released under CC0 (public domain dedication).
How this article was made: Right Side News researched and drafted this article with the help of AI tools. Sources are linked so readers can check them. Spot an error? Tell us in the comments and we will correct it.
