Owners of seized Russian oil tanker claim U.S. improperly sold ship for scrap metal

U.S. authorities sold a seized Russian oil tanker to a maritime scrap dealer for well under market value in an “economically irrational” deal meant to thwart the owner’s bid to recover the vessel, the company lawyers said in court papers. The Justice Department was ordered to respond to the allegations, made by the ship’s Russian owner, Burevestmarin LLC, by 9 a.m. Friday. The tanker, Bella 1, was seized by the U.S. military in the North Atlantic in early January after a weekslong chase on the high seas. U.S. authorities said the ship, which they believed was carrying illegal Iranian oil, was caught fleeing an American blockade of Venezuela. Attorneys for Burevestmarin dispute the claim that the vessel was carrying Iranian oil. The ship was sold to a scrap dealer for $9.1 million, the company’s lawyers said, well below the $21 million that the Bella 1 would fetch as scrap metal alone. Even a proper scrap metal price tag would understate its worth, they added, because the ship has “substantially greater value” as “an operating commercial vessel.” “As discussed and previously briefed, the Government posits a world in which it can — while withholding notice to known interested parties and while aware of challenges to the Court’s jurisdiction — engage in precisely this kind of economically irrational sale for its own convenience,” the owner’s lawyers wrote. They said the sale was conducted “behind closed doors” as part of the government’s “self-interested and unreasonable decisions.” Representatives for the Justice Department and the scrap dealer named in court documents could not be immediately reached for comment Thursday.