More than 40 Sri Lankan officials from seven agencies were trained in detecting maritime sanctions evasion at a three-day workshop in Colombo run by the US Embassy and the Atlantic Council.
The training was held 9–11 September, and was disclosed in a US Embassy statement issued on Friday. It was delivered through the US Department of State’s Office of Cooperative Threat Reduction, the embassy said.
Participants came from the Sri Lanka Atomic Energy Regulatory Council, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, the Sri Lanka Coast Guard, the Merchant Shipping Secretariat, the Sri Lanka Ports Authority, the Ministry of Defence and the Sri Lanka Navy.
What was covered
Through presentations and tabletop exercises led by Atlantic Council specialists, officials examined the tactics used to disguise illicit shipping: manipulation of vessel identification and tracking data, opaque ownership structures, ship-to-ship transfers and falsified documentation — practices designed to obscure a vessel’s identity, ownership, cargo, origin or destination.
The workshop covered both US sanctions and applicable UN Security Council measures, and gave participants practice in conducting due diligence on vessels and associated entities, assessing financial and proliferation risk, and coordinating a response across agencies when suspicious activity is detected in or near Sri Lankan waters.
The service-provider warning
Participants were also briefed on exposure facing shipping agents, bunkering (fuel) providers and other service firms that support sanctioned vessels, knowingly or otherwise.
The United States has previously designated brokers, fuel suppliers and cargo certifiers for facilitating sanctioned vessels’ operations. Supplying fuel, food or provisions to such a vessel can expose a company or individual to US sanctions risk, including civil or criminal penalties — a point of direct commercial relevance to Colombo’s bunkering and ship-agency trade.
‘A strategic crossroads’
“Sri Lanka sits at a strategic crossroads for global commerce, bringing both tremendous opportunity and the need for vigilance,” US Ambassador Eric Meyer said.
“As sanctions-evasion networks increasingly exploit commercial shipping, the United States is taking decisive action to counter these networks and sharing US expertise with our Sri Lankan partners to protect legitimate trade, secure critical waters, and strengthen regional security.”
Not reported
None of the reports names a specific vessel, network or country of concern, says whether the training will be repeated, or indicates whether Sri Lankan agencies have detected sanctions-evasion activity in local waters.
