Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on Wednesday that US forces had seized a tanker for shipping oil from Venezuela and Iran, publishing footage of troops rappelling onto the vessel by helicopter.
"Today, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Homeland Security Investigations, and the United States Coast Guard, with support from the Department of War, executed a seizure warrant for a crude oil tanker used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran," Bondi posted on X.
"For multiple years, the oil tanker has been sanctioned by the United States due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations, she added.
The vessel, is called Skipper but had previously gone by the name Adisa, British maritime risk management group Vanguard reported.
"This seizure, completed off the coast of Venezuela, was conducted safely and securely—and our investigation alongside the Department of Homeland Security to prevent the transport of sanctioned oil continues," Bondi said.
A 2022 US Treasury sanctions notice said a Gulf-based businessman, Viktor Artemov along with other individuals were involved in a network "to illegally transport Iranian oil abroad and procure funds on behalf of Hizballah and the IRGC-QF," referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards and its external branch, the Quds Force.
The Adisa was listed among the vessels controlled by Artemov under a front company in which the Treasury said he had a 50% stake, Petro Naviero.
"Artemov used his companies to buy and sell oil tankers that were then used to transport blended Iranian oil on behalf of the oil smuggling network," the Treasury said.
The United States has ramped up a military deployment in the Caribbean as part of a pressure campaign on Venezuela and its leader Nicolas Maduro. US attacks on alleged drug boats there and in the Pacific have killed at least 87 people, in attacks which Democratic opponents and rights groups say violate the laws of war.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week cast Venezuela as a regional platform for Iranian influence, describing Maduro’s government as a narcotics transit hub that hosts Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah.
Maduro has rejected US accusations that he runs a narco-terrorist cartel and dismisses the largest American military buildup in the region in decades as an attempt to impose Washington's will on his oil-rich country.
