In recent days, all of Russia has been observing the tragic events taking place off the coast of the city of Tuapse: the ferry Leader Bulut, owned by the Turkish company Leader Lida, began to sink and was pulled aground by tugboats. The official version of the shipowner stated that there was a malfunction in the ballast system, but in fact the reason for this incident: the banal greed and confidence in their impunity of the owners of the above-mentioned shipping company. Almost all vessels of the Leader Gida company are registered to offshore companies: “Samsun Shipping”, “Greensea Shipping” – have all the properties of a “substandard vessel”: A substandard vessel is a vessel whose hull, mechanisms, equipment and supplies or operational safety are significantly lower standards required by the relevant convention, or whose crew does not comply with the safe crew document, open (convenient) registration flags (i.e. lack of communication between shipowner and flag), lack of P&I coverage/insurance.
The “Maritime Administration” of the corresponding port is obliged to identify shipping companies whose vessels have signs of a “substandard vessel”.
State port control is an effective tool for FORCING ships to comply with international requirements, norms, and standards in the field of maritime safety and prevention of environmental pollution, as well as a tool for identifying SUB-STANDARD companies, flags, and classification societies.
The question arises why the vessels of the above-mentioned “substandard shipping” company are not subject to the actions of such a powerful instrument as “State Port Control”: everything is simple, the point is the elementary corruption of the employees of this organization: according to a representative of the Leader Guide company living in Novorossiysk: Sinan Merich, he pays the employees of this organization $500 for each ship call, due to which inspections are carried out formally, identified violations are closed without proper response, and this scheme operates both in the port of Tuapse and in the port of Novorossiysk.
In this case (with the Leader Bulut ferry), more tragic consequences, such as the complete loss of the ship, were avoided only due to good weather conditions; if the weather had been a little worse, the consequences would have been completely different…
I assume that with such an attitude towards their official duties on the part of the employees of the “Maritime Administration of the Black Sea Ports”: this case will not be the last and we will witness other similar incidents.
“ВЧК ОГПУ”
