In early January, under a pale winter sun over the Black Sea, satellites spotted a red-hulled cargo ship moored near a grain silo in Russian-occupied Crimea. The vessel was one of three Syrian cargo ships—Phoenicia, Laodicea, and Syria—accused by Ukrainian officials of transporting stolen grain from occupied territory.
What made them remarkable was not only their role in Russia’s “shadow fleet,” but the fact that they once belonged to the Syrian state. In 2023, while Bashar al-Assad was still in power, these ships were quietly transferred to an offshore company in the Seychelles for the symbolic price of one dollar each.
Selling a Nation’s Fleet
According to contracts and corporate records obtained by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and its Syrian partner Siraj, Syria’s General Maritime Transport Company sold the vessels to Al-Huda Holding Ltd, a shell company registered in the Seychelles. The firm disclosed no public ownership and operated through opaque corporate secrecy rules.
Sanctions expert Vittorio Marisca di Siracapriola called the sale “a textbook example of state capture.” He said that disposing of multi-million-dollar assets for one dollar each showed “how regime-connected actors stripped public wealth from Syria’s books while keeping control in their own hands.”
Each ship had been part of the national fleet for over a decade. Phoenicia, built in Japan in 2009, could carry 19,000 tons; Syria and Laodicea, both built in China in the mid-2000s, each carried 13,000 tons.
Shell Companies and Sanctions Evasion
Al-Huda’s director, Ali Mohammad Deeb, was little known to the public. But leaked corporate documents show his deep ties to businesses close to Assad’s inner circle. Deeb held shares in at least eight Syrian firms between 2021 and 2024, three of whose partners have been sanctioned by the European Union for helping the regime evade sanctions.
One of those partners, Ali Najib Ibrahim, ran what EU investigators described as “multiple front companies” for the Assad regime. Another, Ahmad Khalil Khalil, co-owned Sanad Security Services, a firm that guarded Russian energy interests in Syria under Wagner Group supervision.
Deeb also chaired Iloma Investment, a private company that took control of ticketing revenues for state-owned Syrian Air in 2024—an arrangement a former airline director described as “a front for the president.”
The Captagon Connection
Soon after the ships were sold, their management shifted to firms linked to Tahir Kayali, a Syrian businessman sanctioned by the United States, Britain, and the EU for his role in the illicit trade of captagon, the amphetamine-based drug that had become a financial lifeline for Assad’s regime.
Kayali’s Levant Fleet network—registered variously in Britain, Panama, and the UAE—provided administrative and safety management for Phoenicia, Syria, and Laodicea. Corporate overlaps between Levant Fleet and another Kayali company, Orient Fleet Maritime, suggest that the same group effectively ran Syria’s “hidden fleet” from abroad.
When reporters contacted the companies, they received no response. Instead, an anonymous Syrian number identifying itself as “Neptunus”—the name of another Kayali-linked firm under sanctions—sent a vague message promising “all necessary documents,” but never followed up.
A Trail Across the Seas
Since their sale, the three ships have travelled under multiple names and flags, frequently disabling their tracking transponders to conceal their routes. They have been registered in Eswatini, Gambia, Timor-Leste, and the Marshall Islands, despite most of these states denying any knowledge of the registrations.
When Phoenicia—renamed Monte Bianco—was seen near Sevastopol in January 2025, its tracking system was off, but satellite images confirmed its presence. Laodicea and Syria (renamed San Damian) were also observed moving between Russian, Syrian, and Egyptian ports, carrying grain and other cargoes.
Maritime-security analyst Michelle Buckman of Windward Analytics described such ships as “essentially stateless.” Frequent flag-hopping and false registrations, she said, are hallmarks of sanctioned vessels that pose “serious threats to safety, security, and the environment.”
A Pattern of Asset Stripping
The sale of Syria’s ships mirrors what a 2024 Brookings Institution report called the “privatisation of the state.” It detailed how Assad used obscure intermediaries and offshore firms to transfer key national assets to loyalists, insulating them from sanctions while blurring the line between public and private wealth.
Even after Assad’s downfall in late 2024, his network’s legacy endures. In May 2025, Syria’s new president Ahmad al-Sharaa created a committee to trace stolen public funds, yet little has been revealed about efforts to recover offshore assets like the ships or the fortunes parked in secret accounts abroad.
A Shadow Fleet Under New Flags
Today, according to the International Maritime Organization, Al-Huda Holding still owns Syria and Laodicea, while Phoenicia has passed through companies in the UAE and the Marshall Islands. All remain part of the same murky network of ownership, management, and re-registration that now links post-Assad Syria, Russian-occupied Crimea, and Gulf front companies.
For investigators, the $1 sale of Syria’s national fleet stands as a symbol of how a collapsing regime monetised the state itself—and how its remnants continue to navigate the world’s shipping lanes under false names and borrowed flags.
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
