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By Joe Brock
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – More than a dozen shipowners have made payments of about $ 300,000 to release vessels detained by the Indonesian navy, which they say were illegally anchored in Indonesian waters near Singapore, according to sources with direct knowledge of the matter.
Dozens of sources include shipowners, crew members and sources of maritime security involved in arrests and payments, who were paid in cash to naval officers or told intermediaries representing the Indonesian navy by bank transfer.
Reuters was unable to independently confirm that payments had been made to naval officers or that the final recipients of the payments had been determined.
The arrests and payments were first reported on Lloyd’s List Intelligence industry websites.
Rear Admiral Arsyad Abdullah, the commander of the Indonesian navy in the region, said in a written response to questions from Reuters that he had not been paid to the navy and also did not employ intermediaries in legal proceedings.
“It is not true that the Indonesian navy has received or requested payment for the release of the vessels,” Abdullah said.
He said that in the last three months there have been more boat arrests for unauthorized anchoring in Indonesian waters, deviating from the sailing route or stopping in the middle of the route for an unreasonable time. Abdullah said all the arrests were in accordance with Indonesian law.
The Singapore Strait, one of the most crowded waterways in the world, is overflowing with ships waiting to dock in Singapore for days or weeks, at a regional shipping site where the COVID-19 pandemic has caused major delays.
(Graph: Singapore waterways are among the busiest in the world – https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/ce/mypmnkaewvr/SingaporeWaterways.png)
The boats have been anchored in the eastern waters of the strait for years while waiting for the port, which is in international waters and therefore not responsible for port fees, two naval analysts and two shipowners said.
The Indonesian navy says the area is in the waters of its territory and intends to severely crush vessels anchored there without a license.
A spokesman for the Singapore Maritime and Port Authority, a government agency, declined to comment.
TOWN OF ARREST
In the past three months, about 30 ships, including an oil tanker, a bulk carrier and a layer of pipelines, have been arrested by the Indonesian navy and released most after making payments of between $ 250,000 and $ 300,000, according to two shipowners and two maritime security sources. involved.
Making these payments is cheaper than losing the income of ships carrying valuable cargo if they are tied up for months while the case is being tried in an Indonesian court, the two shipowners said.
According to two crew members of the detained ships, the army’s armed sailors approached their ships in warships, boarded them and escorted them to boats in Batam or Binta, the Indonesian islands of southern Singapore, across the strait.
Ship captains and often crew members were detained in cramped, suffocating rooms, sometimes for weeks, until shipowners sent cash or made a bank transfer to a Navy mediator, the two arrested crew members said.
Abdullah, an Indonesian naval officer, said the ship’s crew had not been arrested.
“In the legal process, all the crews on the ships were on their ships, except for the interrogations at the naval base. After the interrogation, they were sent back to the ships,” he said.
(Graph: Arrest near Singapore after Indonesian authorities clear the way for ships – https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/ce/dwvkrezolpm/VesselPathfromIndonesia.png)
Stephen Askins, a naval lawyer living in London, has advised owners who have detained Indonesian ships, said the navy had a right to protect its waters, but if a ship was arrested, some sort of trial would have to follow.
“In a situation where the Indonesian navy seems to be detaining ships with the intention of extorting money, it is difficult to see how legitimate that arrest could be,” Askins told Reuters in an email. He declined to provide details about his clients.
Lieutenant Colonel La Ode Muhamad Holib, a spokesman for the Indonesian navy, told Reuters in a written response to questions that some of the vessels arrested in the past three months had been released without charge because they lacked sufficient evidence.
Five ship captains were being prosecuted and two other short sentences and fines of Rs 100 crore ($ 7,000) and Rs 25 crore were imposed on them, respectively, Holib said, refusing to go into more detail on specific cases.
($ 1 = 14,240 rupees)
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