Adani’s $275m OFAC settlement exposes shipping’s sanctions blind spot

Adani Enterprises will pay $275m to settle US sanctions charges over 35 LPG cargoes OFAC says were Iranian — despite the company screening every ship, operator and seller against the sanctions list before each delivery. On paper, the Indian conglomerate did what the compliance manuals demand. The names came back clean. The oil, according to OFAC, was not.

The details read like a case study in how sanctions evasion actually works. OFAC's red flags included AIS spoofing, dark periods, illogical port calls, and frequent changes of name, owner and flag. The documents for Adani's first cargo — fully refrigerated propane — claimed it loaded at Sohar, in Oman. Sohar had no facilities for exporting fully refrigerated LPG at the time. A port with the wrong plumbing is a fact no screening database catches.

What went wrong after the bank pulled the plug?

In February 2024, the Dubai trader's bank stopped payment on one shipment. The trader's response: a new account at another bank, plus fresh shipping documents OFAC describes as apparently falsified. The payment went through. So did the remaining cargoes.

OFAC called the case egregious. Adani had heard third-party concerns about Iranian origin four separate times, and its purchase prices were, in the regulator's view, not commercially reasonable. Discounted fuel from a worried counterparty is not a bargain. It's a warning with a discount attached.

The core problem, as the case lays bare, is structural. The party carrying the liability rarely holds the whole evidence. Importers hold certificates of origin. Terminals know what their berths can load. Carriers, agents and bunker suppliers see the ship's movements. Satellite providers see what a vessel broadcasts — and when it goes dark. Regulators assemble that picture years after the cargo is paid for. Companies need it before they pay.

How far does the exposure now reach?

Further than most directors assume. Losing the licence to operate is now, in effect, a customs decision. Under the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, customs may accept covered goods above 50 tonnes a year only from an authorised declarant. When the Forced Labour Regulation applies in December 2027, customs can stop banned products at the border, and missing traceability information may count against a company.

Service relationships carry risk too. Since July, the EU can list ships that bunker, tow or transfer cargo with designated vessels. A bunker supplier is now judged partly by whom it fuels.

October offered the smaller-scale version of the same lesson. California forwarder Pegasus Worldwide Logistics settled with OFAC for $175,015 — over a $5,950 machine. OFAC says the forwarder screened its Chinese supplier's new name, missed that the telephone number and email address on the sanctions list hadn't changed, and kept paying and collecting fees even after a US customs detention notice named OFAC. The fine was roughly 30 times the value of the shipment.

What does this change for shippers and forwarders?

It reframes compliance from paperwork to evidence. If every buyer pays for its own view of the same voyage, each still sees only a fragment. What's missing is a neutral way for authorised parties to share verified events while keeping control of their own data. A permissioned record of where cargo loaded, what carried it and who handled it would give customs, banks and insurers what they demand.

Directors, on this reading, need three answers. Which revenues rest on cargo whose origin rests only on the seller's documents? When a bank halts a payment or customs detains a shipment, who stops the next one? And which parts of the voyage record do we depend on others for, and on what terms?

The evidence already exists — at the berth, on the bridge, in the bunker log. A cargo with a traceable journey clears, finances and insures more easily, and compliance becomes a reason to be chosen as a trading partner. Shipping already shares ships, slots and berths. Sharing the voyage record is the smaller step, and the more valuable one. The liability stays yours either way.