Avtandil Kalandadze, a 47 year old Georgian citizen and former master of the tanker Bella 1, pleaded guilty Thursday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to failing to obey a lawful order to heave to a Coast Guard cutter. He faces sentencing on August 7 and is expected to be deported once any prison term is served. The case is one of the highest profile sanctions enforcement actions the U.S. has brought against a shadow fleet master.
According to the Department of Justice, Kalandadze commanded Bella 1 from September through December 2025, during which the vessel moved roughly 1.8 million barrels of Iranian crude oil to Asia using tactics common to ghost fleet tankers. Those included running with the Automatic Identification System turned off and disguising the ship during ship to ship transfers.
The Coast Guard Cutter Munro intercepted Bella 1 in December 2025 while the tanker was bound for Venezuela. Rather than comply, the vessel fled into the Atlantic, was reflagged to Russia and renamed Marinera, and was finally seized on January 7, 2026 under a judicial warrant after a chase that lasted more than two weeks.
Federal prosecutors said Kalandadze also destroyed records aboard the ship at the direction of the operator. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro said the captain put American sailors and Coast Guardsmen at risk while moving illicit oil, and Assistant Attorney General John Eisenberg called the plea a warning to other shadow fleet operators.
The seizure sits inside an expanding U.S. blockade of tankers tied to sanctioned Iranian and Venezuelan oil, which has now grown to at least ten vessels boarded or seized from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean. Bella 1 had previously been sanctioned by Treasury for alleged links to the IRGC Qods Force and Hezbollah, and tanker trackers estimate the ship moved tens of millions of barrels of sanctioned crude since 2021.