On Feb­ru­ary 7, an oil-like sub­stance be­gan leak­ing from an over­turned barge, clear­ly aban­doned, stuck in a reef south of Cove, To­ba­go.

It has been 25 days since the ac­ci­dent, now con­tained by au­thor­i­ties in T&T, but caus­ing an en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter through the South­ern Caribbean, ex­tend­ing to Bonaire.

The Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk has part­nered with Belling­cat—a Nether­lands-based in­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism group that spe­cialis­es in open-source re­search—to un­rav­el some of the ques­tions which re­main: who are the own­ers of the barge, how did it come to be in T&T’s wa­ters, where was it head­ed and who will ac­cept li­a­bil­i­ty for the en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter?

The sto­ry start­ed in To­ba­go and con­nect­ed en­ti­ties from Sier­ra Leone, Pana­ma, Venezuela, Guyana, and Nige­ria.

Belling­cat: Lo­gan Williams, Thomas Bor­deaux, with re­search con­tri­bu­tions from Lotte van der Waal, Ethan Doyle, Mikael Hoff­man and mem­bers of Belling­cat’s Dis­cord com­mu­ni­ty.

Guardian Me­dia: Asha Javeed

The So­lo Creed, the tug­boat be­hind the oil spill off the To­ba­go coast, be­longed to a di­rec­tor of a net­work of Pana­man­ian com­pa­nies ac­cused of trans­port­ing oil from Venezuela.

The tug­boat’s reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments were pro­vid­ed to Belling­cat and Guardian Me­dia by the Zanz­ibar Mar­itime Au­thor­i­ty (ZMA).

The doc­u­ments show the So­lo Creed was owned by a di­rec­tor—Melis­sa Rona Gon­za­lez—of a Pana­ma-based firm called Melaj Off­shore Cor­po­ra­tion when it was tow­ing the Gulf­stream barge on the ill-fat­ed jour­ney that led to the on­go­ing oil spill.

Pub­lic da­ta from the Pana­man­ian cor­po­rate reg­istry shows that Gon­za­lez is an of­fi­cer of Melaj Off­shore Cor­po­ra­tion and that the pow­er of at­tor­ney for Melaj be­longs to Au­gus­tine Jack­son.

Jack­son, who al­so goes by the name Cap­tain Austin Jack­son (or vari­a­tions to that), is a busi­ness­man with op­er­a­tions in Pana­ma, Guyana, Dubai, Ba­hamas and Nige­ria, and bears a Sier­ra Leone pass­port. In 2020, dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, he was in­ter­est­ed in pur­chas­ing ves­sels from Cari­doc but the ac­qui­si­tion was nev­er com­plet­ed.

Da­ta al­so shows that sev­er­al di­rec­tors of Melaj, in­clud­ing Jack­son and Gon­za­lez, share a di­rec­tor­ship in three oth­er com­pa­nies: In­no­va­tion and En­gi­neer­ing Ser­vices, Inc; Mi­lan Mar­itime Op­er­a­tions, SA; and Mi­lan Ship­ping En­ter­prise Cor­po­ra­tion.

De­ter­min­ing own­er­ship

Last month, Belling­cat re­port­ed that the last known pho­to­graph of the So­lo Creed was post­ed by a user with the name “MELAJ OFF­SHORE CORP” on Marine­Traf­fic, a mar­itime an­a­lyt­ics plat­form, on De­cem­ber 24, 2023.

Ship reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed by the ZMA show that the list­ed own­er of the So­lo Creed dur­ing the time of its dis­as­trous jour­ney was Melis­sa Rona Gon­za­lez.

In a state­ment to the team, the ZMA con­firmed the Pro­vi­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate of Reg­istry, which lists Gon­za­lez as the own­er, is au­then­tic.

The pe­ri­od of reg­is­tra­tion in­cludes the So­lo Creed’s de­par­ture on De­cem­ber 30, 2023, un­til it aban­doned the Gulf­stream barge on or around Feb­ru­ary 6, 2024, as seen in satel­lite im­agery.

It ex­pired last week on Feb­ru­ary 29.

Melaj’s re­la­tion­ship with Venezuela and Guyana

Melaj and Jack­son ap­pear to have a che­quered his­to­ry in Guyana and Venezuela.

In March 2019, Reuters re­port­ed that Melaj had be­gun trans­port­ing oil for the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) af­ter the Unit­ed States ap­plied sanc­tions to Venezue­lan oil ex­ports two months be­fore, in Jan­u­ary. US sanc­tions have a far-reach­ing im­pact on the pe­tro­le­um in­dus­try, due to the im­por­tance of the US bank­ing sys­tem on the sale of oil, as more than half of the world’s re­serves are de­nom­i­nat­ed in US dol­lars. 

In 2016, Jack­son was em­broiled in a le­gal dis­pute with two Guyanese busi­ness­men who filed an in­junc­tion against his firm over a pay­ment dis­pute, ac­cord­ing to Kai­eteur News. The busi­ness part­ner named in this law­suit, June El­win, is Jack­son’s moth­er-in-law, as con­firmed by the Guyana vot­er roll. Jack­son coun­tered in court that he had been com­pelled to “smug­gle fu­el across in­ter­na­tion­al bor­ders in­to Guyana”, al­le­ga­tions one of the busi­ness­men called “base­less”.

Lat­er that year, the Venezue­lan sailors he em­ployed on his ves­sel, the MJ Pol­lux A, al­leged that he strand­ed them with­out food or pay. Jack­son con­test­ed their ac­count.

A post on the web­site Ripof­fRe­ports as well as on ShipSpot­ting by fu­el in­dus­try trad­er, Moses Eve­lyn, al­leges Jack­son was in­volved in a PDVSA fu­el ship­ping deal gone awry in Guyana in 2016. In an email ex­change with Belling­cat, Eve­lyn con­firmed he made the post and stands by his ac­count.

The So­lo Creed and Gulf­stream are not the on­ly ships owned by Jack­son’s fam­i­ly busi­ness­es. Da­ta from the ves­sel own­er­ship data­base Equa­sis shows that Melaj owns a ship named the Mar­ilys AJ, which shares the same name as Jack­son’s daugh­ter. In­no­va­tion and En­gi­neer­ing Ser­vices owns a ves­sel named the Mikay­la AJ, and Mi­lan Ship­ping En­ter­prise Cor­po­ra­tion owns a ves­sel named the Edid­iong AJ, for­mer­ly known as the Sea En­deav­our. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Face­book posts made by Jack­son and con­firmed by records from the Pana­ma Mar­itime Au­thor­i­ty con­nect him to an­oth­er tug­boat, Capt Mi­lan.

Like the So­lo Creed, these ves­sels tran­sit be­tween the Caribbean, Colom­bian and Venezue­lan ports, and of­ten seem to sail dark, with AIS track­ing da­ta dis­abled. This makes it dif­fi­cult to com­pile a com­plete record of their move­ments.

En­ter Abra­ham Olalekan

When con­tact­ed last week, Jack­son con­firmed his own­er­ship of Melaj Off­shore Cor­po­ra­tion but de­nied any con­nec­tion to the So­lo Creed or Gulf­stream.

He point­ed the team to a “Dr” Abra­ham Olalekan in Nige­ria and pro­vid­ed his num­ber.

Both of them re­fused to ad­dress why the ship was reg­is­tered in the name of a Melaj di­rec­tor, Gon­za­lez.

Olalekan did not pro­duce any ev­i­dence of pur­chas­ing the So­lo Creed as he claimed, but did pro­vide an os­ten­si­ble bill of sale for the Gulf­stream, which Belling­cat and Guardian Me­dia were not able to ver­i­fy.

This doc­u­ment, dat­ed Au­gust 28, 2023, said that he paid US$350,000—a far high­er price than the auc­tion price ranges in Pana­ma just months ear­li­er—and list­ed the ves­sel as the “Gulf Stream” (sic), a mis­spelling of its pre­vi­ous name Gulf­stream and even though it had been named the Sea Mar­lin for sev­er­al years by that time, in­clud­ing in Pana­man­ian court records from May 2023 on­wards.

Of note, the doc­u­ment is not no­ta­rized and con­tains no oth­er form of third-par­ty ver­i­fi­ca­tion.

Olalekan did not pro­vide con­tact in­for­ma­tion for the oth­er par­ty named in the doc­u­ment up­on re­quest. Ivan Dario Os­orno (if mis­spelt as ‘Or­sono’ in the bill of sale) ap­pears to be a gen­uine in­di­vid­ual but no open-source in­di­ca­tions could be found that he had any cor­po­rate deal­ings in the oil or ship­ping busi­ness­es. Belling­cat was un­able to reach him for com­ment.

Olalekan claimed dur­ing the What­sApp ex­change that he was hav­ing both ves­sels trans­port­ed to Nige­ria when the barge sank, that he had not in­sured them, and that the So­lo Creed was still en route to Nige­ria. Olalekan claimed, “When my ves­sel get here in few days time you can check them on the Ais and find out for ur self” (sic). When asked why the So­lo Creed had ceased trans­mis­sion of AIS da­ta dur­ing the sup­posed voy­age and con­tin­ues to hide its lo­ca­tion to this day, Olalekan replied, “I choose what to do with my prop­er­ty.” 

Olalekan claimed to have pur­chased the tug in Au­gust 2023, con­tra­dict­ing the Pro­vi­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate of Reg­istry from the Zanz­ibar Mar­itime Au­thor­i­ty that in­di­cates the ship was flagged to Tan­za­nia in No­vem­ber 2023 in the own­er­ship of Gon­za­lez. (Zanz­ibar is a se­mi-au­tonomous re­gion of Tan­za­nia which was giv­en its own mar­itime reg­u­la­tor in 2009.)

Olalekan fur­ther claimed to have no busi­ness in Guyana, con­tra­dict­ing a sec­ond Cer­tifi­cate of Reg­is­tra­tion pro­vid­ed by the Zanz­ibar Mar­itime Au­thor­i­ty, which stat­ed that the So­lo Creed is now owned by a Guyanese com­pa­ny. This sec­ond cer­tifi­cate was is­sued on Feb­ru­ary 13, 2024, six days af­ter the dis­cov­ery of the oil spill, and names the up­dat­ed own­er as “In­tek Ma­rine Corp”, in the Ec­cles neigh­bour­hood of George­town, Guyana.

When asked about this con­tra­dic­tion, Olalekan said that he pur­chased the ves­sels from In­tek Ma­rine. He did not ex­plain the dis­crep­an­cy in dates or names on his sup­posed bill of sale. Belling­cat and Guardian Me­dia were not able to lo­cate any com­pa­ny named In­tek Ma­rine in the Guyana Com­mer­cial Reg­istry.

Olalekan of­fered no ex­pla­na­tion for the con­tra­dic­to­ry reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments from the Zanz­ibar Mar­itime Au­thor­i­ty and re­peat­ed­ly re­fused to an­swer why the ves­sel was reg­is­tered in Gon­za­lez’s name at the same time that he claimed own­er­ship.

Olalekan end­ed a con­ver­sa­tion on March 2, 2024, by ex­press­ing sur­prise that peo­ple were cu­ri­ous about the So­lo Creed, say­ing “(s)uch in­ci­dent is not new, cer­tain things are in­evitable. (sic)”

Olalekan claimed to be in con­tact with T&T Mar­itime Au­thor­i­ties but did not pro­duce ev­i­dence of this when asked.

The team was able to source a copy of the let­ter sub­mit­ted in which Olalekan claimed own­er­ship. It was au­thored by a Dr Richard Oyi­wona, claim­ing to be Olalekan’s lawyer. The let­ter was dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 15, 2024, one day af­ter the pub­lic rev­e­la­tion of the barge by Belling­cat and the tug by the T&T Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, and ten days af­ter the loss of the barge.

Augustine Jackson

When asked why he had wait­ed ten days to re­port the sunken barge, which posed an im­me­di­ate nav­i­ga­tion­al and en­vi­ron­men­tal haz­ard, to mar­itime au­thor­i­ties, Olalekan said he was not avail­able for con­ver­sa­tion as he was “at a wed­ding func­tion”.

In the let­ter, Oyi­wona claims that Olalekan pur­chased the So­lo Creed on Jan­u­ary 12, 2024 and that it trav­elled to Aru­ba to pick up the barge on Jan­u­ary 16, 2024. This con­tra­dicts satel­lite im­agery pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed by Belling­cat, which shows that the So­lo Creed and the Gulf­stream trav­elled to­geth­er from Colón.

It al­so con­tra­dicts the Cer­tifi­cate of Reg­is­tra­tion from the Zanz­ibar Mar­itime Au­thor­i­ty is­sued on Feb­ru­ary 13, 2024, two days be­fore the let­ter was sent, that lists In­tek Ma­rine Corp as the reg­is­tered own­er of the ves­sel.

The let­ter fur­ther claims that the tug and barge were trav­el­ling to Guyana to pur­chase bunker fu­el, con­tra­dict­ing doc­u­ments and re­ports that the barge was in­tend­ed to dis­charge fu­el oil in Guyana.

The let­ter does not ac­knowl­edge the 13-day gap in AIS trans­mis­sions, where Belling­cat and Tanker Track­ers re­port­ed the barge’s pres­ence in Pozue­lo’s Bay, near the PDVSA ter­mi­nals at Puer­to la Cruz, Venezuela.

Oyi­wona did not re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment.

Leaky Gulf­stream

Port and le­gal records ac­cessed by the team de­scribed the ves­sel as “pre­sent­ing wa­ter leaks” and re­quir­ing “pump­ing ser­vices” to pre­vent it from sink­ing just months be­fore its fi­nal, dis­as­trous voy­age.

T&T’s Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty had said that the ves­sels were bound for Guyana, which shares a sea bor­der with T&T.

Last week, a re­port by News Source Guyana claimed the car­go was bound for Guyana Pow­er and Light, which said it “wish­es to un­equiv­o­cal­ly state that the com­pa­ny is not re­lat­ed to this un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent”.

Belling­cat pre­vi­ous­ly re­vealed that the ves­sel leak­ing oil off the To­ba­go coast, which strand­ed there in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary, is a barge for­mer­ly known as the Gulf­stream.

T&T au­thor­i­ties said a tug­boat, called the So­lo Creed, was trans­port­ing the barge to Guyana af­ter the ves­sels left Pana­ma. Belling­cat al­so traced the barge’s fi­nal jour­ney us­ing satel­lite im­agery, show­ing that it be­gan leak­ing oil days be­fore it was found strand­ed.

T&T au­thor­i­ties have asked the own­er of the ves­sels to come for­ward and claim re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the spill, which has reached hun­dreds of miles in­to the Caribbean Sea, but no par­ty has yet been pub­licly iden­ti­fied.

Con­nec­tions in Guyana

Ac­cord­ing to the barge’s book­ing for a port pi­lot (a cap­tain who works for a port to help ships nav­i­gate their ar­rival), which was re­port­ed by To­ba­go Up­dates last week, the Gulf­stream was des­tined for the Vreed en Hoop ter­mi­nal of Guyana Pow­er and Light (GPL), Guyana’s state-owned elec­tric util­i­ty.

The doc­u­ment said the barge was car­ry­ing 4,652 met­ric tonnes of Bunker C fu­el oil, car­go worth ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$2 mil­lion. This in­for­ma­tion as well as oth­er in­for­ma­tion in the doc­u­ment match the spec­i­fi­ca­tions of the Gulf­stream and So­lo Creed. The name of the cap­tain match­es crew man­i­fest doc­u­ments al­so ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia and Belling­cat.

The name Culie Boy was first pub­li­cised by mar­itime at­tor­ney Nyree Al­fon­so in the Trinidad Ex­press. Belling­cat and Guardian Me­dia have not been able to ver­i­fy the le­git­i­ma­cy of this doc­u­ment, which was in­de­pen­dent­ly pro­vid­ed by a source with knowl­edge of the of­fi­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Rafeek and Moore, the cus­toms agents stamped on the doc­u­ment, did not re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment.

Mean­while, GPL has dis­tanced it­self from the sit­u­a­tion.

“GPL ten­dered for the Sup­ply and De­liv­ery of Heavy Fu­el Oil in June 2023, via na­tion­al com­pet­i­tive bid­ding,” the util­i­ty said in a state­ment post­ed to Face­book on Feb­ru­ary 22. “Six Bids were re­ceived. The ten­der was award­ed on Oc­to­ber 24, 2023, to Staat­solie Maatschap­pij Suri­name N V (the first ranked bid­der).” Staat­solie is the na­tion­al oil com­pa­ny of neigh­bour­ing Suri­name,” the state­ment said.

“An ad­di­tion­al award for the sup­ply and de­liv­ery of HFO was award­ed to the joint ven­ture Rapid Re­sults Inc and Os­h­er In­ter­na­tion­al Hold­ings LLC (the sec­ond-ranked bid­der) to aug­ment GPL’s in­creas­ing con­sump­tion of HFO and sup­ply re­quire­ments.”

GPL stressed that as “ti­tle, own­er­ship and risk of loss for the fu­el pass­es from the sup­pli­ers to GPL at the dis­charge port” and it had not re­ceived any no­ti­fi­ca­tion about a loss of car­go from its fu­el sup­pli­ers. It “un­equiv­o­cal­ly” had no re­la­tion to the oil spill, it stat­ed.

The CEO of Guyana Pow­er and Light, Kesh Nand­lall, pro­vid­ed no fur­ther com­ment up­on re­quest.

The lo­cal part­ner in GPL’s ad­di­tion­al award, Rapid Re­sults Inc ap­pears to have lit­tle known his­to­ry in the trans­port of fu­el oil. An en­try in the 2021 George­town Cham­ber of Com­merce & In­dus­try mag­a­zine lists the com­pa­ny un­der “Health­care”, and in­cludes a now-de­funct URL, http://www.rapidresult­sphar­ma.com/.

Links to high places

Records from the Of­fi­cial Gazette of Guyana show that the own­er/op­er­a­tor of the com­pa­ny is a man named Mo­hamed Hus­sain and that the com­pa­ny had a li­cence to im­port pe­tro­le­um as of De­cem­ber 31, 2023. At­tempts to con­tact Hus­sain via his of­fice and a cell­phone num­ber were not suc­cess­ful.

Belling­cat and Guardian Me­dia found an archived ver­sion of the Rapid Re­sults Inc web­site in the In­ter­net Archive’s Way­back Ma­chine from 2018, where the com­pa­ny lists con­sult­ing per­son­nel in­clud­ing “In­ter­nal Med­i­cine Spe­cial­ist” and “Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and Vac­ci­na­tion Pro­fes­sion­als”. There is seem­ing­ly no pub­lic in­di­ca­tion that the com­pa­ny had pre­vi­ous­ly ever been in the busi­ness of sup­ply­ing fu­el oil. 

How­ev­er, Rapid Re­sults ap­pears to have links to high­er ech­e­lons of Guyanese pol­i­tics. Most no­tably, the web­site of Rapid Re­sults is “Copy­right Reyaud Rah­man”.

Dr Rah­man ap­pears to be well-con­nect­ed in Guyana pol­i­tics, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly served as the di­rec­tor of Guyana’s Vec­tor Con­trol De­part­ment un­til he re­signed fol­low­ing fraud al­le­ga­tions in 2015, and as of 2021 was Ex­ec­u­tive Li­ai­son Of­fi­cer to the Pres­i­dent of Guyana. Among his du­ties there, in­clud­ing while par­tic­i­pat­ing in bi­lat­er­al talks with Ghana, was “to share knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ences in the oil and gas in­dus­try”. He al­so cur­rent­ly serves as the chair­man of Guyana’s Firearms Li­cens­ing Board.

A reg­is­tra­tion num­ber in the Guyana Gazette from the Rapid Re­sult’s es­tab­lish­ment in 2014 and the num­ber on an ex­tract from the Guyana Com­mer­cial Reg­istry post­ed on Face­book, which al­so names Hus­sain, con­firm that this is the same com­pa­ny. In a What­sApp con­ver­sa­tion with Guardian Me­dia, Rah­man de­nied any af­fil­i­a­tion with Rapid Re­sults Inc. 

A let­ter post­ed on Face­book by Guyana’s Capi­tol News on Feb­ru­ary 28 claimed to be from Os­h­er In­ter­na­tion­al LLC’s le­gal firm and Rapid Re­sults Inc ad­dressed to Guyana Pow­er and Light. It reads, “(o)n be­half of Os­h­er In­ter­na­tion­al Hold­ings, LLC, it is my re­gret­table oblig­a­tion to in­form you that the ship­ment has an un­fore­seen de­lay.”

While the let­ter did not re­fer to the Gulf­stream by name, it was sent on Feb­ru­ary 7, 2024, the day af­ter the Gulf­stream was due to ar­rive at GPL, and the same day that the Gulf­stream washed up on the shores of To­ba­go. 

Os­h­er and the lawyer who au­thored the let­ter did not re­ply to re­quests for com­ment.

Jack­son’s Guyana tax cer­tifi­cate

Open-source ev­i­dence sug­gests Au­gus­tine Jack­son is not with­out his own con­nec­tions to promi­nent Guyanese in­di­vid­u­als. A 2014 tax cer­tifi­cate ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia from a for­mer busi­ness part­ner and shared with Belling­cat states that Jack­son resided at an ad­dress in Bel Aire Park, George­town. That same ad­dress is al­so as­so­ci­at­ed with the vot­er and com­pa­ny reg­is­tra­tion of Dor­wain Bess, a busi­ness­man who in 2023 was found guilty by a Guyanese court of im­port­ing fu­el oil with­out a li­cence.

Belling­cat was not able to in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fy the au­then­tic­i­ty of the 2014 cer­tifi­cate, but open-source com­pa­ny da­ta links Jack­son to An­abel En­er­gy Off­shore Ser­vices Inc reg­is­tered at the same ad­dress. 

An en­try on ship­ping-da­ta.com al­so lists Jack­son (us­ing a known al­ter­nate name “Austin”, found on LinkedIn and al­so men­tioned in the on­line post by for­mer busi­ness part­ner Eve­lyn) as a con­tact for the sim­i­lar­ly named “An­abel En­er­gy & Ma­rine Ser­vice Ltd”. The Nas­sau ad­dress pro­vid­ed is as­so­ci­at­ed in Google Maps with An­abel En­er­gy Off­shore Ser­vices, Inc and da­ta from the Wyoming Sec­re­tary of State shows that Bess was the di­rec­tor/pres­i­dent.

In a con­ver­sa­tion with Guardian Me­dia, Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali said “(f)rom what I am told, there was a joint ven­ture with a US com­pa­ny with a lo­cal com­pa­ny with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for lo­gis­tics and man­age­ment once the fu­el ar­rived. I can­not con­firm.”

A ‘dam­aged’ barge

Belling­cat re­port­ed last month that the Gulf­stream spent 15 months sit­ting in Colón, Pana­ma, first at a dock known as Muelle 3, and then for the last sev­en months beached along an in­for­mal har­bour just to the south.

Pana­man­ian court doc­u­ments shed more light on how the Gulf­stream end­ed up here and the barge’s con­di­tion.

On March 10, 2023, Ter­mi­ni Fi­nanc­ing Group, SA, which has the con­ces­sion to op­er­ate the Muelle 3 dock, filed a court or­der against the Sea Mar­lin for an un­paid bal­ance of US$205,484.12 for its stay at the dock, since Sep­tem­ber 13, 2022. Ter­mi­ni states that it had not re­ceived com­mu­ni­ca­tion or pay­ment from the op­er­a­tors of the Sea Mar­lin, named Star Goods Pe­tro­le­um SA, since the barge’s ar­rival.

In the court or­der, Ter­mi­ni point­ed out that the barge had been dam­aged since it en­tered the port area and had wa­ter leaks so se­ri­ous they re­quired pump­ing wa­ter from the ves­sel to pre­vent it from sink­ing.

The Gulf­stream had to be auc­tioned three times to sell: on May 9, 2023, with a min­i­mum price of US$187,500; on May 16, with a min­i­mum price of US$125,000; and fi­nal­ly on May 23 with a min­i­mum price of just the court process ex­pens­es. On May 24, court records in­di­cat­ed that the mat­ter had been re­solved. Ter­mi­ni Fi­nanc­ing Group re­ceived just US$7,496.30 for the sale.

As pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed by Belling­cat, be­tween May 29 and June 3, 2023, the Gulf­stream had been moved from Muelle 3 to the beach just to the south. On De­cem­ber 30, 2023, hav­ing been sold with se­ri­ous main­te­nance is­sues, and with­out hav­ing vis­it­ed any ship­yard for ma­jor re­pairs, the Gulf­stream was re­moved from its har­bour to an­chor in Colon. On Jan­u­ary 12, 2024, it be­gan its voy­age to Venezuela.

The Gulf­stream has had is­sues be­fore. In 2019, af­ter go­ing miss­ing at sea for sev­en days, the barge ran aground on a beach in Cordó­ba, Colom­bia. Just weeks lat­er, the ves­sel again had nav­i­ga­tion­al dif­fi­cul­ties due to ad­verse weath­er con­di­tions and had to be es­cort­ed to port by the Colom­bian Coast Guard.

Off to Venezuela

Videos ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia and Belling­cat from a source who pre­vi­ous­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the crew, filmed in late Jan­u­ary, show the So­lo Creed en route with the Gulf­stream. In the au­dio, which has been re­moved to pro­tect the iden­ti­ty of crew mem­bers, a voice can be heard in­di­cat­ing that they are trav­el­ling to Venezuela.

Belling­cat ge­olo­cat­ed ad­di­tion­al videos pro­vid­ed by the same source to just off­shore Puer­to la Cruz, Venezuela, in Pozue­lo’s Bay as pre­vi­ous­ly iden­ti­fied on satel­lite im­agery.