Agence France-Presse (AFP), citing sanctions-data analysis, reported that dozens of oil tankers suspected of smuggling crude for Iran and Russia have used a coastal office in the Cook Islands—located in the tropical South Pacific—to hide traces of their activities.
Next to a pizza shop in the remote Cook Islands sits the small but growing headquarters of one of the world’s ship-registration companies.
Iran’s Regime and Venezuela Are the Largest Users of Shadow-Fleet Oil Tankers
According to AFP, foreign shipowners can, without ever setting foot in this tiny palm-covered nation, pay fees to “Maritime Cook Islands,” the Cook Islands maritime authority, to operate their vessels under its flag.
U.S. sanctions data identified twenty tankers registered in the Cook Islands suspected of smuggling fuel for Russia and Iran between 2024 and 2025.
Another fourteen tankers flying the Cook Islands flag were also blacklisted in a separate UK sanctions database for the same period.
New Zealand—historically the Cook Islands’ closest diplomatic partner—responded to the report by stating that undermining sanctions-related efforts is “concerning and infuriating.”
A spokesperson for Winston Peters, New Zealand’s foreign minister, whose country maintains close ties with the Cook Islands through a “free-association” pact, said this is a completely unacceptable and indefensible divergence in foreign policy.
According to him, New Zealand has repeatedly conveyed its serious concerns over the Cook Islands’ ship-registry management in recent years.
The Cook Islands Maritime Authority, responsible for ship registration, denied any failure in due diligence or sheltering sanctioned vessels and said any such ships would be removed from its registry.
In recent years, multiple reports have documented global networks of shell companies used to help Iran evade international oil sanctions.
In one example, the Financial Times, in August, identified an Iranian broker named Saeed Alikhani and presented a new picture of the illicit oil-transfer network moving sanctioned Iranian, Russian, and Venezuelan crude to China.
According to that report, thirty tankers moved at least 130 million barrels of oil—worth roughly 9.6 billion dollars—over about six years.
The shadow fleet
Western sanctions aim to limit revenue from Iranian and Russian oil sales in order to reduce funding for Iran’s regime’s nuclear program and for Russia’s war in Ukraine.
With the start of Donald Trump’s second presidential term, a new phase of the U.S. “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran’s regime began. One-third of U.S. sanctions target Iran’s shipping sector.
A shipping company based in the United Arab Emirates was accused in April of smuggling “millions of dollars” worth of fuel on behalf of Iran’s regime military in the Persian Gulf.
The company owned tankers flying the flags of Barbados, Gambia, Panama, and the Cook Islands.
These vessels are said to be components of the maritime smuggling network known as the “shadow fleet,” which evades sanctions by posing as cargo ships engaged in legitimate missions.
They hide their trail by registering in countries such as the Cook Islands, where regulatory scrutiny is far lighter. Most registries remain unaware of the vessels’ true purpose.
Many maritime registries, including that of the Cook Islands, do not publicly disclose their fees or revenues, but AFP estimated that a 30-thousand-ton tanker may pay around 10,000 dollars in registration fees.
Cook Islands budget documents show that government revenue from maritime fees has grown by more than 400% over the past five years, reaching roughly 175,000 dollars in the most recent fiscal year.
