Mumbai-based Gatik Ship Management, which emerged as one of the largest transporters of Russian crude over the past year, has been busy transferring oil and fuel tankers managed by it to a web of seemingly related shipping companies, as per an analysis of changes in the mysterious shipper’s fleet records over the past few weeks.
According to shipping industry experts, this could just be a ploy by Gatik and its benefactors to distance the company’s name from the fleet in order to make tracking of the entire operation difficult, particularly following the attention the shipper has drawn globally for its prominent role in moving Russian crude.
