March 31 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Vice President of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Nguema Obiang, known as ‘Teodorín’, has reported the suspension of more than 300 fishing boats for fraudulently using the country’s flag.
‘Teodorín’, son of the Equatoguinean president, Teodoro Obiang, has pointed out that of the 368 vessels that fish under the country’s flag, only twenty of them are registered with the Ministry of Transport and the International Maritime Organization (IMO). “The rest have been suspended for fraud”, he has settled.
“The next step is to create control policies and contract acquisition for the legal use of our flag,” added the vice president of the African country on his Twitter account.
This is not the first time that Equatorial Guinea has sanctioned vessels for these same reasons, as in April 2022, the authorities suspended the licenses of nearly 400 vessels for illegally sailing under their flag.
On April 16, the ship ‘Xelo’, with the flag of Equatorial Guinea, sank off the coast of Tunisia when it was transporting a thousand tons of fuel from Egypt to Malta, due to bad weather conditions.
However, Equatorial Guinea filed a lawsuit against the ship’s owners, considering that the circumstances of the sinking are not clear.
