Website of Company Running Ship Registry Closed Down
The website of the International Ship Registry of Cambodia (ISROC), a private company based in South Korea that bought the rights from the government to register foreign vessels under the Cambodian national flag for $6 million, is no longer operating. The shutdown means that foreign vessels now cannot be registered within 24 hours—as the ISROC company boasted last week—by simply filling in an online form that only asks for basic information such as the vessel’s name, gross tonnage and an email address of the owner. It was not known Monday if ship owners can still register their vessels through ISROC’s Busan-based office. Chhuon Molyroth, ISROC representative in Phnom Penh, as well as ISROC contacts in Busan, could not be reached for comment on the website shutdown Monday. Last week, the European Commission (E.C.) announced a proposed ban on all seafood imports—the first ever—from Cambodia as the government had failed to address illegal fishing by Cambodian-flagged vessels on the high seas. ... Seng Lim Neou, a former secretary of state at the Council of Ministers who is still in charge of a committee that works with ISROC, claimed last week that only six foreign vessels are flying Cambodia’s “Flag of Convenience,” though international ship registries showed that about 150 vessels were doing so. ... ISROC had bought the right to sell Cambodian flags in 2003, after its predecessor, the Cambodian Shipping Corp., was stripped of its authority following revelations that they had given the Cambodian flag to vessels complicit in trafficking arms from North Korea as well as drugs. ...
Denise Hruby
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/website-of-company-running-ship-registry-closed-down-48428/
