In the dead of night, officers from Malaysia’s maritime agency boarded two tankers that were transferring millions of barrels of oil in the waters off Penang, as the re-emergence of ageing vessels from a shadow fleet in the country’s waters has put the spotlight on the illegal trade in Asia.
The January 29 bust was a rare disruption to a trade worth billions of dollars each year – much of it from sanctioned oil-producing nations Russia and Iran, and involving ships plying the waters in the…
