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Summary: - Grechushkin (Russian) was transporting ammonium nitrate from Georgia to Mozambique - Grechushkin Ordered a last minute stop in Beirut to pick up ad
by thinkloop 6y ago
Summary:
- Grechushkin (Russian) was transporting ammonium nitrate from Georgia to Mozambique
- Grechushkin Ordered a last minute stop in Beirut to pick up additional cargo in the form of trucks, but the plan was abandoned when the first loaded truck almost broke the deck
- Lebanese officials then detained the ship for safety reasons
- Grechushkin declared bankruptcy and disappeared and the ship was impounded
- The ammonium nitrate was moved to a warehouse at the port and the ship eventually sank behind a breakwater, where its wreckage remains
- 4 years of complicated secrecy, corruption, shell companies, and “flags of convenience” involving Cypriot shipping magnate Manoli, the Portuguese illicit arms trafficking Vieira family, the Mozambique ruling elite, and Ukranian middle-man company Savaro, stymied solutions
- Lebanon then tried to offload the material to several organization including the Lebanese army and a local explosives manufacturer but they refused
- Lebanon then tried to return the cargo to Georgia but did not for unknown reasons
- On July 20, 2020, two weeks prior to the explosion, Lebanese security services warned the president that there were serious flaws with the storage of the ammonium nitrate
Then disaster.
- iso8859-1 6y agoTo me, the biggest revelation is that Grechushkin wasn't the owner. If you lease a vessel, it should be seaworthy. Manoli was the owner, how could he provide a broken ship? So the attention on Grechushkin is exaggerated.
- Uberphallus 6y agoBecause his own (other) company certified it seaworthy. It's almost as if you can create companies according to the corner you want to cut.
- rebuilder 6y agoThe "then disaster" part maybe could be fleshed out a bit more - from other reporting, it seems the proximate cause of the explosion was that they had a welding crew fixing the security problems, namely a missing door, and they accidentally set off fireworks also stored in the same warehouse (!). So ironically, it seems that it was the attempt to secure the stuff that ultimately caused the disaster.