A day after the Millionaire’s MMSI changed, the Lady Rasha left Libya and arrived in Syria on October 26, the Tartous port authority said, where it unloaded cattle and crates, the contents of which the Syrian port authority said were not known.

The Lady Rasha is owned by ISM Group, according to the Syrian port authority at Tartous, a firm that came under the spotlight after Lebanon seized one of its ships with three containers filled with weapons earlier this year, including explosives with labels indicating their origin as Libya.

The port authority at Tartous confirmed the Lady Rasha had called there and the Millionaire had not, but a senior NITC official denied the Iranian tanker had sent out signals that belonged to another ship.

“It is not possible practically to do this,” the NITC official said, declining further comment.

The Lady Rasha’s owners could not be reached for comment, while the agency that registered the vessel with Tanzania said it was unaware of the duplicate signals.

“We have no idea and we cannot justify why they are emitting the same satellite signals,” said Jocelyn Acosta, director of operations at registering agency Philtex Corporation.

Acosta said Philtex cooperated with requests made by United States government agencies and others to identify a ship’s owner and had deregistered a number of vessels accordingly.

TANZANIA UNDER SCRUTINY

In a similar example of Tanzania-registered ships confusing satellite systems, the track left by the cargo ship Talavera became mixed up with NITC oil tanker Pioneer.