Pole Star’s Regulatory Technology PurpleTRAC Incorporates Draught Change Notifications for Comprehensive Risk Management.
Pole Star is pleased to announce that our award-winning sanctions screening & vessel monitoring solution, PurpleTRAC, now includes draught change notifications for enhanced vessel activity awareness.
This new feature is part of a series of new functionalities within PurpleTRAC, providing users with the most comprehensive risk analysis of their associated vessels in a single point solution.
How can draught change notifications bolster vessel investigations?
Draught refers to the vertical distance between the surface of the water and the lowest point of a vessel. A draught change indicates that cargo has been loaded or offloaded onto the vessel- if this occurs during a period of non-reporting, this is likely to pose a substantial red flag to entities engaged with the vessel, such as financing banks, ship operators or ship owners.
Take for example a vessel that goes dark in an anchorage area off the coast of Venezuela. Prior to going dark, it’s draught was 8.6 metres, but 18 hours later, the vessel begins transmitting AIS again and is moving east across the Atlantic ocean. It’s draught is now 13.1 metres, indicating that, during the time the vessel went dark, something was loaded onto the vessel.
The vessel continues to the South China Sea and goes dark again. It then resurfaces a few days later in Dalian, China, with a draught of 8.6 metres. The AIS gap, combined with the draught change and the proximity of Dalian to North Korea, pose a significant red flag for those associated with the vessel. It highlights the possibility that the vessel onboarded crude oil in Venezuela, then proceeded to offload it in North Korea.
Why is this important for those engaged in maritime trade?
A year on from the release of OFAC’s advisory targeting the maritime industry, it is common knowledge that nobody engaged in maritime trade is shielded from sanctions. However, while knowing a vessel’s movement history is crucial, the importance of screening the entire ecosystem and circumstances surrounding a vessel is often understated.
Ensuring that a ship is where it’s supposed to be and only engaging with actors that it is legally allowed to, is essential in underpinning sanctions compliance processes.
“The implementation of our draught change notification feature enables a further layer of investigation into vessel activity. Crucially, it bolsters PurpleTRAC’s ability to filter out the needles in the haystack and present them in a rapid, simple format to our clients, enabling them to fully evaluate some of the most important pieces of the sanctions compliance puzzle. By using tangible, high-quality data from our industry leading partners, PurpleTRAC continues to provide a one-stop solution aggregating data and providing a truly tailored risk management solution”. Simon Ring, Global Head of Financial Markets Compliance, Pole Star.
PurpleTRAC: Automating Proactive Compliance Processes for Customised Risk Management
Within PurpleTRAC, the holistic risk assessment of a ship entails the screening of its associated ownership and management against country and sanctions lists using best-in-class data from our alliance partners, Dow Jones Risk and Compliance.
This includes screening against:
- Company Global Sanctions list: Screens ship’s ownership & management against a comprehensive range of sanctions and regulatory watchlists.
- Country Sanctions: Screens the ship’s flag and the ship’s ownership and management countries of registration, domicile and control against country sanctions and regulatory watchlists.
- Ship Global Sanctions list: Screens the entire commercial history of the ship through the IMO number against sanctions and advisory watchlists.
- Ship movement history check: Captures current and historical ship movement up to 12 months and alerts of any high risk port calls.
Moreover, PurpleTRAC uses patented persistent tracking technology, providing the highest level of certainty possible in a commercially available solution regarding where a vessel is.
Our persistent hybrid tracking combines two data services: Inmarsat, and AIS (both terrestrial and satellite) to effectively overcome AIS information loss and dark ship false positives to provide vessel location with absolute certainty, in real-time. This combination allows for accurate ship location data to be determined even when AIS data is unavailable.
The solution provides tracking redundancy and allows for the elimination of what at times can be a significant level of dark ship false-positives occurring with the use of AIS alone.
Working with Pole Star as your specialist technology partner will provide users with the highest possible level of risk and situational awareness for all those with exposures to maritime trade.
Find out more by getting in touch via sales@polestarglobal.com
