How Cook Islands-flagged ships became tied to Russian and Iranian oil trade – The Front Page

The Cook Islands’ flag has flown from more than a hundred oil tankers implicated in illicitly trading Russian and Iranian oil.

A special Herald investigation has revealed that it’s sparked alarm from foreign Governments, with New Zealand diplomats fielding concerns from Helsinki and London.

Our Foreign Minister Winston Peters has labelled the issue “alarming and infuriating”.

So, what is the link between the Baltic Sea and the Pacific? And how has this been allowed to happen?

NZ Herald business investigations reporter Matt Nippert told The Front Page that cars need licence plates to drive and ships need flags to sail.

“When you’re driving a car, particularly in New Zealand, you don’t tend to cross borders unless you’ve gone a long way out into the Tasman Sea,” Nippert said.

“Ships, by their very nature, are international vessels. They’ll start off in one country, in one port, and travel through the waters of many other countries, and end up somewhere else.

“If you’re on board a ship in international waters, the flag state’s laws apply. Flag states also have a crucial role in determining employment conditions for staff, the crew aboard the vessel, and also maintaining safety standards.

“So it’s a bit like a licence plate, and a WoF [warrant of fitness].”

Nippert was prompted to look deeper into murmurings of the Cook Islands fleet growing when a crude oil tanker, dubbed the Eagle S dragged its anchor over a submarine cable that shares power with Estonia on Christmas Day 2024.

“It cut a very important cable between Estonia and Finland. The vessel was arrested, and its crew was later prosecuted for sabotage.

“That really raised my eyebrows, because this is where these stories tend to move from the very niche shipping industry news pages. There had been an alarming series of reports about the size of the Cook Islands fleet by this point, but I hadn’t paid much attention to it.

“But the Eagle S became like an international diplomatic incident. My further reporting revealed that the authorities in Helsinki were calling up people in Wellington, saying, ‘Why is the realm of New Zealand involved in this sort of activity?’ And I think it was news to the Beehive,” he said.

Read the full Premium story to read more about this deep dive into what’s happening on the high seas.

Listen to the full episode to hear more about:

• Suspicious activities under Cook Island flags
• How the registry works and who gets the money
• Diplomatic fallout for New Zealand and the Cooks
• What happens next?

The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.

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