NCRI – A court in Europe imposed a heavy embargo against the National Iranian Oil Tanker Company (NITC) that is non-cancellable for 30 years and even includes its shareholders such as Social Security Investment Company (Shasta) and Oil Pension Fund, a government website reported on Tuesday October 18.
According to the state-run Fars news agency, the court in the European Union notified the NITC about the heavy embargo sentence in a 27-page bill according to which no court in Europe has the right to terminate or cancel the sentence for 30 years.
Based on the court ruling, European insurance companies are not allowed to insure Iranian oil tankers hereinafter. The most important part of the European Court ruling is the sanctioning of NITC’s shareholders such as SSIC (or Shasta), Oil Pension Fund and National Pension Fund.
According to the report, earlier a court in Europe issued an order to lift the sanctions on NITC and the new European court’s ruling is considered a breach of the previous decision by the EU courts.
One of the most important sanctions against Iranian regime in the past years has been the sanctioning of Iranian oil tankers and their insurance which has created a lot of problems for the movement of the tankers and berthing in ports around the world.
In the media the sanctions on NITC have always been considered as part of the embargo on Iranian oil. The NITC was sanctioned on 15 October 2012 by the European Union. However, following the actions taken by the NITC through its lawyers, Luxembourg court issued a warrant on 3 July 2014 for lifting the sanctions against NITC.
Ali Akbar Safai, Managing Director of the NITC, exactly two years ago in October 2014 after the announcement of definite lifting of sanctions on Iran’s National Oil Tanker Company by the European Union, in response to Fars news agency said: “We have two types of sanctions imposed on us and the first type is general sanctions which persist now. So, in the current situation we cannot use international insurances.”