The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) says a complaint has been filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia seeking to forfeit the Motor Tanker Skipper, a crude oil tanker seized by the United States on the high seas in December 2025 while flying a false Guyana flag.
Authorities say the vessel was carrying approximately 1.8 million barrels of crude oil supplied by Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PdVSA), the state-owned oil company of Venezuela.
The DOJ said the tanker and its cargo are forfeitable because they allegedly provided a source of influence or support to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including the IRGC-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), which the United States has designated a foreign terrorist organization.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, the era of secretly bankrolling regimes that pose clear threats to the United States is over,” said U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “This Department of Justice will deploy every legal authority at our disposal to completely dismantle and permanently shutter any operation that defies our laws and fuels chaos across the globe.”
Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel said the case demonstrates the agency’s determination to enforce sanctions and disrupt networks linked to hostile governments.
“The FBI, working alongside our interagency partners, will continue aggressively identifying, disrupting and dismantling the financial networks used by our foreign adversaries to fund terrorist organisations and destabilise international security. We remain steadfast in safeguarding both the integrity of the international financial system and the security of the American people,” Patel said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney General A Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said the action represents an important step in cutting off millions of dollars in funding to terrorist organisations.
“The criminal division will continue to use every tool at our disposal to end to terrorist financing,” Duva said.
According to the DOJ, the forfeiture complaint alleges that since at least 2021, the Skipper was involved in a scheme to facilitate the shipment and sale of petroleum products for the benefit of the IRGC and its Qods Force.
During that time, officials say the tanker transported crude oil from both Iran and Venezuela and used ship-to-ship transfers to deliver the cargo to various locations around the world, including other governments viewed by the United States as adversarial.
In November 2025, the tanker reportedly loaded about 1.8 million barrels of Venezuelan-origin crude oil at the José Terminal in Venezuela. Bills of lading indicated that roughly 1.1 million barrels of that cargo were destined for Cubametales, Cuba’s state-run oil import and export company, which has been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury since 2019.
The DOJ said U.S. law enforcement seized the vessel on December 10, 2025, under a judicially authorised warrant while it was travelling in international waters.
“At that time, the Skipper was claiming a false Guyanese flag, rendering it stateless,” the department said.
Authorities say the vessel is now the subject of a civil forfeiture process, under which the U.S. government must prove in court that the ship and its cargo were involved in activities violating U.S. sanctions and counter-terrorism laws.
