When a red-decked cargo vessel was spotted earlier this year loading grain at a Russian-occupied port in Ukraine, few realized that the ship’s story stretched far beyond the Black Sea. What seemed like another case of sanctions-busting maritime trade has now unraveled into a complex web of secret deals, offshore companies, and political corruption that ties directly to the crumbling remnants of Bashar al-Assad’s fallen regime in Syria.

At the center of this intrigue are three Syrian cargo ships – the Finikia, the Laodicea, and the Souria – vessels once proudly owned by the Syrian state but now accused of smuggling Ukrainian grain stolen from territories occupied by Russia. Investigations by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and its Syrian partner SIRAJ have revealed that the ships’ ownership was quietly transferred to a shadowy Seychelles-based company, AlHouda Holding, in a set of deals that appear designed to hide their true beneficiaries and circumvent international sanctions.

On the surface, these transactions looked like legitimate privatizations. But closer examination shows they were part of a much larger pattern of asset stripping, manipulation, and secrecy that characterized the final years of Assad’s rule – and continues to echo through global shipping lanes long after his ouster.

The Syrian General Authority for Maritime Transport, a government agency that once oversaw the country’s merchant fleet, sold the Finikia and the Souria to AlHouda Holding in April 2023 for the token price of just one US dollar each. Around the same time, the Laodicea – another ship of the same class – was transferred under similar circumstances.

In the world of maritime trade, where large cargo freighters are typically worth millions of dollars, such symbolic pricing immediately raised suspicions. Documents obtained by OCCRP and SIRAJ show that the man who signed the sale contracts for AlHouda Holding was a Syrian businessman named Ali Mohamed Deeb, whose business interests were deeply entwined with Assad’s patronage networks.

According to sanctions specialist Vittorio Maresca di Serracapriola, the transactions bore all the hallmarks of a deliberate scheme to move state assets beyond the reach of future investigations or sanctions. “Selling multi-million-dollar vessels for $1 is not just symbolic – it’s a way to erase them from public balance sheets while keeping control within the same elite circle,” he explained. “This is a textbook case of how the Assad regime privatized the state for its own survival.”

Deeb’s involvement turned out to be a critical........

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