The location of the superyacht Equanimity is available to anyone with access to an internet search engine and 30 minutes to spare, argued Naeun Rim, the lawyer representing the vessel's claimants.
Rim insisted that contrary to the allegations of the US Department of Justice's (DOJ), the crew of the Equanimity had not switched off the Automatic Identification System (AIS) to hide its location from the US government and evade seizure.
Instead, the data had always been publicly available, she said in a court filing lodged at the California Central District Court yesterday, which was sighted by Malaysiakini.
Rim claimed that the US government was seeking to distract the court from the seizure itself, by raising a “strawman argument” that the Equanimity’s claimants would somehow “abscond with a 3000-ton yacht whose position is known and always has been known to the government and to anyone on the planet willing to spend 30 minutes on Google”.
'Yacht locatable via AIS system'
In support of her filing, Rim also filed a declaration by Wilson Yacht Management Group (WYM) managing director Allan Wilson and 64 pages of Equanimity’s location data that was downloaded from the ship-tracking service MarineTraffic.com.
The exhibit provides the vessel's speed, course and location as recorded by terrestrial AIS receivers for the period from Dec 28 last year to March 28.
A map of its location (photo) over the same period was also provided as a separate exhibit. It showed the Equanimity circumnavigating the Komodo National Park in East Nusa Tenggara, before heading to Bali where it was ultimately seized by Indonesian authorities on Feb 28 and handed over to the FBI.
Wilson, whose company manages the Equanimity, said the exhibits show that the Equanimity’s AIS system had reported the vessel's exact location nearly 3,000 times over the 90-day period, and is publicly available from MarineTraffic.com.
He said MarineTraffic.com has also been asked to provide the Equanimity's entire location since June 2017, but the data has yet to be received.
"To the extent that the government is claiming or implying that it was unable to locate the Equanimity via the AIS system prior to February 2018, that claim or implication is untrue.
"The Equanimity was locatable via the AIS system in Indonesia since at least Dec 28, 2017, if not earlier," Wilson said.
He explained that AIS has a range of only about 60 miles (about 97 kilometres) from the coastline, and thus would not report the yacht's location to shore-based receivers even if it is turned on.
For the record, satellite-based AIS receivers also exist and MarineTraffic.com offers satellite AIS tracking as a premium service.
Other options to find Equanimity
Meanwhile, Wilson said the US government could have simply asked his Florida-based company on the Equanimity's whereabouts even if the information is not publicly available.
"As the company responsible for the operation of the vessel under the International Safety Management Code, WYM would have disclosed the yacht’s location to the government upon request. The government never asked WYM for the yacht’s location," he said.
Alternatively, he said, the US government could have also asked the Cayman Islands government for the Equanimity's whereabouts since it is a Cayman Islands-flagged vessel.
This is because the flag state can track Equanimity's location via the satellite-based Long Range Identification and Tracking system (LRIT), regardless of where the vessel is located.
"If the LRIT system is not functioning properly, the yacht’s flag state will notify the yacht’s management and ask for an explanation. The Equanimity’s flag state is the Cayman Islands. Since assuming responsibility for the yacht’s operation in September 2017, WYM has not ever received any notification from Cayman Islands authorities about any malfunction or technical issues with the yacht’s LRIT system.
"To my knowledge and understanding, nothing prevented the government from asking Cayman Islands authorities for information about the Equanimity’s location based on the LRIT data that the yacht has been consistently and regularly broadcasting to those authorities since WYM assumed responsibility for the yacht’s operation," he said.
The DOJ is currently seeking to bring the Equanimity to the US for sale.
It claims that the superyacht was bought by businessperson Low Taek Jho, using funds misappropriated from 1MDB and laundered through the US financial system, and is seizing it as part of a series of 1MDB-related civil forfeiture suits.
However, it claims that the crew of the Equanimity could not be trusted to bring the vessel to the US even under a court order, because they supposedly tried several methods of evading seizure.
The evasion of arrest purportedly entailed turning off the AIS even when in waters not at high risk of piracy, and avoiding territorial waters of countries deemed likely to cooperate in enforcing a US arrest warrant.
The claimants to the vessel - Equanimity (Cayman) Ltd, Equanimity Crew (Cayman) Ltd, Equanimity Lifestyle (Cayman) Ltd, and Equanimity Operations and Maintenance (Cayman) Ltd - are contesting the seizure of the ship and DOJ's move to take protective custody of it, both in Indonesian and US courts.
Low claims that the allegations against him are politically motivated, while 1MDB has said all its money is accounted for. -Mkini
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