The island nation of Palau says a tanker that recently loaded Venezuelan crude was using a false signal to disguise its identity, potentially putting the Pacific country in the crosshairs of U.S. sanctions. Palau is asking Venezuela to investigate the vessel that claimed last month to be the Ndros. The Ndros was a Palau-flagged ship that was scrapped in Pakistan in 2018, and so couldn’t be the vessel that appeared in December off the coast of Venezuela, according to a letter dated Dec. 16 that the government of Palau shared with Bloomberg. “It appears that this vessel is claiming to be registered with the Palau International Ship Registry. This claim is false,” Palau’s ministry of state said in the note to Venezuela’s foreign affairs ministry. “It therefore appears that the vessel is using a falsified AIS signal in order to mask its true identity.” The letter was delivered to […]