Operational · 2026 / Banks & Insurers · Sanctions intelligence

Spot the ships
that don't want
to be seen.

ShadowFleet is the sanctions-risk layer for oil-trade finance. Real-time vessel intelligence cross-checking satellite, AIS and ground systems — so banks and insurers can clear a transaction, or kill it, in seconds.

Max OFAC penalty
$1.3B
per transaction
Vessels tracked
62,418
live, 24/7
Check latency
2.1s
P95 response
Clear Watch OFAC risk AIS gap zone 14:32:08 UTC
Global · Oil & products tankers · 18 active Last scan · 04m ago
The problem

Banks financing oil trade face existential regulatory risk.

Shadow-fleet vessels switch off their AIS, run STS transfers on the high seas, and rotate flags every few weeks. Every payment a bank processes against that cargo is a potential billion-dollar penalty.

There is no real-time, predictive monitoring of the grey fleet. So banks process. And pray.

01 · Oil
~$100 B / yr
in oil financed through opaque, sanctions-exposed flows annually.
02 · Sanctions evasion
Millions / case
in penalties per OFAC enforcement against a single financial institution.
03 · Environmental disasters
$1–10 B / event
cost range of a single shadow-fleet oil spill, before regulatory fallout.
04 · Human safety
N/A
priceless and impossible to estimate — uninsured crews, unregistered hulls.
05 · Military intervention
Costly
state-level interdictions and escort costs — borne by taxpayers.
One mistake A single misprocessed transaction can trigger an OFAC penalty of up to $1.3B. Today, the only line of defence is a compliance officer with a spreadsheet.
How it works

We see what one system alone can't.

ShadowFleet cross-checks two independent observation stacks — satellite and ground — and surfaces every disagreement. The disagreements are where the dark fleet lives.

S Satellite system

What the sky reports

SAR imagery, optical passes and space-based AIS receivers, merged into a single positional truth refreshed every few minutes. Spoofed AIS positions show up as a ship that “isn't there.”

SAR: VESSEL DETECTED
G Ground system

What the coast reports

Coastal AIS receivers, port-call records, customs declarations, cargo manifests and known sanctions registers — what every ground-based observer thinks the ship is doing.

AIS: 27.5°N · LADEN AIS: SILENT
Δ The delta

Where the systems disagree, the shadow fleet lives.

Every vessel is scored on its signal coherence — the gap between what the satellites see, what the ground reports, and what the AIS broadcasts about itself. Anomalies bubble up as a red flag, before a bank ever touches the payment.

RISK CLEAR FLAG FLAG CHANGE STS DETECTED AIS GAP SANCTIONS HIT Vessel history · 24 months
01 · COMPLIANCE
Protection against fines

Green or red, in seconds. Type the IMO. Get a verdict. One mistake without our tool = a fine of up to $1.3B. Compliance officers stop guessing.

02 · AUDIT TRAIL
Proof of due diligence

Every check generates a cryptographically signed PDF with the ship's full history. The bank has hard evidence it acted in accordance with the law.

03 · LATENCY
Speed without compromise

Banks process hundreds of transactions a day. ShadowFleet runs at 2.1s P95 — fast enough to live inside your payment flow, not beside it.

04 · INSURERS
Protection for insurers

We surface every STS transfer, AIS gap and suspicious drift in a vessel's history — so P&I clubs can price the risk they're underwriting, or decline it.

Live · Try it

Type an IMO. Get a verdict.

This is the same compliance-officer view we ship to banks. Try the sample IMOs to see a clean vessel, a vessel on watch, and a confirmed OFAC hit.

Coverage
62,418 vessels
Refresh
Every 4 minutes
P95 latency
2.1 seconds
Audit trail
Signed PDF per check
Integrations
REST · webhook · CSV
SLA
99.95% uptime
ShadowFleet · Compliance Checkv2.4 · LIVE
Vessel IMO number
IMO 9588011 · KAPITAN VOLKOV
Yellow — manual review required
Anomalous activity within 14 days · risk indicators present
Type
Crude Oil Tanker, Suezmax
Flag
Cook Islands
DWT · Built
158,400 · 2008
P&I insurer
Unknown — non-IG declarant
AIS gap (90d)
2.4d
STS transfers (90d)
1
Flag changes (24m)
1
Owner / UBO
Sunmar Shipping Co. (BVI)
Risk events · last 12 months
2026-05-15
Loitering 18nm off Burgas · speed 0.2kn · 9h
2026-05-13
AIS gap · 2d 09h · Black Sea, 43.8°N 29.8°E
2026-05-09
STS rendezvous with KOTI (IMO 9302100) detected by SAR
2026-04-22
Reflagged from Liberia → Cook Islands
2026-03-12
Sold to Sunmar Shipping Co. (BVI)
Report generated · 2026-05-16 14:32 UTCDownload PDF →
Markets

Three financial centres.
One regulatory blind spot.

Our clients — banks, commodity funds and P&I insurers — are concentrated in three hubs, all routing payments against the same oil trade lanes. We're going where the regulatory pressure is highest first.

Target market · banks & insurers · oil & products trade finance
New YorkNY · CT · TXLondonUK · CH · DE · NLSingaporeSG · HK · JP · AE
NY · CT · TX
New York
11 target banks · $1.4T AUM
UK · CH · DE · NL
London
18 target banks · $2.1T AUM
SG · HK · JP · AE
Singapore
14 target banks · $1.8T AUM
Book a pilot

30-day pilot.
Your real transactions. Zero penalties.

Plug ShadowFleet into your compliance flow for 30 days, on your real transaction volume. If we don't catch at least three sanctions-exposed transactions you would have processed — you don't pay.

hello@shadowfleet · Warsaw · Gdańsk

Cooperation model

SaaS subscription PLN 25–35k / month
Onboarding 2 weeks · keyed to your KYC stack
Team training Monthly · included
SLA 99.95% · 24/7 ops
Dedicated CS Yes

Who it's for

Foreign-trade banks Primary
Commodity funds Primary
P&I insurers Primary
Military (dual use) Pilot Q3 2026