WASHINGTON, United States (CMC) — The United States (US) 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 US on the high seas with a false Guyanese flag in December 2025.

The ship had about 1.8 million barrels of crude oil cargo supplied by Petróleos de Venezuela, SA (PdVSA), the state-owned oil company of Venezuela.

The DOJ said that, as alleged, the Skipper and its cargo are forfeitable as property affording a person a source of influence over the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including the IRGC-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), a designated foreign terrorist organisation.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, the era of secretly bankrolling regimes that pose clear threats to the United States is over,” said US 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.”

FBI Director Kash Patel said that this forfeiture complaint for the Skipper and its oil cargo “demonstrates the FBI’s unwavering commitment to enforcing US sanctions and thwarting hostile regimes who exploit the global oil trade”.

“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 US Attorney General A Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said today’s actions are an important step in making America and the world safer by disrupting the flow of millions of dollars to foreign terrorist organisations.

“The criminal division will continue to use every tool at our disposal to end to terrorist financing,” Duva said.

The DOJ said the forfeiture complaint alleges a scheme, between at least 2021 and the present, to facilitate the shipment and sale of petroleum products for the benefit of the IRGC, including the IRGC-QF.

During this time, the DOJ said the Skipper moved crude oil from Iran and Venezuela and, through ship-to-ship transfers, delivered it to various locations around the world, including to other “rogue regimes”.

Most recently, the DOJ said, in November 2025, the Skipper loaded about 1.8 million barrels of Venezuelan-origin crude oil at the José Terminal in Venezuela.

According to bills of lading, about 1.1 million barrels of the Skipper’s oil cargo were to be delivered to Cubametales, the Cuban state-run oil import and export company that was designated by OFAC in July 2019.

On December 10, 2025, the DOJ said the US law enforcement seized the Skipper on the high seas pursuant to a judicially authorized seizure warrant.

“At that time, the Skipper was claiming a false Guyanese flag, rendering it stateless,” said the DOJ.