Bulker BAM Arion Sold at Auction in Rotterdam and the Crew Are Finally Paid
Seventeen seafarers who applied for the sale recover some €200,000 from a $9.4m hammer price
The bulk carrier BAM Arion was sold at judicial auction in Rotterdam on Friday for $9.4 million, some €8 million, ending an arrest that had held her in the Waalhaven since May and releasing about €200,000 in unpaid wages to her crew.
The auction was applied for by the seventeen seafarers on board. Under maritime law their wage claims rank first against the proceeds of the sale, ahead of the mortgagee and the trade creditors, which is what makes a crew-initiated judicial sale a usable remedy rather than a symbolic one. The new owner takes over responsibility for the vessel from Saturday, and the crew are to be relieved and sent home shortly.
She is one of four ships belonging to BAM Shipping, part of a Greek-controlled group operating under the Marshall Islands flag. The fleet was retrofitted last year in a programme in which a Dutch yard took part, and the financing behind that work was underwritten in part with Dutch state money.
Doubts over that support have since surfaced. In early July the Ministry of Finance disclosed that fraud was being investigated in fourteen files, and the Dutch fiscal investigation service confirmed searches in the Netherlands and Austria on the same day. Three suspects, one woman and two men, are no longer in custody.
The arrests followed the money. The yard moved first to attach the fleet, and the state credit insurer handling the case followed. Ships were chained up in Rotterdam, Sfax, Belfast and Denmark.
For the crew the wait ran from May. The credit insurer and the port authority stepped in to keep them supplied and to make sure families at home had something to live on while the case ran.
The sale itself drew unusual interest. Where a previous auction of comparable tonnage had attracted a single bidder, close to forty people took seats in an enlarged courtroom, and the bidding closed after two rounds at a level regarded as fair against market value. What becomes of the other three vessels is not yet known.
