The ammonium nitrate shipment that caused the cataclysmic Beirut port explosion was originally headed to the Syrian regime and was to be used for military purposes.
The company used to ship a huge stockpile of ammonium nitrate to Beirut port, where it caused the explosion on August 4, has been linked to three influential businessmen with ties to the Syrian president Bashar Assad, a new investigation has found, reported the Guardian on Friday.
The revelations about Savaro Ltd – a London shelf company that was deregistered at Companies House on Tuesday – have amplified suspicions that Beirut had always been the cargo’s intended destination, and not Mozambique, its official endpoint.
They also for the first time raise the possibility that the detonation of 2,750 tons of nitrate in Beirut may have been a byproduct of Syrian officials’ attempts to source nitrate to use in weapons, continued the Guardian.
An investigation by the Lebanese film-maker Firas Hatoum, which aired this week on local television network Al-Jadeed, drew links between Savaro and three figures who had been central to efforts to bolster Assad since the earliest months of the Syrian war.
George Haswani, Mudalal Khuri and his brother Imad are joint Russian-Syrian citizens who have all been sanctioned by the United States for supporting the Syrian leader’s war effort. Companies linked to Haswani and Imad Khuri shared a London address with Savaro, which bought the nitrate in 2013. The official destination of the cargo was Mozambique, but it was diverted to and unloaded in Beirut, where it was stored unsafely until the catastrophic blast.
Mudalal Khuri was accused by the US Treasury of attempting to source ammonium nitrate months before the Russian freighter Rhosus docked in the Lebanese capital midway through a winding voyage from Georgia. The ship’s change of route, its opaque ownership and the mysterious provenance of the cargo’s suppliers had fueled suspicion that Beirut had been the intended destination of a sophisticated smuggling operation from the outset.
The Savaro address – 10 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3BQ – was also the registered address of Hesco Engineering and Construction, which was directed by Haswani, a go-to businessman for Assad who was also sanctioned by the US in 2015 for allegedly buying oil from the ISIS terror group on behalf of the Syrian government.
According to documents supplied by Hatoum, another of Savaro’s London addresses is linked to a second company tied to Haswani’s Hesco now defunct company, IK Petroleum, which was directed by Imad Khuri until 2016, said the Guardian.
Interpol this week issued red notices for three figures thought to be relevant to the probe: a Russian national, Igor Grechushkin, who is believed to be the owner of the MV Rhosus; another Russian, Borys Prokoshew, who was the ship’s captain at the time; and Jorge Moreira, who is Portuguese. He allegedly sourced the ammonium nitrate from a Georgian factory, Rustavi Azot. Why a shelf company was used to broker the deal with the Mozambique firm Fábrica de Explosivos de Mocambique is central to inquiries. The firm is linked to the Assads.
Last week, head of Lebanon’s Progressive Socialist Party, Walid Jumblatt, said that the shipment was headed to Syria where the nitrate would be used in its war effort.
The shipment, he noted, had arrived in 2014, at the height of the battle for Homs. The easiest way to send the shipment was through Beirut, he added, accusing the regime of bringing the stockpile to Lebanon.
“I call for the continuation of the investigation to uncover the purpose of the nitrate. It’s important to establish whether it could be destined for the Syrian regime. It must keep going and not be waylaid,” he stressed.
In December, the judge investigating the explosion charged caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab and three former ministers with negligence over the blast that killed 200 people and devastated swathes of the capital.
