Mark Whiteside: RNZAF No. 5 Squadron Commanding Officer on the reported breaches of UNSC sanctions against North Korea

The Royal New Zealand Air Force has reported observing breaches of UNSC sanctions against North Korea during patrol missions.

The P-8A Poseidon flew 11 missions to detect and deter evasions of UN during April and May - and allegations of illegal ship-to-ship transfers have surfaced.

RNZAF No. 5 Squadron Commanding Officer Mark Whiteside says they detected multiple transfers that could potentially contain banned goods, such as oil or coal. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The New Zealand Air Force reckons it's seen evidence of
the UN sanctions against North Korea being breached. An Air
Force PSIDON flew eleven patrols to monitor those UN sanctions. Recently,
reckons it witnessed ship to ship transfers potentially of banned
goods like oil and coal. Now Wing Commander Mark Whiteside
was the commanding officers of this mission, high Mark hi, Ever,

(00:21):
how many times did you guys see this happen?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
So we patrolled on eleven separate occasions up into the region,
and on four occasions we did detect what we call
ship to ship transfers on the high Sea that could
be in support of evasion sanctions.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Could you see from all the way up there whether
it was oil or coal or whatever it was?

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yes, certainly. So we target in particular the commercial oiling
ships or any ships that carry refined petroleum, because that
is the sanctions that we're up there to detect. So
with our imagery will certainly be able to see if
two vessels are close together, it's very very obvious ones
they've rafted up on the high seat, and we'll get

(01:07):
close enough to take imagery and collect evidence to the
point that you can see the hoses between the two vessels,
so they're definitely transferring and refined controllum.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Right, okay, and so how long does the transfer take?

Speaker 2 (01:22):
I'm not Aaron a Surrey. We can say is that
as soon as that we've detected any type of transfer
and that activity is occurring, and we have to piece
together a whole lot of other information that is seen
the draft state of the vessels before and after to
see how much I gets deeper in the ocean they
sit versus before any transfers. So really it relies on

(01:42):
a whole lot of information rather than staying there and
observing the whole activity from start to finish.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
How do you know for sure that one of the
vessels is a North Korean vessel?

Speaker 2 (01:53):
There's many things we can do when we're connecting surveillance
to our team will look for what flag it is flying,
international maritime organization number, where it's registered, whether it's displaying this,
and whether that's different to what's registered. There's a whole
host of ways that people trying to evade sanctions behavior
that they will take that that is quite suspicious from

(02:16):
all of that and try and try and piece that together.
It's not so much, you know, looking for any one
particular piece of information.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
You say that that these vessels are avoiding or are
adopting all the players are adopting tactics to avoid being spotted.
I'm assuming that's things like flying perhaps an incorrect flag.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, yeah, that's correct. Then they can paint over their
original names, change their names many times. Does it changes ownership?
They can report in correct information on what's called AIS
or the automatic identification system that commercial ships are required
to transmit on, or they can completely turn that off,

(02:53):
which is against all kind of international law. Many different
other activities, including the the route are taking for navigation,
and the time of day and where they're going. All
sorts of that activity needs to be pieced together.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
Right, And which is the other ship? The other ship?
Where is it coming from?

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Many different places? So, and we'll keep looking for different
areas of interest or hotspots where we where we know
this happens. But it can come from from the south
of North Korea, it can come from the east. It's
it's wherever they can get it from.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
So what I'm meaning is, basically I'm trying to I'm
trying to ask you which is the country that's preaching
the sanctions.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Here's that's so that's hard for us to tell as
a maritime surveillance aircraft. There can be no flag at
all on some of these vessels. So that's why we
pass this information onto the Enforcement Coordination Cell that will
piece all that together and try and work on that
big picture.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
Right, what happens now with the information you have?

Speaker 2 (03:52):
So we pass all that information onto that Enforcement Coordination Cell,
which is a multi national organization that does piece together
every individual nation's kind of surveillance activities and tries to
put that big picture together. It's passed on and back
to the UN Security Council, which is the entity that
sets these resolutions in the first place, and then other

(04:13):
action can occur as well. If there is like a
flag state that's been identified, then they can pass that
information directly to that state to take their own action.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
If I'm assuming that the flag state is China, would
I be wrong?

Speaker 2 (04:28):
No? I can't. I honestly can't answer that one, because
we literally don't deal with the e SEC side of it.
We only deal with what we see out there, and
from what we saw, there were no flag states. They
hide themselves particularly well.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
Mark Thank you is fascinating stuff. Thanks for talking us
through it. That's Mark Whiteside Win Commander Mark's Whiteside, Royal
New Zealand Air Force.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
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