Russia’s Ghost Ships and the Evolution of a Grain Smuggling Operation - bellingcat

The Clotilda arrived in Mobile Bay in July of 1860, fifty-two years after the slave trade was declared illegal. Slave traders broke the law by importing captured Black people, either from Africa or the Caribbean, and secretly depositing the cargo at hidden locations along the Gulf Coast. It was a lucrative game of cat and mouse. With the Clotilda,

These days, things were more complicated. Border disputes often meant that delivering mail from polity A to nation B was impossible. So people contacted Les Coureurs, and the mail got through. Sometimes the mail consisted of people for whom the passage from polity A to nation B might otherwise be impossibly delicate. Sometimes it was items which na

• UK Limited Partnerships acted as intermediaries for over 17,000 imports into Russia between 24 February 2022 and 31 March 2023.


• None of these Partnerships have controlling partners or persons of significant control in the UK.

The tin probably came from the Badakhshan region of Afghanistan, one of the few places where it was available during the second millennium BC. The lapis lazuli on board came from the same area, traveling thousands of miles overland before being brought onto the ship.

But it was more complicated than this. Farmers who had never grown poppies began to plant them so they could get free maize seed in return for destroying the fields they had just planted.’