SeaLead container ship makes third Strait of Hormuz crossing

The vessel Paya Lebar arrived in Jebel Ali on 29 May a month after it left the Gulf via the Strait

The Antigua-Barbuda flagged container ship Paya Lebar has made its third transit of the Strait of Hormuz in less than two months on 29 May according to ship tracking data from Pole Star Global.      The SeaLead Shipping operated and owned Paya Lebar entered the port of Jebel Ali on 27 May having been last tracked leaving Sohar, Oman five days earlier, and with its AIS transponder only turned on sporadically since it left Kandla, India on 15 May.         

This is the third crossing the container ship has made of the Strait of Hormuz despite the critical security situation in the waterway.            The Paya Lebar first transited westbound through the Strait of Hormuz westbound into the Gulf on 13 April having been at anchor in Nhava Sheva, India since late March. While in the Gulf the vessel called at Jebel Ali and Khalifa ports in the UAE and Hamad in Qatar.      The Paya Lebar then crossed the Strait of Hormuz eastbound on 28 April and headed back to Nhava Sheva and then moved to Kandla on 13 May.

Singapore-headquartered SeaLead was forced to offhire nearly a third of its fleet in mid-2025 when chartered in vessels were hit with Iran sanctions.          In July last year the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)  sanctioned 16 container ships the company had on charter over links with Iran. SeaLead acted to quickly terminate the charters on the 16 vessels and denied it had ties with Iran.     

However, in March this year the US Department of Justice filed civil forfeiture complaints seeking to seize $2.4 million in funds allegedly intended for Sea Lead Shipping Pte Ltd and its Indian subsidiary, as part of a broader action targeting more than $15.3 million tied to a sanctions-evasion network linked to Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani, the son of a senior adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader.