An official at a Turkey-based grains trading company denied on Friday that barley and flour aboard a ship docked in a Lebanese port had been stolen from Ukraine, saying the source of the flour was Russia.
Earlier the Ukrainian Embassy in Beirut told Reuters that the Syrian ship under U.S. sanctions had docked in the northern Lebanese port of Tripoli carrying barley had been plundered by Russia from Ukrainian stores.
The Laodicea docked in Tripoli on Wednesday, according to the shipping data website MarineTraffic.
"The ship has traveled from a Crimean port close to international shipping, carrying 5,000 tons of barley and 5,000 tons of flour that we suspect was taken from Ukrainian stores," the embassy told Reuters.
"This is the first time a shipment of stolen grains and flour reaches Lebanon," the statement said.
The official at Loyal Agro Co. LTD., who declined to be identified, told Reuters that the company had sought to import 5,000 tons of the flour on the ship to Lebanon to sell to private buyers, not the Lebanese government.
Reuters could not immediately reach Lebanese government officials for comment.
The Russian Embassy in Beirut said it had "no information regarding the Syrian vessel or a cargo brought to Lebanon by a private company."
Russia has previously denied the allegations that it has stolen Ukrainian grain.
Ukrainian Ambassador Ihor Ostash met Lebanese President Michel Aoun on Thursday to discuss the shipment, telling him that purchasing stolen Ukrainian goods would "harm bilateral ties" between Kyiv and Beirut, the embassy told Reuters.
A Lebanese official confirmed that the issue had been raised during a Thursday meeting with Aoun and noted Ukraine's general concerns that Russia might try selling stolen Ukrainian wheat to a host of countries, including Lebanon.
Lebanon's Economy Minister Amin Salam told Reuters that the country's customs authority and its agriculture ministry were following up on the issue.
Salam had said earlier on Thursday that severe bread shortages in Lebanon would be eased this week by new wheat imports, but did not say where they were coming from.
The agriculture minister, the head of customs and the head of Tripoli port did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
"We are checking the accuracy of the information that has been mentioned in the media, and we have laws and we resort to Lebanese law," Lebanon's Transport Minister Ali Hamie told Reuters.
The company official said the cargo had not been offloaded and Lebanese customs had not yet granted an import license as customs was in the process of investigating Ukrainian assertions that Russia had stolen the flour from Ukraine following Moscow's invasion of the country.
The official said the company had provided Lebanese customs with documentation showing the source of the cargo was legitimate.
They declined to provide the documents to Reuters.
A customs official and shipping source told Reuters on Thursday that the Tripoli port had not offloaded the ship due to suspicions it was carrying stolen goods.
"Nothing was taken off of the ship – as soon as we got the information, we stopped everything," the customs official said.
The company official said that the cargo, some 8,000 tons of flour and 1,700 tons of barley in total, had initially been destined for Syria but the company decided to offload 5,000 tons of flour in Lebanon amid bread shortages tied to a three-year economic crisis.
The remaining cargo was set to be offloaded at a Syrian port, they said.
The official said the flour could be sold for between $620 to $650 per ton in Lebanon, whereas a ton would fetch $600 in Syria.
The Laodicea is one of a trio of ships owned by the Syrian port authority that Ukraine says have been transporting wheat plundered from stores in Ukrainian territory recently overtaken by Russia.
The United States had sanctioned all three ships since 2015.
When asked about the Laodicea's docking in Tripoli, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said he could not comment on the specific vessel but said he could "confirm the fact that the Russians have pilfered grain belonging to Ukraine" in general.
The Laodicea's arrival coincides with a new round of severe bread shortages across Lebanon, where a three-year economic crisis has slowed imports of subsidized wheat.
Bakeries were inundated this week with frustrated crowds in a country where about half the population is food insecure, according to the World Food Programme.
Lebanon used to import about 60% of its wheat from Ukraine, but those shipments have been disrupted by Russia's invasion and blockade of the main Black Sea ports that Ukraine once exported.
Ukraine had resumed legal exports of wheat to Lebanon in mid-July, according to the Ukrainian Embassy and the head of Lebanon's mills association.
