The owners of The Emerald, the tanker believed to have spilled massive amounts of oil off the Israeli coast in February, have been identified, the Environmental Protection Ministry revealed Sunday.

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According to an independent investigation by the private intelligence agency Black Cube, the tanker – registered in the Marshall Islands – is owned by a company called Emerald Marine LTD.

The information provided by Black Cube indicates that the tanker is owned by Oryx Shipping and its address is registered in Piraeus, Greece.

The company is believed to be owned by the Malah family of Syria, whose ships are insured by the Islamic P&I Club, known as one of the only companies in the world willing to insure Iranian ships.

The information provided to Black Cube showed that the Malah Group owns a chain of straw companies in the Marshall Islands, Panama and even a British company, all of which are registered at the same address in Piraeus.

At the beginning of the month, Environmental Protection Minister Gila Gamliel said that a "pirate ship" owned by a Libyan company that departed from Iran had been responsible for the oil spill.

"We got our hands on the criminal ship," Gamliel said in a tweet, offering no further details.

This article was first published by i24NEWS.

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Responding to the emergency, President Donald Trump issued a major disaster declaration to provide federal assistance.

Two clusters of wildfires in the San Francisco Bay Area grew to become the second- and third-largest wildfires in recent state history by size.

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Just over two weeks later, the industrial chemicals exploded in a massive blast that obliterated most of the port, killed at least 163 people, injured 6,000 more, and destroyed some 6,000 buildings, according to municipal authorities.

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A report by the General Directorate of State Security about events leading up to the explosion included a reference to a private letter sent to President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister Hassan Diab on July 20.

While the content of the letter was not in the report seen by Reuters, a senior security official said it summed up the findings of a judicial investigation launched in January which concluded the chemicals needed to be secured immediately.

The state security report, which confirmed the correspondence to the president and the prime minister, has not previously been reported.

"There was a danger that this material, if stolen, could be used in a terrorist attack," the official said

"At the end of the investigation, Prosecutor General [Ghassan] Oweidat prepared a final report which was sent to the authorities," he said, referring to the letter sent to the prime minister and president by the General Directorate of State Security, which oversees port security.

"I warned them that this could destroy Beirut if it exploded," said the official, who was involved in writing the letter and declined to be named.

Video: Reuters

Reuters could not independently confirm his description of the letter.

The prime minister's office and the presidency did not respond to requests for comment about the July 20 letter.

The prosecutor general did not respond to requests for comment.

The correspondence could fuel further criticism and public fury that the blast is just the latest, if not most dramatic, example of the government negligence and corruption that has already pushed Lebanon to economic collapse.

As protests over the blast raged in Lebanon on Monday, Diab's government resigned, though it will remain as a caretaker administration until a new cabinet is formed.

The rebuilding of Beirut alone is expected to cost up to $15 billion, in a country already effectively bankrupt with total banking system losses exceeding $100 billion.

Aoun confirmed last week that he had been informed about the material. He told reporters he had directed the secretary general of the supreme defense council, an umbrella group of Lebanon's security and military agencies chaired by the president, to "do what is necessary."

"[The state security service] said it is dangerous. I am not responsible! I don't know where it was put and I didn't know how dangerous it was. I have no authority to deal with the port directly. There is a hierarchy and all those who knew should have known their duties to do the necessary," Aoun said.

Many questions remain over why the shipment of ammonium nitrate docked in Beirut in late 2013. Even more baffling is why such a huge stash of dangerous material, used in bombs and fertilizers, was allowed to remain there for so long.

The letter sent to Lebanon's president and prime minister followed a string of memos and letters sent to the country's courts over the previous six years by port, custom and security officials, repeatedly urging judges to order the removal of the ammonium nitrate from its position so close to the city center.

The report by the General Directorate of State Security, said many requests had been submitted, without giving an exact number. It said the port's manifest department sent several written requests to the customs directorate up until 2016 asking them to call on a judge to order the material be re-exported immediately.

"But until now, no decision has been issued over this matter. After consulting one of our chemical specialists, the expert confirmed that this material is dangerous and is used to produce explosives," the General Directorate of State Security report said.

The road to last week's tragedy began seven years ago, when the Rhosus, a Russian-chartered, Moldovan-flagged vessel carrying ammonium nitrate from Georgia to Mozambique, docked in Beirut to try to take on extra cargo to raise the fees for passage through the Suez Canal, according to the ship's captain.

Port authorities impounded the Rhosus on December 2013 by judicial order 2013/1031 due to outstanding debts owed to two companies that filed claims in Beirut courts, the state security report showed.

In May 2014, the ship was deemed unseaworthy and its cargo was unloaded in October 2014 and warehoused in what was known as Hangar 12. The ship sank near the port's breakwater on Feb. 18, 2018, the security report showed.

Moldova lists the owner of the ship as Panama-based Briarwood Corp. Briarwood could not immediately be reached for comment.

In February 2015, Nadim Zwain, a judge from the Summary Affairs Court, which deals with urgent issues, appointed an expert to inspect the cargo, according to the security report.

The report said the expert concluded that the material was hazardous and, through the port authorities, requested it be transferred to the army. The expert's account could not be independently confirmed.

Lebanese army command rejected the request and recommended the chemicals be transferred or sold to the privately-owned Lebanese Explosives Company, the state security report said.

The report did not say why the army had refused to accept the cargo. A security official said  it was because they didn't need it. The army declined to comment.

The explosive company's management stated that it had not been interested in purchasing confiscated material and that the firm had its own suppliers and government import licenses.

From then on, customs and security officials wrote to judges roughly every six months asking for the removal of the material, according to the requests seen by Reuters.

The Judges and customs officials contacted declined to comment.

A number of customs and port officials have since been detained as part of the investigation into the blast.

In January 2020, a judge launched an official investigation after it was discovered that Hangar 12 was unguarded, had a hole in its southern wall, and one of its doors dislodged, meaning the hazardous material was at risk of being stolen.

In his final report following the investigation, Prosecutor General Oweidat "gave orders immediately" to ensure hangar doors and holes were repaired and security provided, a second high-ranking security official who also requested anonymity said.

On June 4, based on those orders, state security instructed port authorities to provide guards at Hangar 12, appoint a director for the warehouse, secure all the doors, and repair the hole in the southern wall, according to  the report and security officials.

The port authorities did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

"The maintenance started and [port authorities] sent a team of Syrian workers [but] there was no one supervising them when they entered to fix the holes," the security official said.

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During the work, sparks from the welding took hold and fire started to spread, the official said.

"Given that there were fireworks stored in the same hangar, after an hour a big fire was set off by the fireworks and that spread to the material that exploded when the temperature exceeded 210 degrees," the high-ranking security official said.

The official blamed the port authorities for not supervising the repair crew and for storing fireworks alongside a vast deposit of high explosives.

Reuters could not determine what happened to the workers repairing the hangar.

"Only because the hangar faces the sea, the impact of the explosion was reduced. Otherwise all of Beirut would have been destroyed," he said. "The issue is all about negligence, irresponsibility, bad storage, and bad judgment."

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A record number of blazes are ravaging the rainforest, many of them thought to have been started deliberately in Brazil, drawing international concern because of the Amazon's importance to the global environment.

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"We will straightaway offer Amazonian countries that signal to us their needs, financial support of at least up to 20 million euros [$22 million]," said Macron, who is locked in a war of words with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Macron last week accused Bolsonaro of lying about his environmental commitments.

The Brazilian president hit back, accusing Western countries of interfering in his country's affairs and mocking the looks of the French leader's 66-year-old wife on Facebook.

"It's sad, it's sad first of all for him and for Brazilians," Macron said in response on Monday.

Standing alongside Chilean President Sebastián Piñera, who was invited to join the wealthy-nation leaders in the French seaside resort of Biarritz, Macron said G-7 countries were ready to provide concrete support to the region.

"France will do so with military support in the coming hours," he said, without giving further details.

The plan decided at the G-7 will be implemented in two stages, said Piñera. "Countries urgently need firefighters and specialized water bombers. This will be the first step that will be implemented immediately.

"The second phase is to protect these forests, protect the biodiversity they contain and reforest this region of the world," he added.

Macron added that the G-7, which comprises the United States, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Britain, and Canada, would draw up an initiative for the Amazon that will be launched at next month's UN General Assembly in New York.

Bolsonaro, a right-wing leader who wants to open the Amazon to more farming and mining, said on Twitter that Macron's initiative treated Brazil like "a colony or no-man's land" and an attack on its sovereignty.

US President Donald Trump was absent from the talks on climate change and biodiversity at a G-7 session on Monday, and Macron said he had been busy holding bilateral meetings.

"He wasn't in the room, but his team was," Macron said. "You shouldn't read anything into the American president's absence. … The US are with us on biodiversity and on the Amazon initiative."

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