Several vessels recently removed from Panama’s ship registry have since been reflagged to Sierra Leone and are still operating, NK News can reveal, in a possible breach of UN resolutions.

On February 18, the Panama Maritime Authority released a circular saying it had deleted 20 vessels from its registry because of their ties to North Korea.

While the document cited three possible reasons why vessels could be removed from the registry,  all 20 ships were deleted “as a result of investigations that have shown links to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”

Two of these, the Surplus Ocean 1 and the