The superyacht Equanimity, that US authorities allege had been bought with stolen 1MDB funds, had entered Malaysian territorial waters in November last year.

At the time, the ship was transiting through the Straits of Malacca while on the way from Phuket to Indonesia, before ultimately being detained in Benoa Bay, Bali, on Feb 28.

This is according to court filings lodged at the California Central District Court on April 9 by the vessel’s registered owners and operator, who are seeking to stave off the US Department of Justice’s (DOJ) attempts to obtain protective custody of Equanimity.

The latest filings include a declaration by Wilson Yacht Management Group’s managing director Allan Wilson, who furnished the court with logs of the ship’s location, as reported by its automatic identification system (AIS) since June 3, 2017.

Wilson Yacht Management is the company that manages the yacht Equanimity on behalf of its registered owner Equanimity (Cayman) Ltd. DOJ had alleged that the vessel is beneficially owned by the Penang-born tycoon Low Taek Jho.

Malaysiakini has sighted the documents and analysed a portion of the AIS data that pertain to its voyage from Phuket to Bali.

This was done by comparing the data to a 1970 treaty between Malaysia and Indonesia that delimited the territorial seas of the two countries in the narrowest portion of the Straits of Malacca.

The analysis is supplemented by information on maritime borders provided by the Flanders Marine Institute, which drew digital maps based on treaties and other legal documents it compiled.

Based on this information, Malaysiakini found that Equanimity had kept close to the Malaysia-Indonesia border during its transit in the Straits of Malacca, and had been on the Malaysian side of the border during parts of the voyage.

The first AIS data point available for that voyage is from 8.19pm, Nov 16, 2017. At the time, the ship was already in the Straits of Malacca and was about 44km southwest of Port Klang and within Indonesia’s territorial waters.

At about 1.24am on the following day, it began to enter Malaysian waters, but continued to travel along the border and sailed past Port Dickson at a distance, until it went back into Indonesian waters off the coast of Malacca at about 6.17am.

It kept sailing on both sides of that border until it reached the Singapore Straits near Tanjung Piai, where it kept on the Indonesian side of the Singapore-Indonesian border until it re-entered Malaysian waters near Pengerang, and then turned southeast towards Bali.

It arrived in Benoa Bay on Nov 20, 2017, about 10.50am (Malaysian time), but travelled to other parts of Indonesia before returning to the same spot, where it was eventually seized in a joint operation between the Indonesian police and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The US is now seeking the California court’s order for DOJ to take protective custody of the vessel to sail it to the US for sale, as part of its 1MDB-related civil forfeiture suits.

DOJ: Yacht's crew cannot be trusted

The DOJ told the court that the crew cannot be trusted to bring the vessel to the US even under court order, as they had purportedly sought to evade seizure by turning off its AIS, and by avoiding jurisdictions deemed likely to cooperate with US authorities.

Singapore had previously taken legal action against bankers involved in the 1MDB scandal and had reportedly impounded Low’s private jet at Seletar Airport in February last year. However, Singapore authorities had refused to confirm or deny the aircraft’s impoundment.

The latest court filings are a continuation of Equanimity Ltd’s legal battle against the DOJ, which includes more extensive AIS data than before.

While previous submissions only provided three months’ worth of AIS data collected from terrestrial receivers, the latest submission had data since 2016 and included data from both terrestrial and satellite-based receivers.

“Exhibit A (the AIS logs) reflects that the Equanimity broadcast its location over the AIS system many thousands of times during that time period (from June 3, 2017, to Jan 1, 2018), including in every single one of the months during that period.

“Attached as Exhibit B (a map) to this declaration is a visual depiction from Big Ocean Data, which shows the locations and path of the Equanimity from June 1, 2017, through March 28, 2018, as based on the yacht’s AIS data.

“The depiction in Exhibit B shows that the yacht was in and around the territorial waters of Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia during that period.

“This information was publicly available at all times to everyone with access to the Internet, including the (US) government,” Wilson argued.

For the record, 1MDB has denied that its money is missing, while Low has claimed that the allegations against him are politically motivated.

While the Indonesian authorities seized the Equanimity at the request of their US counterparts, Malaysia’s inspector-general of police Mohamad Fuzi Harun said that police here received no such request.

Apart from the Central California Court, Equanimity Ltd had also mounted a legal challenge against the vessel’s seizure in Indonesian courts, which is still pending.