The owner of a tanker carrying Russian oil, arrested by Finland on suspicion of severing an undersea power line and four telecoms cables in the Baltic Sea, is seeking the vessel’s release, according to Euractiv.
Finnish police and coast guard officials boarded the Cook Islands-registered Eagle S on Thursday and took it to a location near a Finnish port, where crew members were being questioned.
Investigators said the Eagle S on December 25 tore the Estlink 2 undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia and severed or damaged four fibre-optic lines, dragging the anchor across the seabed.
Finland’s president last week said he believed more damage would have been done on the seabed if the vessel had not been stopped. The Finnish Customs Service stated that the Eagle S could have been part of a shadow fleet of aging tankers used to circumvent sanctions for selling Russian oil.
The owner of the Eagle S, UAE-based Caravella LLC FZ, filed a petition with the Helsinki District Court to cancel the arrest of the vessel on Monday.
However, a police spokesman said that the seizure of the vessel had been carried out in accordance with Finnish law and that the crew members had been informed of their rights. They had not been deprived of sleep as claimed by the lawyer, the police spokesman added.
The Baltic Sea states are on high alert after a series of disruptions of power cables, telecommunications lines and gas pipelines since the war in Ukraine broke out in 2022. Finnish lawyer Herman Ljungberg, who filed documents on behalf of the company, stated that “The Finns have hijacked a vessel.”
