A Swedish court has ordered the detention of the Russian captain of the tanker 'Sea Owl One', suspected of sailing under a false flag as part of Moscow's shadow fleet. The unnamed man appeared in court in Ystad after being arrested on Friday by the Swedish Prosecution Authority on suspicion of using forged documents.
Members of the coast guard boarded the tanker in Swedish waters, where it was sailing under a Comoran flag they believed might be bogus. The 228-meter tanker is on a list of vessels sanctioned by the European Union. Moscow has relied on a network of tankers with obscure ownership or insurance to evade Western sanctions on its oil exports.
The 'Sea Owl One' was traveling from Santos in Brazil to Primorsk on Russia's Baltic coast when it was intercepted. According to the Swedish coast guard, the tanker has transported oil between Russia and Brazil in recent years. The 55-year-old captain has been detained for a period of up to 14 days, with prosecutors stating they intend to question him further.
The Russian embassy in Sweden confirmed that 10 of the 24 sailors aboard the 'Sea Owl One', including the captain, are Russian, while the rest are from Indonesia. It said on Saturday that it is closely monitoring the situation. This marks the second time in a week that Swedish authorities have seized a vessel suspected of being part of Russia's shadow fleet.
Previously, on March 6, the coast guard took control of the Guinean-flagged cargo ship 'Caffa' on similar suspicions, as it sailed from Casablanca in Morocco to St. Petersburg. The vessel is suspected of carrying stolen Ukrainian grain and is now anchored off the Trelleborg coast. France has also seized several tankers thought to be part of Russia's shadow fleet, including the 'Grinch' in the Mediterranean in January and the 'Boracay' in the Atlantic in October.
Western sanctions have targeted Russia's oil exports since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022—a major revenue stream used to finance the war. In addition to dodging those sanctions by carrying Russian oil abroad, Moscow's shadow fleet has been accused of 'spoofing' their location data, sabotaging undersea cables, and launching drones.
Source: www.bbc.com