PARIS (AP) — A French prosecutor said police have detained two crew members of an oil tanker immobilized off the country’s Atlantic coast which President Emmanuel Macron linked to Russia.
Macron has alleged that that the tanker belongs to Russia’s so-called shadow fleet of aging tankers of uncertain ownership and safety practices that are avoiding Western sanctions over Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Stéphane Kellenberger, prosecutor of the western port city of Brest, said Thursday that the crew members presenting themselves as the ship’s captain and chief mate have been in custody since at least Wednesday.
A preliminary investigation was opened into the crew’s “refusal to cooperate” and “failure to justify the nationality of the vessel” after the Atlantic Maritime Prefect alerted justice authorities Monday, Kellenberger said.
The tanker, which was sailing last week off the coast of Denmark, was cited by European naval experts as possibly being involved in drone flights over the country.
French naval forces forcibly boarded the ship a few days ago at the request of prosecutors who suspected wrongdoing, a military official said Wednesday.
The ship was ordered to stay in place pending further investigation, according to the official, who was not authorized to be publicly named discussing an ongoing investigation.
The ship left the Russian oil terminal in Primorsk near St. Petersburg on Sept. 20, sailed off the coast of Denmark and has stayed off the coast of the French western port of Saint-Nazaire since Sunday, according to the Marine Traffic monitoring website.
“There were some very serious wrongdoings made by this crew,” Macron said Wednesday on the sidelines of a European Union leaders summit in Copenhagen, Denmark. He added this “highlights” the existence of Russia’s “notorious shadow fleet.”
The tanker known as “Pushpa” or “Boracay,” whose name has changed several times, was sailing under the flag of Benin and appears on a list of ships targeted by EU sanctions against Russia.
The shadow fleet is made up of used, aging tankers that were often bought by nontransparent entities with addresses in non-sanctioning countries and were sailing under flags from non-sanctioning countries. Their role is to help Russia’s oil exporters elude the price cap imposed by Ukraine’s allies.
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