COPENHAGEN (Reuters) -Finnish prosecutors are considering pressing charges against three senior officers of an oil tanker suspected of damaging undersea power and telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea in December, police and the prosecutor said on Friday.
Finnish authorities suspect the Cook Islands-registered Eagle S of having broken the Estlink 2 undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia as well as four internet lines last December by dragging its anchor across the seabed.
Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation concluded its investigation into the damage on Friday and said in a statement it suspected three senior officers of the Eagle S of aggravated criminal mischief and interference with telecommunications.
The head of the police investigation, Sami Liimatainen, told Reuters all three crew denied any wrongdoing.
The Baltic Sea region has been on high alert for sabotage after a string of outages of power cables, gas pipelines and telecoms, although subsea infrastructure is also subject to technical malfunctions and outages caused by accidents.
A lawyer for United Arab Emirates-based Caravella LLC FZ, the owner of the Eagle S, said he could not comment on behalf of the crew as he does not represent them. Reuters was unable to identify legal representatives for the crew.
The lawyer has previously said the ship’s alleged damage to undersea equipment happened outside of Finland’s territorial waters and therefore Helsinki lacked jurisdiction to intervene.
(Reporting by Louise Breusch Rasmussen and Essi LehtoEditing by Gareth Jones)
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