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A French court will consider whether it has jurisdiction over the Chinese captain of an oil tanker who failed to follow orders from the French navy off the coast of Brittany in October. With no clear national registration, the Boracay is reportedly part of Russia’s so-called ‘shadow fleet’, which allows Moscow to circumvent Western sanctions to export its oil.
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French authorities opened an investigation in October on suspicion that the Boracay, was sailing under a false flag, registered in Benin.
The vessel appears on the International Maritime Organisation’s list of Russian shadow fleet ships.
Dark vessels: how Russia steers clear of Western sanctions with a shadow fleet
Danish authorities believe the Boracay may have been used to launch drones that flew over Copenhagen’s airport in September, forcing its temporary closure.
The captain, Chen Zhangjie, is at sea, and will not attend the hearing in the court in Brest, northern France.
His lawyer plans to challenge the court’s jurisdiction, arguing that as the events occurred in international waters, “French law does not automatically apply”.
Instead, he said the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, known as the “Montego Bay Convention”, indicates the jurisdiction lies either with the vessel’s flag state or the sailor’s country of residence – in this case, Benin or China.
The prosecutor in Brest has said that the matter will be debated during the hearing.
The lawyer has pointed to a precedent in Finland last year, when a court declined to try the captain and two officers of the oil tanker Eagle S, another Russian ghost fleet ship, which was registered in the Cook Islands.
The sailors, from Georgia and India, were accused of deliberately cutting cables in the Baltic Sea at the end of 2024.
The Finnish prosecution has appealed the court’s decision not to hear the case.
Meanwhile, the Boracay returned to sea five days after it was boarded by the French navy. According to the Marine Traffic site, the ship was anchored last Friday near the port of Rizhao, in north-eastern China.
(with newswires)
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