The district court in the Finnish capital Helsinki has ruled that Finland has no jurisdiction to prosecute the captain of the Eagle s tanker Davit Vadachkoria and his two assistants accused of damaging underwater cables in the Baltic Sea. This was reported on 3 October by the Finnish publication Yle.
The lawyer of the shipowner and the defendants themselves insisted that Finland had no jurisdiction over the case. The court agreed with this position and ruled that criminal jurisdiction in the case of cable damage in the Gulf of Finland belongs either to the flag state of the vessel or to the courts of the countries of citizenship of the accused.
The court ruled that the Finnish state must pay the seafarers’ legal costs, which amount to approximately €195,000.
The prosecution insisted that Vadachkoria and his assistants Robert Eghizarian and Santush Kumar Chaurasia be sentenced to at least 2.5 years of unconditional imprisonment.
Telecom and power cables have been damaged repeatedly in the Baltic Sea over the past few years.
The Cook Islands-flagged tanker Eagle S, which is reportedly part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” that Moscow uses to circumvent sanctions on oil exports, is currently under arrest in Finland. It was probably the vessel’s anchor that cut the Estlink 2 cable connecting Estonia and Finland.
Finnish President Alexander Stubb claimed that the cable cut was probably sabotage by Russia.
On 19 January 2025, The Washington Post wrote, citing senior U.S. and EU officials, that the intelligence community is gradually coming to the conclusion that the cable damage by commercial ship anchors was not the result of deliberate actions at Moscow’s behest. According to the report, the evidence available so far allegedly shows that the cables were damaged due to the inexperience of the crews of poorly maintained vessels.
Officially, the Finnish Bureau of Investigation said the investigation is ongoing and it is too early to draw conclusions.