On February 17, the French government confirmed that the ship named Grinch had left its territorial waters after three weeks of detention. Previously, on January 22, French authorities intercepted this ship in the Mediterranean Sea for suspected oil transportation in violation of sanctions targeting Russia.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot made a tough statement on social network X: " Avoiding European sanctions will cost a lot. Russia will no longer be able to brazenly use a ghost fleet off our coast to fund the war".
According to the investigation of the French maritime agency, the ship Grinch departed from Murmansk port in northern Russia. To hide its whereabouts, this ship hung a fake flag of Comoros - a small island nation in East Africa often used by ships of the "dark fleet" to circumvent the law. After being discovered, the ship was forced by French forces to move to Marseille port to serve the investigation.
Prosecutors said the company that owns the Grinch ship had to pay a large fine, up to "a few million euros", for failing to prove the legality of the flag that the ship was flying.
However, legal troubles did not stop there. The captain of the ship, a 58-year-old Indian citizen, was handed over to the judiciary last month. This person is expected to appear in court this month on charges of refusing to cooperate with functional forces during inspections.
The arrest of the Grinch ship is considered one of the strongest moves by the West against Moscow's "dark fleet". This is a term used to refer to a network of more than 400 old oil tankers, operating under the guise of ghost companies in countries that do not participate in sanctions, to help Russia continue to export oil.
To date, the US, UK and EU have put a total of 640 ships on the sanctions list to prevent international customers from trading with this fleet.
Not only in Europe, the fight against oil smuggling fleets is also heating up on the other side of the Atlantic. In recent months, US authorities have arrested or tried to prevent at least 7 ships involved in transporting sanctioned oil from Venezuela. There were even cases where oil tankers brazenly changed flags to Russian nationality in the middle of the sea while being chased.
France's collection of millions of euros in fines from the Grinch ship is considered an important precedent, sending a message that the cost of circumventing the law is becoming increasingly expensive for "underground" oil transportation units.
