The latest news about the Balticconnector pipeline case from SCMP on the afternoon of August 12 said that Chinese officials have opened an internal investigation and recently notified the Estonian and Finnish authorities of the results.
According to a Chinese investigation report, the accident that severed an important gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea connecting Estonia and Finland was caused by a strong storm.
When the Balticconnector was broken, Estonia and Finland opened a joint criminal investigation, focusing on NewNew Polar Bear - a Hong Kong-flagged container ship (China) passing through the waters at the time of the incident. The ship's owner is NewNew Shipping Line in mainland China.
According to SCMP, a spokesman for the Estonian prosecutor's office said that the Chinese documents have not been sent to the office and therefore "cannot be used as evidence in an Estonian criminal investigation".
“We have sent a request for legal assistance to the Chinese authorities to collect evidence from the ship and its crew,” said Kairi Kungas, public relations director of the Estonian prosecutor's office.
“To comply with the request for legal assistance, Chinese authorities may conduct investigative activities themselves or participate with Estonian investigators , with all activities conducted on Chinese territory subject to local law. Chinese authorities have not yet responded to the request for legal assistance," he added.
A spokesman for the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) refused to confirm whether or not it had received Chinese documents, but confirmed that it is still continuing the investigation into the Balticconnector gas pipeline rupture.
“During the investigation, we cooperated with Chinese authorities and others, and the NBI submitted a request for legal assistance to Chinese authorities” - Anna Zareff, communications director of NBI, shared.
She emphasized that the investigation is still ongoing and the final conclusion on the cause of the Balticconnector pipeline rupture can only be made after all necessary investigative measures have been completed and this will takes some time.
Officials in two EU member states said that the Newnew Polar Bear ship dragged anchor along the seabed, cutting off an important gas pipeline and damaging two telecommunications cables connecting the two countries late at night. October 7 or the morning of October 8, 2023.
At that time, Finnish investigators described a "strip extending from 1.5 to 4 meters" leading to a "broken point on the gas pipeline". "A few meters from the damaged point of the gas pipeline, there is an anchor that is believed to have caused the trail and that damage point itself" - the document dated October 27, 2023 of Finnish investigators stated. Additionally, after the anchor was lifted, there were “marks that the anchor had come into contact with the gas pipeline.”
After passing through the Baltic, NewNew Polar Bear traveled to St Petersburg, Russia and was then photographed in the Arkhangelsk region of Russia before docking at the port of Tianjin, China.
Last November, the Finnish government said that China had committed to fully cooperate with the investigation of the Balticconnector pipeline rupture. In January this year, then-Finnish President Sauli Niinisto had a discussion with Chinese President Xi Jinping about the damaged pipeline. Helsinki described the exchange as "constructive".
The 77km long Balticconnector pipeline is Finland's main energy supply. The Balticconnector gas pipeline rupture occurred at a sensitive time, leading to alarm about the vulnerability of undersea infrastructure in the Baltic region.
The Balticconnector pipeline incident occurred after the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines connecting Russia and Germany exploded in September 2022 and up to now the culprit has not been found.
