The latest news on SCMP's Balticconnector pipeline case on the afternoon of August 12 said that Chinese authorities have opened an internal investigation and have recently notified the Estonian and Finnish authorities of the results.
According to the Chinese investigation report, the accident that severed an important gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea connecting Estonia and Finland was due to a strong typhoon.
When Balticconnector was broken, Estonia and Finland opened a joint criminal investigation, focusing on the NewNew Polar Bear - a container ship flying the flag of Hong Kong (China) that was crossing the sea at the time of the incident. The owner of the ship is NewNew Shipping Line in mainland China.
According to SCMP, a spokesperson for the Estonian prosecutor's office said that the Chinese document had not been sent to the office and could therefore "not be used as evidence in an Estonian criminal investigation".
We have sent a request for legal aid to the Chinese authorities to collect evidence from the ship and crew, said Ka Kungirias, director of public relations at the Estonian prosecutors office.
To meet the legal aid request, the Chinese government can conduct its own investigation or participate with Estonian investigators, with all activities conducted in China subject to local laws. Chinese authorities have yet to respond to the request for legal aid, he added.
A spokesperson for the National Investigation Agency of Finland (NBI) declined to confirm whether it had received Chinese documents, but said it was continuing the investigation into the Balticconnector gas pipeline disruption.
During the investigation, we have cooperated with the Chinese government and other parties, the NBI has sent a request for legal aid to the competent authorities of China, Anna Zareff, communications director of the NBI, said.
She stressed that the investigation is still ongoing and that the final conclusion on the cause of the Balticconnector pipeline break could only be made after all necessary investigation measures have been completed and it will take some time.
Authorities in the two EU member states said the Newnew Polar Bear dragged its anchor along the seabed, cutting off an important gas pipeline, damaging two telecommunications cables connecting the two countries on the night of October 7 or the morning of October 8, 2023.
At the time, Finnish investigators described a ards 1.5 to 4 meters long that led to a broken point on the gas pipeline. The damaged point of the gas pipeline was several meters away, with an anchor believed to have caused a prolonged strain and the damage was the one, the document dated October 27, 2023 by Finnish investigators stated. In addition, after the anchor was lifted, there were traces that the anchor had come into contact with the gas pipeline.
After crossing the Baltic, the NewNew Polar Bear traveled to St Petersburg, Russia and was then photographed in Russia's Arkhangelsk region before arriving in Tianjin, China.
In November last year, the Finnish government said that China had pledged comprehensive cooperation in the investigation of the Balticconnector pipeline break. In January this year, then-French President Sauli Niinisto had a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping about the damaged pipeline. Helsinki described the meeting as "constructive".
The 77km Balticconnector pipeline is Finland's main energy source. The Balticconnector gas pipeline outage occurred at a sensitive time, leading to an 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 the culprit has not yet been found.
