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Sweden has sharply criticized China for refusing to allow the Nordic country's lead investigator to board a Chinese ship suspected of cutting two cables in the Baltic Sea.
The Yi Peng 3 sailed away from its anchorage in international waters between Denmark and Sweden On Saturday, it appeared to be headed to Egypt after Chinese investigators boarded the ship on Thursday.
The Chinese team allowed representatives from Sweden, Germany, Finland and Denmark on board the ship as observers, but did not allow Henrik Söderman, the Swedish prosecutor, access, according to authorities in Stockholm.
“It is something the government takes very seriously by nature. It is striking that the ship departs without giving the public prosecutor the opportunity to inspect the ship and question the crew as part of a Swedish criminal investigation,” Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergaard said in comments to the Financial Times.
It was the Swedish government Pressure on the Chinese authorities To allow a bulk carrier to move from international waters to Swedish territory To allow a full investigation into the cutting of the Swedish-Lithuanian and Finnish-German data cables last month.
People close to the investigation said that boarding the ship on Thursday showed there was no doubt about its involvement in the incident.
The Yi Peng 3 belongs to Ningbo Yipeng Shipping, a company that owns only one other ship and is based near the eastern Chinese port city of Ningbo. A representative for Ningbo Yiping told the Financial Times in November that “the government has asked the company to cooperate with the investigation,” but did not answer further questions.
There is division among countries on the motivation behind cutting cables. Some people close to the investigation said they believe poor seamanship may have led to the Yi Peng 3's anchor being dragged along the seabed in the Baltic Sea.
However, other governments have privately said they suspect Russia was behind the damage and may have paid the ship's crew.
The cutting of the two cables was the second time in 13 months that a Chinese ship had damaged infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.
the New polar bearA Chinese container ship damaged a gas pipeline in October 2023 by dragging its anchor along the Baltic Sea floor a large distance during a storm. Officials were slow to react to this incident, allowing the ship to leave the area without stopping, something they had been careful to prevent in the case of the Yi Peng 3.
Officials in the Nordic and Baltic countries doubt the same thing could happen twice in quick succession. One Baltic minister said: “The Chinese must be truly terrible leaders if this continues to happen innocently.”
