General – Damage Balticconnector
Finnish investigators said Tuesday they believed an anchor of a Chinese container ship was dislodged and caused the damage to the undersea Balticconnector gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia on the Baltic Sea earlier this month.
The National Bureau of Investigation, a branch of the Finnish police, said that it has evidence and data pointing to a Hong Kong-flagged cargo vessel as the culprit in damaging the pipeline running across the Gulf of Finland.
Detective Superintendent Risto Lohi, NBI’s head of the investigation, said in a news conference that a 1.5 to 4-meter-wide dragging trail on the seabed is seen to lead to the point of damage in the gas pipeline.
That trail is believed to have been caused by a heavy 6-ton anchor which the Finnish Navy retrieved late Monday.
