Sweden’s customs service has said that authorities boarded a Russian cargo vessel in Swedish territorial waters after the ship suffered an engine failure and came to anchor off the country’s coast.
The freighter, Adler, dropped anchor in Swedish waters on Friday due to machinery problems and is now being inspected. Customs spokesperson Martin Hoglund said on Sunday that the vessel’s owners are on the European Union sanctions list and that officers are carrying out a customs inspection of the cargo.
Hoglund said customs personnel, supported by the Swedish Coast Guard and police, went on board just after 0100 local time (00:00 GMT) to conduct the check. He added that the inspection is still underway and declined to comment on any findings from the search.
According to ship-tracking service Marine Traffic, Adler is a 126 m (413 ft) roll-on/roll-off container ship. The vessel is anchored off Hoganas in southwest Sweden.
As well as appearing on an EU sanctions list, Adler and its owner, M Leasing LLC, are also under U.S. sanctions over suspected involvement in weapons transport, according to OpenSanctions, a database that lists sanctioned companies and individuals along with government watchlists.
Hoglund said the ship left the Russian port of St Petersburg on 15 December, but that Swedish customs had no information about its intended destination.
The night-time boarding operation was led by the Swedish Customs Administration, working together with the coastguard, the National Task Force, the Swedish Security Service, and prosecutors.
In an earlier case, Greek forces boarded Adler in the Mediterranean in January 2021. That action was conducted under the European Union’s Operation Irini, an EU mission that oversees the implementation of the United Nations arms embargo on Libya.
