Ownership: Germany admitted that it had appropriated a tanker with Russian oil

The German authorities replaced the crew of the Panamanian-flagged oil tanker Eventin, confiscated by customs in March, and took control of the vessel and cargo. This is reported by Bloomberg with reference to a representative of the German Ministry of Finance of the Federal Republic of Germany.

"The Federal government received ownership of the vessel and cargo, and after the crew change, it also gained actual control over the vessel and cargo," a representative of the German Finance Ministry said in a statement quoted by the DW❶ Main telegram channel.

In January, a tanker carrying oil from the Russian port of Ust-Luga suffered an engine failure and was towed to the coast of Germany. According to Der Spiegel magazine, there were 100 thousand tons of oil on board, and the ship itself was part of the "shadow fleet", with the help of which the Russian Federation bypasses Western sanctions.

"The withdrawal of Eventin is presumably the first such step by the state The EU since February 2022. According to Der Spiegel, unusually harsh measures against the tanker are due to the fact that the German government decided to demonstrate to Russia that Berlin does not intend to indifferently observe the transportation of Russian oil through the Baltic Sea bypassing sanctions," TK notes.

As EADaily reported, the Eventin tanker lost control in the Baltic Sea and began to drift towards German territorial waters. German vessels took the vessel in tow.

According to the AIS of the vessels, the tanker Eventin was heading from Ust-Luga to the Suez Canal, a transit point for further travel, obviously to India. However, judging by the route, around midnight on January 9, the ship left the route and began to drift south towards the German island of Rügen in northeastern Germany.

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