The Chinese bulk carrier Yi Peng 3 has raised its anchor and left the Kattegat after a month long standoff, according to vessel tracking data.
The ship had been under investigation over allegations that it lowered and dragging its anchor across data cables connecting Sweden and Finland with Lithuania and Germany.
The 75,100-dwt Yi Peng 3 (built 2001), which is listed under the management of China’s Ningbo Yipeng Shipping, was underway from Ust-Luga in Russia to Pakistan or the west coast of India with a cargo of pig iron, the tracking data shows.
The move comes after the ship was reported to have left the Russian port on about 15 November, two days before the the cables were broken.
As TradeWinds has reported, it subsequently anchored in the Kattegat in international waters between Sweden and Denmark where neither country has any authority over the vessel.
The suspicions are that the vessel deliberately dropped its anchor at the behest of Russia to sever two cables, one connecting Finland with Germany and another connecting Sweden with Lithuania.
Sweden’s SVT reported that a cable connecting the Swedish island of Gotland and Lithuania was damaged on 17 November and the next day a cable between Helsinki and the German port of Rostock was severed.
Both Finland and Sweden recently joined NATO. Earlier Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson had indicated that he wanted the vessel to move into Swedish waters prior to being boarded for inspection.
Internet sleuths had poured over photographs of Yi Peng 3 and pointed to a bent fluke of one of its anchors as being of interest.
On Thursday Swedish, Danish, Finnish, German and Chinese officials had boarded the vessels to gather evidence.
At the time the Danish Foreign minister Lars Rokke Rasmussen had said that the vessel was able to sail towards its destination on completion of the inspection.
