French military last week boarded an oil tanker in the Mediterranean Sea suspected of belonging to Russia's so-called shadow fleet. The ship is being detained and the captain has now been arrested, prosecutors in Marseille announced.
The captain is a 58-year-old man from India. French authorities are initially investigating whether the ship was sailing under a false flag. The ship is anchored off Marseille on France's Mediterranean coast.
The oil tanker is called the Grinch and came from Murmansk on the Russian Kola Peninsula. Russia is believed to be using hundreds of ships with flags of convenience and complicated ownership structures to circumvent extensive sanctions on oil and gas.
