Bulgarian shipping company denies sabotage, attributes incident to bad weather
Date
1/28/2025 4:30:04 AM
(MENAFN) A Bulgarian shipping company, Navibulgar, issued a statement on Monday denying that one of its vessels intentionally damaged an underwater fiber optic cable that connects Latvia with the Swedish island of Gotland. Alexander Kalchev, the CEO of Navibulgar, acknowledged that the company's ship, the Vezhen, may have caused the cable to break but rejected any claims of sabotage or deliberate action by the crew. According to Kalchev, the ship was navigating in harsh weather conditions late on Sunday, and the crew later discovered that the left anchor appeared to be dragging along the seabed.
Kalchev’s statement came after Swedish prosecutors launched a preliminary investigation into the incident, suspecting sabotage, following the ship's detention in the Baltic Sea. The automatic identification system on the ship showed that the Vezhen passed over the cable, though it remains unclear exactly when the cable was severed. Kalchev expressed hope that the investigation would conclude that the incident was caused by technical issues linked to the bad weather, rather than intentional wrongdoing, and that the ship would soon be released.
The Vezhen, a Maltese-flagged vessel, was en route to South America, carrying a cargo of fertilizer. The 32,000-ton vessel, which was launched in 2022, has been at the center of the ongoing investigation. Kalchev emphasized that the ship's crew had acted in good faith and that the incident should be seen as an unfortunate technical occurrence.
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