France has said it has released an oil tanker believed to be part of Russia’s shadow fleet after paying a fine, the BBC reports.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said the GRINCH had left French waters on February 17 after paying a multi-million euro fine.
The ship was seized by French authorities in the Mediterranean in January and diverted to the port of Marseille. It was en route from Murmansk and was flying the Comoros flag. Moscow’s shadow fleet is a secret network of tankers used to circumvent Western sanctions on Russian oil exports. Many countries have deployed them since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The shadow fleet is made up of aging tankers with unclear ownership and insurance status.
In a post on the X, Barro said that circumventing European sanctions comes at a price, and Russia will no longer be able to finance its aggression with a “ghost fleet” off European shores.
The minister added that the GRINCH is leaving French waters, having gotten rid of several million euros
and spent three expensive weeks in port, and that it should continue in the same spirit.
A statement from the prosecutor’s office and the local shipping authority said that a fine equivalent to the value of the ship was also imposed as part of the sentence. The exact amount paid by the owner is not known.
Shadow fleet ships are appearing more and more frequently, and a large number of tankers carrying Russian, Venezuelan and Iranian oil are using various methods to hide their identities and circumvent sanctions. Data varies, but monitoring group TankerTrackers.com estimates that there are currently around 1,468 ships in the shadow fleet, almost three times as many as when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
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