An oil tanker believed to be part of Russia's "shadow fleet" sailed into a French harbor Tuesday, an AFP reporter said, after the French navy detained it on suspicion of flying a false flag.
It is the fourth such ship that France has seized since September last year on suspicions of belonging to the "shadow fleet," which Russia is believed to use to circumvent Western sanctions.
The French navy boarded the Tagor on Sunday morning in international waters with the help of Britain, after its Russian captain refused to comply with orders, French authorities said.
The Kremlin likened the seizure to "international piracy".
The Tagor sailed into the Bay of Douarnenez in western France's region of Brittany on Tuesday morning, the AFP reporter said.
Suspected of carrying Russian or Iranian oil despite international sanctions, the Tagor is linked to petroleum shipping magnate Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani, according to open-source database Opensanctions.org.
Shamkhani is the son of security official Ali Shamkhani, who was an adviser to the former Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, both of whom were killed on February 28, the first day of the US-Israeli attacks that started the Middle East war.
According to French authorities, the Tagor was on its way from Murmansk in northwestern Russia when it was boarded.
It was falsely flying a Cameroonian flag and was heading toward Limbe, a seaside city in the west of the African country, they added.
- Flag-hopping -
"Shadow fleet" vessels frequently change the flags they fly, a practice known as flag-hopping, or use invalid registrations in an attempt to escape tracking.
France previously detained two tankers in the Mediterranean, the Deyna in March and the Grinch in January, but they were allowed to set sail after paying fines.
In another case, a French court in March issued a one-year jail sentence in absentia and a 150,000-euro ($177,000) fine against the Chinese captain of another tanker, the Boracay, for failing to comply with orders to stop his ship in September last year off the coast of Brittany.
In April, France announced a plan to double penalties for ships that fail to fly a flag or refuse to comply.
Several Western countries have imposed sanctions on hundreds of vessels believed to be part of Russia's "shadow fleet" over its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Nearly 600 ships suspected of belonging to the fleet are subject to European Union sanctions.
