A Bulgarian shipping company denies its vessel sabotaged a Baltic Sea cable

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SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — A Bulgarian shipping company on Monday denied that one of its ships had intentionally damaged an underwater fiber optic cable connecting Latvia and the Swedish island of Gotland.

Swedish prosecutors announced on Sunday night that they had launched a preliminary investigation on suspicion of sabotage, after the ship was detained in the Baltic Sea

Navibulgar CEO Alexander Kalchev said in a statement it was possible that the Vezhen ship had caused a cable to break but dismissed any possibility of sabotage or any other action on the part of the crew.

Kalchev cited information obtained from the crew that the ship was sailing late on Sunday in extremely bad weather. Eventually, the crew discovered that the left anchor was apparently being dragged along the seabed.

He added that the automatic ship identification system clearly showed that the Vezhen passed over the cable, and that it was not clear when exactly it was cut.

“I hope that the investigators will quickly establish that this is not a matter of any intentional action, but a technical incident due to bad weather, and that the ship will be released,” Kalchev said.

The Maltese-flagged Vezhen was sailing to South America, loaded with fertilizer. The 32,000-ton vessel was launched in 2022, Kalchev said.

The Swedish public prosecutors' office said it was now carrying out a number of specific investigative measures. Authorities including the National Police Operations Department, the Coast Guard and the Armed Forces are involved in the investigation, senior prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist said in a statement.