Media: The crews of maritime vessels that were spotted in Crimea are wanted by Ukrainian authorities
Ukrainian law enforcement officers are investigating four criminal cases regarding an illegal visit of the annexed Crimea by maritime vessels, as outlined in the joint investigation of Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) journalists’ Scheme program – a joint-project of Radio Svoboda and UA: Pershyi (1TV) news channel.
The crews of four vessels are under suspicion and have been declared wanted. According to the Criminal Code of Ukraine, only the captain and crew members of the ship in question can be brought to justice. They are facing up to five years’ imprisonment if found guilty, since there are no legal mechanisms in place to punish the company-operator that runs the vessel or the ship-owner, making it very difficult to bring charges against them, as stated in the text of the investigation.
According to the OCCRP, the Ukrainian Ministry of Infrastructure collects information about vessels that visit the Crimea after the ports were closed and sends that information to the Prosecutor’s Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
According to the State Hydrographic Service of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Ministry of Infrastructure and the public organization Maidan of Foreign Affairs, 631 vessels were recorded in ports of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol as of August 2016. The report includes all types of ships for which information is available, except military and auxiliary vessels, as well as for those that were already in the ports during the annexation and those that entered the ports after it.
The majority of the vessels (352) have a Russian flag or registration. There were 97 ships that entered Crimea with Ukrainian registration and flying the Ukrainian flag, and 28 flying the flags of EU countries.