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Swedish authorities released the EU-sanctioned tanker Flora 1 after investigators determined they did not have sufficient evidence that the vessel caused an oil spill in the Baltic Sea, the Swedish Coast Guard said. The release followed the tanker’s detention after Sweden boarded the ship on suspicion it was responsible for a spill discovered earlier in the week.
The Swedish Coast Guard said the oil spill—found Thursday—stretched for about 12 kilometers (8 miles). The Coast Guard said investigators had not found evidence that Flora 1 was at fault for the spill, and authorities therefore ended the detention.
Investigators also addressed confusion over the vessel’s flag status at the time it was stopped. The Coast Guard said Cameroon confirmed that Flora 1 was sailing under Cameroon’s flag, after the vessel and its 24-member crew were stopped Friday.
Flora 1 had been on the European Union’s sanctions list because of how it was used in shipping Russian oil in ways the bloc described as linked to a “shadow fleet.” The EU listed the tanker as practicing “irregular and high-risk shipping practices,” including potentially disabling automatic tracking systems that transmit vessel location, according to the Coast Guard account.
Sanctions aimed at the shadow fleet are tied to the Group of Seven democracies’ price-cap regime for Russian oil. Under that approach, shipping and insurance were barred from handling Russian oil above the cap, a measure intended to limit the revenue that helps fund Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The shadow fleet is described as a network of aging tankers whose ownership and insurance are based in countries that are not observing the price cap, and the age of those vessels along with their limited Western insurance has raised safety concerns, including spill risk and questions about who would pay for cleanup.
The Coast Guard said Flora 1 was owned by a Hong Kong company as of late 2025 and that it had also been sanctioned by the UK, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, New Zealand and Australia, citing the Ukrainian government. The Coast Guard also said the vessel has changed its name six times and its flag country nine times.
Authorities have further pointed to behaviors associated with trying to obscure cargo origins, including the tanker’s reported use of ship-to-ship transfers. In such operations, the vessel can shift cargo between ships in ways that may help disguise the provenance of an oil shipment.
Swedish sanctions, the Coast Guard said, forbid any transactions involving the named vessels, even as the Baltic Sea spill investigation concluded without enough evidence to tie the Flora 1 detention to causation of the spill.