On March 6, the Swedish coast guard and police detained in the Baltic Sea at the entrance to the territorial sea of this country the bulk carrier “Caffa” IMO number 9143611. Swedish authorities stated that the Guinean flag declared by the ship was fake, which was the legal reason for the detention.
During operation “Black Coffee”, a police helicopter landed on this 1997 Russian-built bulk carrier, and investigations were carried out. Coast Guard spokesman Daniel Stanling said the ship was falsely flagged and that it is on Ukraine’s sanctions list, which states that it is transporting stolen grain.
Swedish Minister of Civil Defense Carl-Oskar Bohlin also noted that the ship’s “ownership structure is unclear, and there is a suspicion that there is no insurance.” It was stated that 10 of the 11 crew members “probably have Russian citizenship.”
This ship was actually included in the Ukrainian sanctions decree in November last year, for the illegal export of grain from occupied Sevastopol to Tartus; when detained, it was traveling from Moroccan Casablanca to St. Petersburg and was transferred by the Swedish authorities to the roadstead of the port of Trelleborg.
The offshore company “Caffa Shipping Ltd” is declared as the formal owner and operator of the vessel, and it was clearly specially created for his service. Previously, the bulk carrier was under the Russian flag and owned by the St. Petersburg company “Idan Shipping” LLC.
The founders of “Idan Shipping” are Russians Andrey Selyanin, Sergey Sergeev, and Anastasia Sochina. The Astrakhan “Caspian Logistics Company” is also registered to her, and Sergeev owns “Intermar St. Petersburg” and “Ingria Shipping”, as well as a number of other companies.
Previously, until 2024, the co-founder of “Idan Shipping” was the Finnish company “Idän Liikenteenvälittys IL” from Lappeenranta, the beneficiary of which is Risto Riihimäki, who also owns several companies in the field of cargo transportation and consulting in Russia and Kazakhstan; in particular, this is the Vyborg “Idan.Ru,” which deals with forests, as well as “Idan” from Almaty.
At the same time, “Idan Shipping”, as previously reported by the press, imported sanctioned trucks into Russia.
But “Ingria Shipping”, as the press writes, was connected with an offshore shipowner from the British Virgin Islands, “Aressa Shipping Ltd.,” whose owners are the same Sergeev, as well as residents of St. Petersburg Vyacheslav Fesko, Andrey Kuznetsov, and Denis Kropotkin.
Fesko, who is a resident of the UK, until 2024 registered a company in London, “Aressa Alliance Ltd.”
“Aressa Shipping Ltd” started the dry cargo ship “Aressa”, number IMO 7612498, built in 1978, formerly “Baltiysky-103”, and in 2020, a ton of cocaine was found on it, transported from Venezuela to Greece. The ship was detained during a joint operation near the Caribbean island of Aruba through a joint police operation between Great Britain, Holland, Montenegro, and other countries.
And now this ship, renamed “Turbo-SM” under the flag of the Comoros Islands, carries out transportation in the Black and Mediterranean Seas, but not only between Russian, Greek, and Turkish ports, but also with illegal ship visits to Abkhazia, as well as to occupied Kerch.
At the same time, Fesko and Sergeev, as well as Estonian citizens Anastasia Skijarova and Oleg Kudinov, are co-owners of another offshore ship owner from the British Virgin Islands, namely “Porhov Shipping Ltd”.
This offshore company owned the bulk carrier “Porhov” number IMO 7612474, formerly “Baltiysky-105”, involved in a scandal with the “disappearance of scrap ferrous metals from the Rostov port” and in repeated illegal calls to the occupied Crimean ports.
This ship also appeared in Colombian ports and was delayed in Gibraltar; then this cargo ship was renamed “Gauja” and sent for cutting to Turkey.
Thus, in addition to the obvious scams with changing the flag and circumventing sanctions, the cargo ship “Caffa” may be involved in other criminal cases, including drug trafficking.
