The Swedish Coast Guard on Thursday boarded a Liberia-flagged bulk carrier suspected of dumping waste in the Baltic Sea, Sweden's civil defence minister said.
"During the afternoon, I have received information that [the coast guard] in Swedish waters has boarded a Liberia-flagged bulk carrier outside Gothenburg, which has reportedly been observed dumping garbage in the Baltic Sea off Fårö, Civil Defence Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin said in a post on social media, without naming the vessel.
"This is a clear example of how the coast guard conducts active maritime surveillance work to prosecute environmental crimes."
Swedish patrol aircraft first detected the vessel near Fårö, an island off Sweden’s southeastern coast, during a recent aerial survey.
Göteborg Posten reported that a crew member was busted by the coast guard "red handed" illegally dumping waste into the sea. The ship was permitted to proceed as scheduled to Gothenburg, where the Swedish Coast Guard boarded it early Thursday morning.
Local media indicated that the crew member admitted to the illegal waste disposal and was fined 50 times his daily earnings, reflecting Sweden’s income-based penalty system.
(Reporting by Stine Jacobsen, editing by Terje Solsvik)
