By Greg Torode and James Pomfret
HONG KONG, Feb 11 (Reuters) - The Chinese captain of a Hong Kong-registered cargo ship pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to a charge of criminal damage, following allegations that his vessel damaged undersea cables in the Baltic Sea.
Wan Wenguo, 44, the captain of the container ship NewNew Polar Bear, is alleged to have damaged an underwater natural gas pipeline and submarine telecom cables between Finland and Estonia in October, 2023, according to a Hong Kong charge sheet reviewed by Reuters.
The charge sheet stated that Wan had been "reckless" and "without lawful excuse damaged the property belonging to another".
Finnish investigators said the container vessel had dragged its anchor to sever the Balticconnector gas pipeline. Finnish police later retrieved a broken anchor from the seabed near the pipeline, and technical examinations showed it belonged to the container vessel that was missing an anchor.
A lawyer for Wan, Jerry Chung, earlier said 18 prosecution witnesses would be called to testify in the case that includes one charge of criminal damage, as well as two charges of failing to ensure the ship complied with safety requirements under the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea.
Wan also pleaded not guilty to those two charges. The next hearing is on May 5.
These witnesses include crew members, Hong Kong officials, and experts in maritime matters, Chung added.
The Baltic Sea region has been on high alert for sabotage after a series of outages involving power cables, gas pipelines and telecom links since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. NATO has boosted its military presence with frigates, aircraft and naval drones.
When asked about possible Russian involvement in the case, a prosecution lawyer told reporters that there had been no indication so far in court of such a claim.
But Nordic and Baltic authorities have struggled to prove intent and convict anyone including Wan for the incidents.
"There has been no response to the legal assistance request that Finland sent to Hong Kong," Finnish state prosecutor Ari-Pekka Koivisto told Reuters by email. "As far as I understand, Estonia's legal assistance request has also not been answered."
The NewNew Polar Bear first severed three telecom cables; a Russian one linking St Petersburg to Russia's Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad; and two others connecting Estonia to Finland and Sweden on Oct. 7-8, 2023, before hitting the gas pipeline on its way to a port near St Petersburg, Russia.
Estonian police have investigated the damage to Estonian telecom cables, while the owner of the Russian cable, state company Rostelecom, has said it won't seek compensation.
Early on, China's foreign ministry promised both Finland and Estonia to assist with the investigations, while calling for an objective and fair probe.
Ian Chan, a prosecution lawyer for Hong Kong's Marine Department that has regulatory oversight over the port city's maritime industry shipping registry, told reporters that he had not made contact with Finnish or Estonian authorities regarding the case.
He noted, however, that Wan's ship, when it sailed from Russia to China, had been missing an anchor, and it had failed to report daily to its shipping company, as is required under maritime regulations.
(Reporting by James Pomfret and Greg Torode in Hong Kong; Anne Kauranen in Helsinki; Editing by Anne Marie Roantree, Christopher Cushing and Kim Coghill)
