THE French Navy has boarded a false flagged sanctioned aframax laden with Russian crude, says President Emmanuel Macron in a post on X.

Lloyd’s List Intelligence vessel-tracking data shows Grinch (IMO: 9288851), which is falsely flagged with Comoros, stopped transmitting AIS data at 1027 hrs UTC while sailing off the coast of Spain towards the Mediterranean.

Macron’s statement indicates the ship was boarded on the high seas with support of allies, and “carried out in strict compliance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea”.

A judicial investigation into Grinch has been opened and the vessel diverted.

At the time it was intercepted Grinch was signalling its destination as “for orders” having loaded crude at Russia’s arctic port of Murmansk.

The tanker suffered third-party Automatic Identification System interference at the time of calling, but a four-day gap in AIS transmissions suggests it deliberately loaded “dark”.

President Macron has previously urged Europe to increase pressure on the shadow fleet*, arguing that it helps finance Russia’s war in Ukraine.

This is the second time the French Navy have intercepted one of Russia’s shadow fleet tankers.

Phoenix (IMO: 9332810), formerly Boracay (IMO: 9332810), was temporarily diverted by French authorities and in September and investigated for “lack of documentation of the ship’s nationality and flag affiliation” and “refusal to comply with the authorities’ instructions”.

EU coastal authorities have routinely been asking fraudulently flagged vessels for certification over the past year but until recently there has been little direct action to obstruct these vessels.

This month the German Federal Police effectively blocked a fraudulently flagged shadow fleet tanker, Tavian (IMO: 1095337), from accessing German territorial waters, forcing it to exit the Baltic.