Anchor, Cable, Jurisdiction: The Eagle S Appeal and UNCLOS Article 97
· Oscari Seppälä and Liene Krumina · Maritime & Transport Law
On 27 August 2026 the Helsinki Court of Appeal quashed the dismissal of the Eagle S prosecution and remitted the case to the Helsinki District Court. Finland therefore has criminal jurisdiction over the master and officers of a Cook Islands–flagged tanker whose dragging anchor severed the EstLink 2 power interconnector and four telecommunications cables in the Finnish exclusive economic zone on 25 December 2024.
The reversal turns on a single concept. The District Court had held the casualty to be an "incident of navigation" under Article 97(1) UNCLOS, which confines penal proceedings against a master or crew to the flag State or the State of nationality. The Court of Appeal agreed that the anchor's sudden loss was a fortuity but held that the character of the event did not survive what the crew allegedly did next. Once the vessel had been contacted by the authorities, allegedly misreported the position of her anchors and continued dragging for more than three hours, the occurrence ceased to be fortuitous and Article 97(1) ceased to apply.
Nothing has yet been decided on guilt. The decision is one of jurisdiction, and it is subject to an application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Finland. Read our analysis in Finnish from the Appeal Court judgement.
The casualty, in eight lines
The tanker Eagle S, flying the flag of the Cook Islands, owned by Caravella LLC-FZ and operated by Peninsular Maritime India Pvt Ltd, sailed from Ust-Luga bound for the Mediterranean. On 25 December 2024, in the Gulf of Finland, her port anchor came free and fell to the seabed.
The vessel continued. Her speed and engine revolutions dropped markedly. She dragged the anchor for roughly 90 kilometres.
At approximately 12.26 the anchor struck the EstLink 2 submarine power cable, co-owned by Fingrid Oyj and Elering AS. At 15.20 the Finnish authorities contacted the vessel and asked where her anchors were; according to the indictment the officers reported that both were up and secured. The passage continued. Between 18.04 and 18.44 four further telecommunications cables were damaged, including the C-Lion 1 Finland–Germany link. The chain was not recovered until around 18.50.
Charges of aggravated criminal mischief and aggravated interference with communications, with alternative counts of aggravated criminal damage and negligent endangerment, were brought against the master, first officer and second officer. Civil claims exceeded EUR 105 million.
What the District Court actually decided — and what it did not
The Helsinki District Court dismissed the indictment on 3 October 2025, unanimously, and ordered the State to reimburse the defendants' costs. The dismissal was widely reported as a finding that Finland lacked jurisdiction over its own exclusive economic zone. That is not what the judgment says, and the distinction matters.
It found a Finnish consequence — for some counts
Under Chapter 1, section 10 of the Finnish Criminal Code an offence is committed both where the act was performed and where the statutory consequence appeared. The District Court held that:
- the danger element of criminal mischief and aggravated criminal mischief (Chapter 34) was not made out in Finland at all; but
- the very serious economic loss element of aggravated criminal damage (Chapter 35, section 2) and of aggravated interference with communications (Chapter 38, section 6) was, and materialised in Finland.
For those counts, therefore, the offence was committed in Finland as a matter of national law. The dismissal did not rest on the absence of a Finnish nexus.
The narrow construction of "energy supply"
The court read "energy supply" in Chapter 34 restrictively, as the availability and adequacy of electrical power, and invoked the principle of legality against any wider reading covering the electricity market or international transmission. On the evidence, the worst realistic case was a price rise and localised outages of a few hours; materialisation would have required simultaneous serious faults in cold, windless conditions, which the court considered relatively unlikely. Disruption to telecommunications was assessed as relatively minor. That the interconnector was transmitting from Finland to Estonia at the moment of failure was treated as reinforcing the conclusion.
This holding was never overturned. It comes back to life on remand.
The dispositive point: UNCLOS Article 97
Having found a Finnish consequence, the court turned to Chapter 1, section 15 of the Criminal Code, which gives way to binding treaty restrictions, and to UNCLOS:
- Article 92 (exclusive flag-State jurisdiction) was held to address ships, not persons on board, and not to exclude concurrent jurisdiction.
- Article 97(1) was held to be decisive. Penal proceedings arising from a collision "or any other incident of navigation" may be instituted only before the flag State or the State of nationality. Relying on the ILC's 1956 commentary — which gives cable damage as an example and on the Enrica Lexie award's requirement that the damage relate to the manoeuvring or movement of a ship, the court found the event to be an incident of navigation. The anchor had fallen because its securing arrangements failed; no deliberate use of the anchor as a cutting tool was alleged.
- Article 113 was read, with the Proelss commentary and Finland's own Act on the Protection of Certain Underwater Cables, as evidence that jurisdiction over cable damage beyond the territorial sea is confined to the flag State.
The indictment and the civil claims fell away under Chapter 1, section 15.
What changed on appeal — the five findings that reversed the outcome
Leave for continued consideration was granted on 16 January 2026. The Helsinki Court of Appeal gave its decision on 27 August 2026. Its reasoning proceeds in five moves.
Finding 1 — Concurrent jurisdiction is the baseline
The court began from the territorial principle, which it treated as both a rule of Finnish law (Chapter 1, sections 1 and 10) and a generally recognised rule of international law, citing Enrica Lexie. The alleged consequences appeared in Finland; the offence was therefore committed in Finland. Because the vessel flew the Cook Islands flag, it was also committed in the Cook Islands (Enrica Lexie).
Article 92 governs the flag State's exclusivity. It does not determine whose criminal law applies where the consequence lands in another State. Both States therefore hold jurisdiction, and that jurisdiction is parallel. Article 97 is the only provision that trims the parallelism which reframed the whole case as an exception to be established, not a rule to be presumed.
Finding 2 — "Incident" imports fortuity, and fortuity can be lost
This is the pivot of the judgment.
The Court of Appeal first disposed of a translation point: under Article 320 UNCLOS the Finnish text is not authentic, so the authentic English term "incident of navigation" governs, not the narrower Finnish rendering.
It then traced the provision's purpose. Article 97(1) was drafted to displace the position established by the Permanent Court of International Justice in the Lotus case, under which both flag States held criminal jurisdiction over crew after a collision — a position considered unsatisfactory for international shipping. The object was to shield navigational criminal liability from multi-forum exposure (Enrica Lexie). From paragraphs 649–656 of the same award, an incident of navigation requires an occurrence connected with the movement and steering of the ship, from which damage results.
The court then held, in terms worth quoting in substance:
Although "incident" is a broader concept than "accident", in this context it carries the requirement that the matter be an occurrence comparable to a collision a fortuity that is not intentional in relation to the consequence of that fortuity.
Applying that test, the court accepted that the sudden loss of the anchor and the damage associated with it were a fortuity, and so an incident of navigation. But it declined to freeze the characterisation at the moment of the casualty. Taking into account the crew's alleged conduct during and after the authorities' contact, and the continuation of the dragging in the pleaded circumstances for more than three hours, what occurred could no longer be regarded as a fortuity.
The counterfactual the court relied on is the sharpest sentence in the decision: had the vessel stopped when the authorities made contact and had the crew checked the anchors, at least the last four cables would have remained undamaged.
The ILC's 1956 example of cable damage as an incident of navigation did not displace that conclusion.
Finding 3 — Article 113 is a duty to criminalise, not a cap on jurisdiction
The Court of Appeal separated the two questions the District Court had merged. Article 113 obliges contracting States to make wilful or culpably negligent cable damage by their own flag vessels and their own nationals an offence. An obligation to legislate says nothing about the international jurisdiction of a court in a criminal matter. The scope of Finland's implementing statute was therefore irrelevant to the jurisdictional issue.
Finding 4 — Article 59 as an equitable forum-allocation rule
Having found parallel jurisdiction and no Article 97 bar, the court confronted an express positive conflict of jurisdiction between Finland and the Cook Islands and resolved it under Article 59 UNCLOS, on the basis of equity and in the light of all relevant circumstances, weighing the importance of the interests to the parties and to the international community as a whole.
Its conclusion: taking particular account of the extent of the criminal consequences caused in Finland, it is equitable that the charges be tried in Finland rather than in the Cook Islands.
This is the most exportable part of the decision. Article 59 is ordinarily read as a residual rule for rights not attributed in the exclusive economic zone. Here a national appellate court deploys it as a forum-allocation principle in a criminal case a move other coastal States facing flag-of-convenience cable casualties will read closely.
Finding 5 — The legality principle does not bite
The defence argued that Chapter 3, section 1 of the Criminal Code barred an expansive jurisdictional construction, and that change must come from treaty amendment rather than from case law. The court answered structurally: jurisdiction rests on international law and national provisions; Article 97 is an exception to that jurisdiction; holding an exception inapplicable does not enlarge the underlying jurisdiction. No legality problem arises.
Two collateral rulings practitioners should not skip
Cable owners have injured-party standing
The defence challenged the standing of Fingrid Oyj and Elering AS arguing that endangerment of energy supply is not directed at any single company, that Fingrid's property was not damaged in Finland, and that Elering is Estonian. The court held that an injured party is the holder of the legal interest directly infringed or endangered, and the sufferer of the damage. Ownership of EstLink 2 was undisputed. Where the endangerment landed, where the damage was located and where Elering is domiciled are questions for the merits of liability, not for standing. Both companies are injured parties.
The manager was heard, but was never a party
Peninsular Maritime India Pvt Ltd, which had signed the officers' employment contracts, sought its first-instance costs from the State EUR 680,951.05 as claimed on appeal, plus sums in US dollars, dirhams and rupees, and a further EUR 75,860 for the appeal itself. Under Chapter 3, section 1 and Chapter 7, section 5 of the Tort Liability Act an employer who has not been sued must be given an opportunity to be heard, but the party heard occupies only the position of a non-independent intervener; the judgment's res judicata does not extend to it. The Court of Appeal upheld the dismissal of the costs claim and rejected the manager's appeal.
The practical lesson for owners and managers is blunt: funding and coordinating the defence of your master and officers in a Finnish criminal case does not create a costs entitlement against the Finnish State. A separate civil action is the route.
Side by side
| Issue | Helsinki District Court (3.10.2025) | Helsinki Court of Appeal (27.8.2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Territorial nexus | Economic-loss consequences materialised in Finland; danger consequence did not | Consequences appeared in Finland; offence committed in Finland |
| Art. 92 UNCLOS | Addresses ships, not persons; no bar | Same, and expressly grounds parallel Finnish/Cook Islands jurisdiction |
| Art. 97(1) UNCLOS | Incident of navigation; jurisdiction barred | Fortuity at the outset, but lost through the alleged post-contact conduct; not an incident of navigation |
| Temporal frame | Fixed at the moment the anchor was lost | Extends through the three-plus hours of continued dragging |
| Art. 113 UNCLOS | Supports a flag-State jurisdictional limit | Duty to criminalise only; jurisdictionally irrelevant |
| Art. 59 UNCLOS | Not reached | Applied to resolve a positive conflict of jurisdiction in Finland's favour |
| Legality principle | Bars extensive construction | Not engaged; disapplying an exception does not extend jurisdiction |
| Outcome | Indictment and civil claims dismissed; State pays defence costs | Judgment quashed; remitted to Helsinki District Court |
Why this decision travels
It supplies a workable test where the treaty supplies none. UNCLOS never defines "incident of navigation". The Court of Appeal's answer an occurrence comparable to a collision, fortuitous and not intentional as to its consequence is short, quotable and capable of application in any coastal State's courts.
It makes the casualty a process, not a moment. The characterisation of an event under Article 97 is assessed across its duration. A crew's response to a casualty can remove the very protection the casualty created. For masters, officers, owners and P&I clubs, that relocates the risk from the mechanical failure to the bridge conduct that follows it.
It severs Article 113 from jurisdiction. Coastal States can no longer be met with the argument that the cable-protection article itself confines prosecution to the flag State.
It is a Baltic and North Sea problem, not a Finnish one. The same anchor-drag fact pattern has now recurred repeatedly across the Baltic. Every littoral State's prosecutors and every owner trading the region face the identical question, and this is the first reasoned appellate answer to it.
And it is not the end. The Court of Appeal decided jurisdiction and expressly declined to rule on guilt. The District Court's restrictive reading of "energy supply", its assessment of the probability of danger and its view of the telecommunications impact were never reviewed. On remand they remain live, alongside the intent question — the prosecution contends that the degree of intent grew as the act progressed, at latest into deliberate ignorance once the authorities had called.
What happens next
The Helsinki District Court must take the case up again once the appellate decision becomes final, or earlier with the parties' consent, and must also rule on the costs claimed in the Court of Appeal. The decision is subject to an application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Finland. Given the novelty of the Article 97 and Article 59 reasoning, a leave application would be unsurprising.
A note on Finnish maritime exposure
Finland is a small jurisdiction with an outsized submarine cable, pipeline and interconnector density, a busy Gulf of Finland traffic separation scheme, and authorities that have now demonstrated they will board, detain, investigate and prosecute. Eagle S shows how quickly a routine passage becomes a criminal matter in which the master and officers are personally charged, the vessel is detained under port State control, and eight-figure civil claims are consolidated into the criminal proceedings.
LKOS Law Office Oy advises shipowners, managers, charterers, cargo interests, insurers and P&I correspondents on Finnish shipping, maritime and transport matters — casualty and cable-damage response, criminal exposure of masters and crew, port State control detentions, cargo and liability claims, sanctions questions on Baltic trades, and dispute resolution before the Finnish courts and in arbitration. If your file has a Finnish element, we are glad to be a second pair of eyes on it before it becomes a first-instance judgment.
Töölönkatu 4, 00100 Helsinki · [email protected] · +358 44 516 8648 · lkoslaw.fi
Frequently asked
Did the Court of Appeal convict anyone?
No. It decided jurisdiction only and expressly declined to take a position on guilt. The case returns to the Helsinki District Court.
What is an “incident of navigation” under Article 97(1) UNCLOS after Eagle S?
An occurrence connected with the movement and steering of a ship, from which damage results, and which is comparable to a collision — that is, a fortuity that is not intentional in relation to its consequence.
Can a casualty stop being an incident of navigation?
On the Helsinki Court of Appeal’s reasoning, yes. The anchor’s loss was a fortuity; the alleged decision to continue dragging for over three hours after the authorities’ inquiry meant the event as a whole was no longer fortuitous.
Does Article 113 UNCLOS limit prosecution to the flag State?
The Court of Appeal held that it does not. Article 113 obliges States to criminalise cable damage; it does not allocate criminal jurisdiction between courts.
Is the decision final?
No. It is subject to an application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Finland.
Disclaimer
This article is a summary of publicly available court decisions prepared for general information. It does not constitute legal advice or a legal opinion, it does not create a lawyer–client relationship, and it must not be relied upon in any actual or contemplated matter. The proceedings described are ongoing and no finding of guilt has been made against any person. Where the Finnish-language decision and this English summary differ, the original prevails. For advice on a specific matter, please contact us.
Sources: Helsinki District Court, judgment of 3 October 2025 in case R 706/2025/12270 (ruling no. 1035 6447), English translation circulated by the Council of the European Union as document WK 14133/2025 INIT; Helsinki Court of Appeal, decision of 27 August 2026 in case R 16/2025/2572 (ruling no. 1051 2110).