"We're losing this with a bang!"
That's just one of several nervous statements on intercepted telephone conversations that the prosecutors of the Danish Fraud Police played in the Odense Court on Tuesday.
The man behind the words is Torben Østergaard Nielsen, the founder of the company Dan-Bunkering, which together with the parent company Bunker Holding is accused of a major breach of the EU's sanctions against Syria.
The companies are accused of having sold fuel to aircraft for 648 million kroner. to Russian companies that were agents for the Russian Navy - and with the knowledge that the fuel was going to Syria.
- Until recently, I have been the sole owner and have built it up from scratch, said Torben Østergaard-Nielsen.
One man created Dan-Bunkering 40 years ago, which has grown into one of the world's largest companies when it comes to supplying fuel to shipping.
Nothing suspicious
During the interrogation, he was confronted with what he said to his one daughter and two directors, shortly after the police had searched the companies' address in Middelfart in the fall of 2019.
One director explained to him that Dan-Bunkering had assisted with renting equipment, as the fuel was in some cases pumped from a ship to a Russian ship out in the open sea, after it had been loaded, for example, on Cyprus.
"That's new to me," he said on the wiretap.
On Tuesday, however, he explained that renting equipment is just a detail that does not give Dan-Bunkering any responsibility whatsoever. It was precisely transhipment in the high seas that the accusations were made about. The phenomenon is called ship-to-ship, STS.
The STS transfers were initiated at a time when one of the Russian ships that Dan-Bunkering had supplied to was given the red card. The captain of the "Yaz" had been charged by the Greek authorities for violating sanctions.
Then a new practice came about. Other tankers picked up the fuel at the refinery and sailed out to sea to meet the "Yaz" or another Russian ship.
But Torben Østergaard-Nielsen denied that STS operations were in any way suspicious. On the contrary, they are very common, he explained.
Ritzau
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