Owner of the cargo ship that brought ammonium nitrate to Beirut questioned by police after Interpol request
The Russian owner of the cargo ship that brought 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate to Beirut which exploded on Tuesday has been located and questioned by police in Cyprus.
Detectives on the island found Igor Grechushkin on Thursday morning following a request by Lebanese police.
They are trying to establish the sequence of events which led to the devastating blast that killed at least 157 people.
He is alleged to have abandoned his vessel, the MV Rhosus, and its cargo after it got stuck in Beirut in 2014 - refusing to pay docking fees and the salaries of its crew.
ITV News Security Editor on the arrest of Igor Grechushkin
Mr Grechushkin made Cyprus his home several years ago, in common with many other wealthy Russians.
But Cypriot police traced him this morning following a formal request by Interpol to ask him a series of questions on behalf of investigators in Beirut.
“We located him, we questioned him and he co-operated” a Cypriot law enforcement official told ITV News.
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The interview was conducted as new details emerged about a series of warnings made over several years to officials in Beirut.
The warnings were about the potential dangers of the abandoned ship’s cargo - its huge stockpile of ammonium nitrate which was later moved into the port-side warehouse where it blew up this week.
The Rhosus was reportedly owned by Grechushkin’s company, Teto Shipping.
The vessel docked in Beirut in 2013 while sailing from Georgia to Mozambique.
Officials forbade it from sailing further.
A Cypriot businessman told ITV News how he sold the ship to Grechushkin months before it set off on its final voyage.
Charalambos Manolis recalled the day he finalised the deal - 22 May 2012 - and the grim consequences of the transaction for the ship’s new owner.
“In 2013 September the cargo ship was detained in Lebanon due to legal reasons, and this caused poor Igor to go bankrupt and close his company and after that he had to go work as an employee in someone else’s company” he said.
“He is still in Cyprus working in the shipping sector.”
“What my concern is, and what people should focus on, is why the Lebanese authorities kept this dangerous cargo stored next to a fireworks storage facility all these years. Did they not consider the risks involved?”
Lawyers representing the vessel’s crew didn’t name Mr Grechushkin in a statement released on Thursday, but said the ship’s owners had “ceased settling the charges and dues that were accruing on her… [stopped] paying the four crew members abandoned on board and were no longer providing them with supplies and medicine.”
They said they wrote to the Harbour Master of Beirut Port in April 2014 warning of a tragedy on the scale of the 1947 Port of Texas City disaster, when a cargo ship carrying ammonium nitrate exploded, killing several hundred people.