The ship’s crew were rescued on Aug. 17 in waters off Cape Verde in the Atlantic Ocean. Photo used courtesy of the Solchart Group.

TALLINN — The Estonian government is denying that a former intelligence agency director was involved in the Arctic Sea hijacking as a Latvian man convicted in the incident told a Russian court.

Dmitrijs Savins, a Latvian national and the leader of seven other hijackers that included four Estonians, two Russians and another Latvian, was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison on Friday. Russian state television reported that during the trial Savins said the motive for the case was financial and the operation was organized by Eerik-Niiles Kross, who served as the director of Security Coordination Office in the Estonian State Chancellery, which is connected to the Ministry of Defense Information Service (Riigi Teabeamet), from 1995 to 2000.

The Russian government, which has been very secretive about the case leading to speculation that smuggled weapons may have been aboard the ship, has not said whether it was investigation Kross or planning on taking legal action against him.

Kross denied Savins’ allegation in interviews with Estonian and Finnish media last week.

“The claim that I ordered the Arctic Sea hijacking is ridiculous,” Kross told Helsingin Sanomat on Friday. “The story was started in the Russian press, and the information did not get there by accident.”

Chief State Prosecutor Lavly Lepp told Postimees that no connection between hijacking the ship and Eerik-Niiles Kross was found during Estonia’s criminal investigation of the hijacking incident.

“The prosecutor’s office and Estonian security police have checked all connections between Dmitri Savins and the people he communicated in Estonia that were relevant to the investigation,” Lepp said.

The president’s office and defense ministry told Baltic Reports that they are not commenting on the case, as the prosecutor’s office already has stated their position.

However, other Estonian politicians are waving their finger at Russia, saying that the reason this information has been released in this secretive case is to hurt Estonia’s international reputation. In his blog, Estonian parliament member Marko Mihkelson wrote last week that “the dissemination of of this false information seems like a discrediting operation.”

“Why doesn’t the Russian prosecutor’s office work with their Estonian colleagues on such inquiries, instead of going to the media with it?” Mihkelson wrote.

The government refutes that Estonia is a country pervaded with such large-scale crime. Erkki Koort, deputy chancellor of internal security at the Ministry of Interior said that Estonia is a state based on the rule of law and fulfills the obligations of all international conventions.

“If somebody tries to create considerable connections with Estonia within the hijacking case, it is just ridiculous,” Koort told Baltic Reports on Wednesday. “In the case of the hijacking it is just an individual case, on which one cannot make any conclusions on how law-abiding Estonian citizens are or on the internal security in general.”

— Baltic Reports editor Nathan Greenhalgh contributed to this article.

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