Nord Stream suspect’s Maltese link: Italian court extradition sends shockwaves from Milan to Marsaxlokk

Italian court orders extradition of Ukrainian in Nord Stream case – what it means for Malta
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Valletta, 14 June 2025 – When Magistrate Gabriella Vella read out her judgment on a small-time crypto fraud in Malta’s Courts of Justice last month, few realised the same building might soon echo with the fallout from an Italian extradition order 1,200 km away. Yet the decision by a Milan appeals court on Wednesday to hand Ukrainian citizen Andriy K. to German investigators over the 2022 Nord Stream sabotage is already rippling through Malta’s energy-security circles, fishing fleets and even the village festa fireworks stores that depend on German-sourced black powder.

Why should an island that gets its gas through Sicily care about a blown-up pipeline under the Baltic? Because Malta’s new electricity interconnector – the €450 million cable laid last winter to link Delimara with Ragusa via a 160-km sub-sea route – was surveyed by the same consortium that mapped Nord Stream 1 back in 2008. German prosecutors believe the suspect, a 44-year-old former Ukrainian special-forces diver who later acquired Maltese residency through the now-defunct IIP scheme, rented a Polish-registered tug that loitered off Bornholm days before the explosions. Investigators found GPS data pointing to a curious detour: a 36-hour loop that took the vessel within 80 nautical miles of Malta’s South-East offshore wind-study zone, where seabed sensors recorded a sudden drop in salinity consistent with covert diving operations.

“Malta became an unwitting logistics hub,” Assistant Commissioner Alexandra Mamo, who heads the Financial Crimes Investigation Department, told *Hot Malta*. “We are cross-checking every bunkering licence issued to non-EU flagged vessels between July and October 2022.” So far police have questioned three local agents who supply super-yachts with marine diesel, but no charges have been filed. Still, the mere mention of Malta in a 400-page German warrant has jolted a country still bruised by grey-listing and FATF finger-wagging.

Energy minister Miriam Dalli sought to reassure households that the security of Malta’s gas pipeline from Gela is “robust and monitored 24/7 by AFM patrol boats”. Yet the Chamber of Engineers warns that a copy-cat attack on the single 16-inch line would leave the island dependent on its new interconnector – itself vulnerable to sub-sea interference. “Redundancy is only as good as your last survey,” chamber president Saviour Baldacchino said, calling for a national under-sea infrastructure protection unit modelled on Italy’s Maricoguard.

In the Marsaxlokk fishing community, the extradition news has revived memories of September 2022 when trawlers returned with nets shredded by “mystery metal shards”. Fisherman Jesmond Azzopardi produced a twisted carbon-steel plate he pulled up that week; German reporters now believe the alloy matches pipeline coating. “We joked it was Russian ghosts,” Azzopardi laughs, “but if this Ukrainian guy was ferrying explosives past our EEZ, we deserve answers and maybe compensation.”

Culturally, the saga has ignited Malta’s tight-knit 2,000-strong Ukrainian community. At the Żejtun parish hall last Sunday, Orthodox priest Father Mykhailo held a bilingual service praying for “truth and justice” while collecting aid for front-line medics in Mykolaiv. “Our people are not terrorists,” parishioner Oksana Petrenko stressed, showing her Maltese passport acquired after five years of teaching Russian literature at Junior College. She fears a backlash: “Already one landlord in Sliema told my cousin ‘no more Ukrainians’.”

Meanwhile, the island’s gaming sector – which employs dozens of Ukrainian IT specialists – is watching compliance departments scramble. The MGA has quietly asked licence holders to re-screen staff hired since 2021 against updated sanctions lists. “A single diver with a Maltese ID card could sink reputations faster than any Russian missile,” one compliance officer at a St Julian’s crypto-casino admitted.

As Andriy K. awaits transfer from a Busto Arsizio cell, Maltese authorities face a delicate balancing act: cooperate with Berlin without inflaming local tensions or spooking investors. History teaches the island that great-power pipelines rarely leak without side-effects. When the Greenstream line to Libya was ruptured in 2011, electricity tariffs here spiked 20 %. If Nord Stream’s shadow reaches our azure shallows, the next shock could be more than financial.

For now, Malta watches, waits, and quietly checks its own seabed for ghosts.