On a Monday morning in September 2024, an alarming email lands in the inbox of the Norwegian Financial Supervisory Authority.
The email is from an insurer from Ghana who has been asked to investigate a potential Norwegian partner for a customer. Before the customer signs his contract, he wants to make sure that the Norwegian company is legitimate, so the insurer attaches a document he has received in the email to the Norwegian authority.
“Something wasn’t right and I couldn’t put my finger on what it was,” says the Ghanaian insurance man, who doesn’t want to be named for risk of losing his job. “Maybe I was just following my instincts”.
At the Financial Supervisory Authority in Oslo, the authorities quickly realize that something seems strange. The document, which bears both the FSA logo and stamp, confirms the company’s permits and license and on the surface looks genuine. Yet something is not quite right.
The paper is dated April 2016, but no company was at that time registered in Norway with the name given. The document refers to laws that do not exist in the Norwegian legal system. And the person signing on behalf of the FSA has never worked there––and may not even exist.
It’s all made up.
Extensive research, freedom of information requests and leaked documents obtained by Danwatch and NRK shows that the document is fake.
The fraudulent Norwegian company is called Ro Marine AS. On the surface it appears to be an insurance company that issues statutory certificates for oil ships and merchant vessels.
But in reality, the company is nothing more than an empty shell with no operations, no financial statements and no employees––apart from a Bulgarian board member and the Russian sole owner, Andrey Mochalin. A 41-year-old Russian businessman who has worked in the insurance industry in Norway for many years but now lives in Saint Petersburg.
Ro Marine has nevertheless issued hundreds of certificates and papers to a wide range of large oil vessels, many of which belong to Russia’s shadow fleet. Experts say the company undermines the entire international system for preventing oil disasters.
In the worst case scenario, an accident on one of the oil ships could lead to the worst environmental disaster in Danish history, and the insurance fraud could make it impossible for Denmark and the other Baltic Sea countries to file a claim with the insurance company.
In collaboration with Norwegian NRK, Danwatch has obtained documents that reveal how Denmark and 11 other NATO countries are being presented papers by a fake insurance company controlled by a Russian national.
Danish professor of maritime law Kristina Siig from the University of Southern Denmark calls the revelations very serious.
“I’ve never seen it proven so systematically before. There have been isolated cases, but not on this scale and not this systematically. It’s outrageous. It completely undermines the system,” says Kristina Siig.
In a brief email to Danwatch and NRK, a spokesperson for Ro Marine explains that the only person who can answer the submitted questions is ill and cannot be contacted at the moment.
We have also repeatedly tried to get in touch with the Russian owner of Ro Marine, Andrey Mochalin, and the Bulgarian board member, but neither of them have responded to our requests.
Old, worn-out oil ships
In the early morning hours of Wednesday, March 12, the oil tanker Achilles departed from the Russian oil port of Primorsk near Saint Petersburg and headed for the Baltic Sea.
The 245 meter long and 42 meter wide tanker was fully loaded with up to 100,000 tons of oil.
The ship is considered by international experts to be part of the Russian shadow fleet due to its murky ownership and insurance, and therefore the ship was contacted by the authorities in Finland who checked its papers.
The controls are put in place so the authorities can check, among other things, who insures shadow fleet vessels like Achilles and confirm that international conventions have been complied with and that safety on board is in order.
This is part of a major international collaboration between 12 NATO countries to protect the Baltic Sea from oil disasters and sabotage from Russia’s shadow fleet. A brand new collaboration announced in December last year and initiated by Denmark.
The ship Achilles presented papers showing that it had valid insurance from Norwegian Ro Marine, and the certificates were issued with approval from the Norwegian Financial Supervisory Authority. But it turns out that neither is true.
Achilles’ certificates were forged, as was the license from the Norwegian Financial Supervisory Authority. But the authorities never realized that something was wrong until Danwatch and NRK get in touch.
Danwatch and NRK has learned from people with direct knowledge of the matter that at least seven oil ships have similarly presented false insurance papers from Ro Marine during inspections in the Gulf of Finland without being detected.
According to Kristina Siig, this is “exactly what people have been worried about”.
“Another aspect is that an insurance company would check that safety is in order before agreeing to insure a ship. The security that this provides goes out the window. They are cheating the system,” she says.
The Danish Maritime Authority tells Danwatch and NRK that it has “challenges in validating the certificates from Ro Marine”. The Danish authorities will now contact Norway and other countries involved, such as the ship’s flag state–the country under whose flag it sails.
The agency also writes that the ships may be sanctioned if it turns out that they have provided false information.
“If, based on dialog with the Norwegian authorities and relevant flag states, it turns out that the ships do not have the conventional CLC insurance coverage, the Danish Maritime Authority will initiate the above measures against these ships in cooperation with relevant partners.”
Danwatch and NRK have contacted both the Danish and Finnish foreign ministries and asked whether they will return to the negotiating table in the international NB8++ cooperation.
Neither of them have answered specific questions, instead stating that the Danish Maritime Authority in Denmark and the Ministry of Transport in Finland are responsible for carrying out inspections.
On a general level, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark states that “Denmark, together with our international partners, is determined to hold the shadow fleet and the actors involved accountable for the risks posed by the shadow fleet vessels and the support they provide to Russia’s war against Ukraine”.
The Finnish Transport and Communications Agency, Traficom, states that they have not had the opportunity to check Ro Marine further.
“We control all the ships we can, but we can’t force them to do more right now. We don’t have the resources. But we are looking at the possibilities to do more during inspections,” says Traficom Maritime Director Sonninen Sanna.
Authorities were convinced it was legitimate
Danwatch and NRK have identified at least 255 oil and tanker ships that Ro Marine claims to have issued insurance certificates to according to their own database. At least 76 of these ships belong to the Russian shadow fleet according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence, and many of them regularly sail in and out of the Baltic Sea through Danish waters.
But there is nothing to suggest that Ro Marine has any kind of cover behind the certificates. Apart from its registration in the Norwegian Business Register, there is no other indication that the company even exists in Norway. Ro Marine’s website is operated from St. Petersburg and its logos and graphics are made by a Russian design agency.
American sanctions expert at Harvard University, Craig Kennedy, calls Ro Marine’s fraudulent business a major threat to the Baltic Sea.
“Sham insurance directly violate this international convention and raises risks for everyone,” he says.
Craig Kennedy points out that false insurances are not just a matter of circumventing sanctions.
“It violates a core principle of global shipping standards, and should be of concern to all coastal and importing countries,” he says.
According to Danwatch and NRK’s information, the authorities have been convinced that Ro Marine was a legitimate company on par with other Western insurance companies that the authorities trust.
This is because the company has presented licenses from the Norwegian Financial Supervisory Authority to sell ship insurance.
But Ro Marine has falsified its licenses from the Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway, and the company has never been registered in the Financial Supervisory Authority’s business register or at any time had a license to issue insurance in Norway.
Police charges four people
Ro Marine claims to have its offices at the Norwegian Shipowners’ Association in Oslo, but that claim is also false. In a report to the authorities in January 2025, the association explains that they have tried to contact Ro Marine to get them to “correct incorrect address information on their own website and in the company register, but they have not succeeded”.
“This case is of significant importance to the Norwegian Shipowners’ Association and may have implications for other actors and companies (…) For the Norwegian Shipowners’ Association, it is clearly harmful that Ro Marine spreads false information about having a business and postal address in our building,” they write to the Norwegian authorities.
Danwatch and NRK can now reveal that Norwegian police searched an address in Oslo on Friday, March 21, and that a total of four people connected to Ro Marine have been charged in connection with the case––the Russian owner Andrey Mochalin, the Bulgarian board member and two Norwegian business associates.
“The Oslo Police District has started an investigation based on a report from the Financial Supervisory Authority. This has led to further investigations of the reported company and associated persons. Four persons have been charged and are under investigation for document forgery and for operating insurance brokerage without a license from the Financial Supervisory Authority,” says a spokesperson for the Oslo Police District.
From sources with knowledge of the case, Danwatch and NRK also learn that Andrey Mochalin and the Bulgarian board member are being investigated by Norwegian police for possible circumvention of Western sanctions.
After Danwatch and NRK contacted Ro Marine, several of the ships have been deleted from the company’s website.
However, as recently as March 23, 2025, Ro Marine added a new shadow fleet vessel to their website.
