Operatives of the Southern Regional Department of the State Border Service jointly with the police seized the vessel Bospor (the flag of Moldova), illegally shipping sailors and residents of the Odessa and Kherson regions across the state border. This is stated on the website of the State Border Service. The joint interdepartmental group, in the framework of criminal proceedings, for a long time carried out measures to document and counteract the functioning of an organized criminal group.

As law enforcers found out, during 2015-2017, violators, using foreign ships, carried out illegal shipment of seamen through closed border checkpoints in the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. In addition, it was found that during this period the organizers of the canal illegally smuggled across the border almost 100 residents of the Odessa and Kherson regions. The preliminary amount of the appraised property estimate is about 44.5 million UAH.