THE CAPTAIN OF a river cruise ship involved in a deadly collision last week with a smaller sightseeing boat in Budapest is already under investigation over another accident in April, Hungarian prosecutors said today, as the toll rose to 17.

After last week’s crash, the 64-year-old Ukrainian captain of the larger Viking Sigyn ship was arrested on suspicion of “endangering waterborne traffic resulting in multiple deaths”.

Hungarian press reports said the same man, named as Yuriy C, was being investigated over the collision of another Viking ship, the Idun, with a chemicals tanker near the Dutch city of Terneuzen on 1 April.

“He is being treated as a suspect in Holland,” the Metropolitan Chief Prosecutor’s Office told AFP in a statement, citing information from the EU judicial agency Eurojust, but without confirming the incident they were referring to.

In a statement sent to AFP today, Viking said: “We can confirm that even though the captain of the Viking Sigyn was onboard the Viking Idun on 1 April, he was not serving as the ship’s captain at the time of the incident.”

“We are unable to comment further while the investigations of both incidents are ongoing,” the statement added.

At the time of the April collision, the Idun had 43 crew and 137 passengers on board. Several passengers were injured.

Dutch authorities are still investigating the circumstances of that collision.

Hungarian prosecutors also said Thursday that the captain was suspected of “deleting data from his telephone after the collision” in Budapest.

The captain’s lawyers could not be reached for comment today but said in a statement issued last Friday that he was “devastated” by the accident and insisted that he did not make any errors.

Meanwhile the death toll rose to 17 after the bodies of two more South Korean tourists were identified, leaving 11 people still missing from the occupants of the Mermaid sightseeing vessel – nine South Koreans and two Hungarian crew members.

The Mermaid overturned and sank on 29 May seconds after colliding with the Viking Sigyn on a busy stretch of the Danube river in the heart of Budapest.

Only seven people are known to have survived the accident.

Divers have been unable to enter the sunken boat due to the strong current in a river swollen after weeks of rain.

A barge carrying a crane powerful enough to lift the Mermaid arrived in Budapest Wednesday but was to remain docked in the north of the city until the river level subsides enough to allow it to pass under several bridges to reach the accident scene.

Experts said the crane was unlikely to begin the salvage operation before the weekend.

The Viking Sigyn left Budapest with a new captain last Friday but Seoul has reportedly asked Hungarian authorities to return the ship to Budapest for the duration of the investigation.

- © AFP 2019