AgnEf was founded in 1999 by some of the Swedish survivors and Swedish relatives to find out the true causes of the ESTONIA disaster. It was for the first time that survivors and relatives joined their forces and efforts to find out the truth about the casualty, which had changed their lives so dramatically. The chairman was Anders Ericson, one of the survivors, and the initial board consisted of survivors, e.g. Rolf Sörman and Mikael Öun, and of relatives, e.g. Odd Lundqvist and Bertil Calamnius. The organisation had about 250 members. Nowadays AgnEf has changed and many of the founding members have left. AgnEf is closely cooperating with the relatives organisation SEA.
With considerable personal involvement and financial efforts AgnEf successfully organised and managed the first – and so far only – “International MV ESTONIA Seminar” which took place on 29-30 May 2000 at the Enskede Conference Centre in Stockholm. About 200 participants mainly from Sweden but also from Finland, Estonia, Germany, the UK and the USA listened to and had discussions with 16 speakers from Sweden, the UK, Holland, Greece and the USA, the overwhelming majority of whom voiced the opinion that the JAIC Report was wrong in substance and conclusion, that available evidence had been ignored and had even been falsified, and that the ferry could not have sunk in the way explained by the JAIC. Although presented by some of the world’s leading experts in their field of expertise the partly striking evidence was more or less ignored by the Swedish media – not surprising in the light of the previous years’ experience. The former owners of MV ESTONIA were represented by lawyers, the JAIC was represented by its former members Hans Rosengren and Olle Noord and it was noted that the permanent observer of Sjöfartsverket to the JAIC, Sten Andersson, was also present together with the then head of the Sjöfartsinspektionen’s Stockholm office, Ulf Beijner.
Many important papers were presented to the audience, however for the purpose of this Update only six subjects presented by the Independent Fact Group and one subject - The sinking scenario - presented by two scientists, Professor D. Vassalos and Jan de Kat, shall be repeated and discussed in detail with reference to the respective parts of our Report.