As BarentsObserver reported, The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has revealed a new method for fish fraud. Small motor boats transport fish from vessels in the Russian economic zone to shore in military towns on the Kola Peninsula. This week two motorboats transporting 4 tons of illegal caught fish were detained by FSB nearby Safonovo in the Bay of Kola, Murmansk Oblast.
According to Norwegian Broadcasting Cooperation Russian trawler captains have told Norwegian authorities that this kind of fraud is possible because of corrupt officers in FSB’s Border Guard Service. Poachers allegedly pay around 20.000 USD to land 100 tons of fish.
Accusations about corruption in FSB’s Border Guard Service have been flourishing on Murmansk-based internet discussion boards lately, news paper Murmansky Vestnik reports. One of the anonymous contributors claims to have video material of a border guard officer demanding bribes.
In a press conference on the issue, Head of FSB’s Border Guard Service in Murmansk Oblast Major General Vyacheslav Biryukov said that the reports on the discussion boards have been analyzed, and that the people behind the accusations have been found. Biryukov claims that they were members of an organized crime grouping who lost large incomes when the border guard terminated their business.
In course of the five last years, eight such groupings have been revealed, two of these in 2008.
According to Biryukov both the public and the military prosecutor in Murmansk Oblast have been asked to investigate the accusations. The Borders Guard’s own department for internal affairs is also making enquiries.
