07 June 2004 16:08
Russian TV report details extent of corruption in fishing industry
[Presenter] The week began with news of a bribe worth 3,700,000 dollars. According to the Interior Ministry, it was
given to the State Fisheries Committee. Boris Sobolev reports.
[Correspondent] Searches, interrogations, arrests. Again in the fisheries authority, and again for corruption and
skulduggery in the issue of fishing quotas. This time it was Aleksandr (?Tukushev), a former deputy chairman and now
head of the committee's liquidation commission. He and three others were arrested at an upmarket dacha in Zhukovka,
near Moscow. [Passage omitted]
This is Gennadiy (?Natulin). Before falling in with Tukushev, he ran the State Property Ministry's premises
department. He was charged with conspiracy to embezzle the state interest in the Zhemchuzhina hotel, Sochi, to a cost to
the state of 3m dollars. He spent the summer of 2002 in Lefortovo prison. He was then released, and here he is getting
caught again. Because of fish this time.
Another swindler is Aleksandr Lisakov, a former State Fisheries Committee official and now running a major unitary
enterprise under the Ministry of Transport. He used to be in charge of managing the roadsides in central Russia, a
business worth millions [currency not specified] a year: building shops, filling stations, carwashes, hundreds of
advertising hoardings along the highways. What do they find during the search: papers about the distribution of fishing
quotas. And this certificate, of the award to Mr Lisakov of an engraved watch from the Russian president. According to
the organized crime squad officers who carried out the search, a year ago they found an illegal printing house that was
producing just this kind of certificate. They were being sold for 200 dollars each, plus R100 for the frame. [Passage
omitted]
And finally, our last here is Vladimir Chekunov, also a former official at the State Fisheries Committee. His links
to Tukushev go back to his days as an apprentice with the Murmansk shipping fleet. According to detectives, Chekunov was
a middleman between dealers in Moscow and fishery companies in the provinces. One such company is Polluks, based in
Khabarovsk. It sent 3,700,000 dollars to Moscow in return for a promise it could bypass a tender for a quota of 50,000
tonnes of pollack. The company fears the worse, because the money had been borrowed.
[Vasiliy Polukarov, member of Polluks board of directors] I think it was simply payment for a quota, which an
official apparently promised but for whatever reason couldn't deliver. And the money's already been handed
over. The bank could turn up at any time, knock on the door and say to the wife, come on, pay it back. [Passage omitted:
expands on this]
[Correspondent] Indeed, the businessmen were simply taken for a ride. Without waiting for their promised quota and
maybe to save themselves from their creditors, the bribe-givers went to the Moscow organized crime squad. They're
now staying at a police safe house.
[Oleg Yelnikov, head of Interior Ministry organized crime squad press office] We're well aware that what happens
next largely depends on their testimony and of course we'll be doing everything we can, up to and including
physical protection for them, so that nobody can get near them with ill intent.
[Correspondent] What the bribe-takers expected to receive in all this is not clear. Detectives say it's good
that the victims came to them. They could have taken other, more radical, action. Be that as it may, four State
Fisheries Committee officials are now facing up to 10 years in jail for corruption and fraud. And they are not the
first.
Here are just some of their predecessors.
A first deputy chairman of the Committee, Mikhail Dementyev - abuse of office, dealing in quotas, five years in the
camps. Similar charges were brought against a former chairman of the Committee, Yuriy Sinelnik. A deputy chairman, Yuriy
Moskaltsov, got four years in jail last April for embezzlement and fraudulent dealing in crab quotas. In the same case,
the director of a fisheries research institute, Aleksandr Rogatnykh, went to jail for three years. The same crab quotas
were the downfall of yet another deputy chairman, Leonid Kholod. [Passage omitted]
[Correspondent] These are the corridors of the former State Fisheries Committee, now the Federal Fisheries Agency.
Silence. Some are in jail, the rest have yet to be hired. One man is on the job - the new chief, Stanislav Ilyasov, who
was brought in from Chechnya.
[Ilyasov] We don't yet have a full staff. I'm the only person here so far. I've only just been
appointed and I don't have a secretary yet, just a temp. I'm the only one working here, that's the
situation.
[Correspondent] According to Mr Ilyasov, the situation is this - the fishing fleet is on the verge of collapse and is
nearly 80 per cent worn out. Legal jobs are melting away while poaching is on the increase. Official catches have fallen
by two thirds in the past 10 years, and imports of fish from abroad have trebled in the same time. [Passage omitted]
[Correspondent] Five ministers have been replaced in the fishing authorities in the past six years. Each one of them
talked about the industry's disintegration and changed the rules for issuing quotas. Mr Ilyasov is the sixth. He
suggests cancelling the annual quotas altogether and instead issuing them wholesale, for five or 10 years. His reasoning
is pure Russian - so there'd be less bribery going on.
[RTR Russia TV] |
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