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A consortium of Russian shareholders may take over the shipping company VostokTransFlot after a fight for a controlling interest with American companies at a shareholders meeting Aug. 28.

The board of directors elected as acting general director Alexei Dmitrenko, a manager with the investment corporation Partnyorstvo, which holds 5.86 percent of the shares.

Representatives of Anderson Consulting Service, Jidax Limited and ULM Enterprise also won positions as directors. But the Zolotoi Rog newspaper reports that their blocks of stock will be resold to Russian companies, and they will leave the board soon.

As a director, Dmitrenko sees his first goal in paying workers who haven’t been paid in five months. To do this, VTF might take out a loan.

“The company has very good assets, and it can work perfectly if we clean up its past debts,” he said. The company finished 1996 with 7 billion rubles ($1.2 million) in losses. However, that was less than the previous year, when the loss was 20.9 billion rubles ($3.6 million).

Former General Director Victor Ostapenko reported to the meeting that the main result of his work was withdrawing 30 ships loaned to Tans Ocean Express, an American operator. An agreement allowed Trans Ocean to use the fleet in exchange for a share of the profits. But VTF never received its share, Ostapenko said.

VTF has a new partnership with a Cyprus company, Trans Dol, under an agreement that allows VTF to watch the company closely, he said. But Ostapenko’s predecessor, Victor Mistyuk, who signed the agreement with Trans Ocean, said the deal still leaves VTF vulnerable.

“The same thing will eventually happen with Trans Dol,” he said.

However, VTF is still trying to get another 11 ships back.

Ostapenko said, “Trans Ocean never paid its debts, either for fuel or for repair; that’s why our ships were arrested ... We had to pay all the back debts of the operator.”

Now VTF is preparing a lawsuit against Trans Ocean, he said.

VTF also faces some domestic problems, Ostapenko said. Some captains have stolen equipment.