vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #589 / Crime watch / Reading article...

Investigators have launched a huge crackdown on crab poaching in the Russian Far East and seized documents from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky fishing port and Kamchatsky Center of Fishing Monitoring in connection with arrests of three businessmen in late September who are facing charges of illegal crab exports from Russia to the United States.

The law enforcers are checking the documentation of 15 ships belonging to the companies which were part of the holding ‘Eastern Fish Resources’ whose owners were arrested in Moscow on September 20.

Arkady Gontmakher, an American of Russian birth and head of the Seattle-based Global Trading (Fishing) company, and his two Russian associates Aziz Embarek and Alexander Suslov, are accused of illegal exports of crab and crab meat products to the United States. The investigators revealed that the contraband export reached 15,000 metric tons annually bringing the businessmen some $200 million in profits.

The investigators, performing searches in Moscow and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, suspect that fishing regulation officials could be part of the crab mafia chain.