A huge black-market operation in fish and other marine products is being carried out with the full knowledge and participation of senior shipping-company officials, an Interior Ministry investigator said Wednesday.


"The overwhelming majority of all illegal dealings in sea products from this country are carried out by shipping companies and their captains," Nikolai Kharzhevsky, a senior investigator for serious crimes, said in an interview with The Moscow Times .


He said the usual ploy would be for a top employee of a shipping company to sign a delivery contract with a foreign company, arrange a delivery far larger than the one covered in the contract and then make a huge profit on the difference.


"No businessmen will refuse to buy extra goods if the prices are lower than in the official agreement," he said. "Very often Russian and foreign so-called partners connive to make money."


He cited the case of the general director of the Arkhangelsky Trawler Fleet, Ivan Degtyarov, who was arrested last November with seven captains and most of their crew members.


Kharzhevsky said Degtyarov had signed an agreement with Arni Veres, a representative of Hammerfest Ships Expedition company in Norway. The two men had then organized a huge volume of illegal exports, dividing the profits between them.


Kharzhevsky said the Russian company had deposited $1.1 million from excess sales in a bank account in Hammerfest.


But according to Kharzhevsky the total losses represented by the illegal exports amounted to more than $7 million.