Murmansk court case against Norwegian fishing company comes to end
After five rounds in the Russian court system, the owners of trawler «Remøy» decides to pay the fine.
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«We are convicted for a mistake which we have not committed,» says Olav Remøy, board leader of Remøy Havfiske, the shipowner.
According to Fiskebåt.no, Remøy will have to pay a fine of 8.1 million NOK (€ 820.000). After five rounds in the Russian court system, the Norwegians decided not to appeal the last verdict.
Olav Remøy says he expects Norwegian authorities to assist.
«We ended up in this situation because of a mistake made by the Fishery Directorate, and we therefore take for granted that Norwegian authorities take responsibility and fix this so that crew and company get compensated for the loss inflicted on them as part of this case,» he says to Fiskebåt.
The Norwegian trawler was on the 10th May arrested by the Russian Coast Guard for illegal fishing of shrimp in Russian waters.
The Norwegian Fishery Directorate soon confirmed that an administrative error on the Norwegian side had been the reason for the detention of the ship. The trawler had applied for license to shrimp catch as part of a Norwegian quota in Russian waters. The license was issued, however the documents submitted by the Directorate to the Russian side included mistakes.
The court in Murmansk originally demanded 394 million rubles (€6.2 million) from the Norwegian shipowner and an additional 197 million rubles (€3.1 million) from the captain for the release of the trawler. The sums were based on the marked price of the shrimps caught by the vessel during its more than three weeks of fishing in Russian waters.
In early June this year, the vessel returned to Norway after three weeks of arrest in Murmansk. Norwegian authorities had then provided a 90 million NOK bail guarantee.
