MURMANSK, Russia. May 20 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia's border guard confirmed there had been attempts by Russian fishing boats to sell poached fish in cordoned-off military areas on Russia's Kola Peninsula, but said it possessed no evidence of poachers bribing officials in order to be able to enter such areas.
On Tuesday, media reports cited the head of the Directorate of Fisheries of the Norwegian region of Finnmark, Hermod Larsen, telling Norwegian television and radio company NRK that his agency possessed evidence that smaller vessels have been obtaining fish from trawlers and then penetrating Russian military areas by paying bribes.
"There have been such instances [of poaching], and we are aware of them. But we have no information that any officials have been getting any bribes for this," the spokesman for the Murmansk regional border guard branch, Col. Alexei Astashkin, told Interfax on Tuesday.
On April 21, the head of the branch, Maj. Gen. Vyacheslav Biryukov, sent a letter to the commander of the North Norway Armed Forces, Rear Adm. Trond Griting, with "a request for official information from our Norwegian counterparts on instances of corruption amongst the Russian military in order to enable us to verify it on the spot and prosecute those guilty if it were confirmed," Astashkin said.