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No information available about bail talks for release of Russian trawler

MOSCOW/MURMANSK, January 07, /ITAR-TASS/. No information is available either in Moscow or in Murmansk about alleged negotiations between the owner of the Russian Oleg Naidenov fishing trawler, which has been under arrest at the Dakar military port since Sunday, and the Senegalese authorities about a bail of one million U.S. dollars for the release of the ship, spokesman for the Russian federal fisheries agency Alexander Savelyev told Itar-Tass.

“It is the matter of the ship owner to hold any talks to regulate its economic relations, we are shocked by the mere fact that a military operation had been staged against Russian and Guinea-Bissau citizens,” he said, commenting on the publication in the Senegalese newspaper Liberation.

Savelyev expressed the hope that the Oleg Naidenov crew would be released after a meeting between a Russian delegation with the Senegalese authorities due to begin in Dakar later on Tuesday. He stressed that Russia insisted on the “release of the crew and the ship.”

When asked to comment on the alleged one-million U.S. dollar bail talks, Yuri Parshev, executive director of Fenix, a company owning the trawler, said there had been no official claims or requests from the Senegalese authorities.

The Oleg Naidenov suspected of illegal fishing within Senegalese waters was seized by the Senegalese military 46 miles of Guinea-Bissau on Saturday with 82 crew onboard, including 62 Russians and 20 citizens of Guinea-Bissau, and convoyed to the port of Dakar on Sunday.

The Oleg Naidenov is owned by private company Fenix, registered in Murmansk, the extreme northwest part of Russia. It is a big fishing boat of Moonzund type, 120 meters long, built in Germany in 1989.

The crew remains on board the vessel under control of the Senegalese law enforcers. Sailors’ passports were confiscated after the trawler’s arrest. Among those detained are three women.