MOSCOW, January 21 (RAPSI) – Senegal has released a Russian trawler detained more than two weeks ago on suspicion of illegal fishing, the ship’s owner told Prime news agency Tuesday.
Feniks, the company that owns the Oleg Naidenov trawler, paid a $1 million deposit to secure the vessel’s release, a Russian state fisheries spokesman said Friday.
Yury Parshev, director of Feniks, said earlier Tuesday that each day the Oleg Naidenov spent moored in the dock was costing Feniks 1 million rubles ($30,000), and that the total damage to the company amounted to 19 million rubles ($565,000).
The trawler had been in custody in the port of Dakar since it was seized by Senegalese border guards off the coast of Guinea-Bissau on January 4 for allegedly fishing in Senegal’s exclusive zone.
The captain of the Oleg Naidenov, which was carrying 62 Russians and 23 Bissau-Guinean crew members on board, insists his vessel was fishing legally in waters belonging to Guinea-Bissau.
Updated with new headline and lede to include news of the vessel's release.
