Distress signal from Partner schooner could be false – specialist

MOSCOW, January 10 (Itar-Tass) – The Partner fishing schooner engaged in poaching in the Tatar Strait most likely sank, but there is another version – the distress signal could have been false, the head of the Russian Federal Agency for Fishery (Rosrybolovstvo), Andrei Krainiy, told reporters on Monday.

“If the vessel did sink, it is impossible to find traces, but there is another version. The ship gave a false distress signal to escape to some port in the Asia-Pacific Region, most likely to Japan, be repainted and renamed, get a new package of documents and set off fishing as a new schooner,” Krainiy said.

On August 7, 2010, for violating fishing regulations in the exclusive economic zone of the Russian Federation this fishing vessel, before the arrest known as The Glen Grant, owned by the company SGI CO., LTD, registered in Belize, and flying the flag of Cambodia, was detained by the border guards and escorted to Kholmsk. October 8, 2010 the schooner was transferred to the shipowner on bail.

The head of Rosrybolovstvo said the following fact suggests such developments. Neither the shipowners from Belize, nor the authorities of Cambodia, where the ship is registered, have reported the ship missing. In Sakhalin, where the crew lives, nobody went to police to report that their next-of-kin were missing.