With the Baltic smugglers

Press, 14 January 1987, Page 15

With the Baltic smugglers

The Soviet tanker carrying the Second Officer Ivan Brunovsky began to deviate from its course. Examination revealed that a box forming part of its navigating equipment had been stuffed with four Orders of Lenin, three Orders of the Red Star, one Order of Glory, and other medals, reports Andrew Wilson, the London “Observer” correspondent in Moscow. Brunovsky (the magazine Ogonyek reveals) was taking them abroad to sell to foreign collectors. As if this were not

shameful enough for the son of a Second World War veteran, the officer, on an earlier trip homeward, had smuggled aboard 15« car radios — “and even two cars, under the guise of necessary spare parts.” The revelation is the latest in a series involving the smuggling of goods by ships’ crews and passengers, particularly on routesbetween the Soviet Union and Finland. Recently, a Finn, Palo Yarme, was accused of trying to bring in 21 copies of pornographic material in the bottom

of a biscuit tin; Valye Savolainen, another Finn, was accused of carrying four “antiSoviet” video-cassettes; and Zalma Nieminena, yet another Finn, of having SUSI4S« in a pot of flowers. ' According to “Ogonyek,” many of the Finns who visit the Baltic port of Tallin for a few days “do not come to listen to the opera and wander around the streets of the old quarter. out their heavy suitcases.* ’ Last November, the Finnish

newspaper “Helsingto Sanomat” reported that a large “contraband organisation” had been operating for four years in the Finnish port of Port... > > The organisers were alleged to have offered unemployed Finns a holiday to the UA&IL, IM roubles (just over S2X) to spend there, and a night to.a restaurant all to return for taking to Western goods to sell, and bringing out goods that carry a price in the West. Prominent among the former are jeans, running shoes, radios, watches, video ? cassettes, recorders, paintings, and antiques.