Russian defector breaks silence

Press, 20 July 1987, Page 3

Russian defector breaks silence

By

BILL MOORE,

“Nelson Evening Mail,” through NZPA The Russian fisherman who defected in Dunedin last year has broken a 10month silence to allege high-level corruption in the Soviet fishing industry. Mr Vitaly Sinilo, aged 47, now living in Nelson, has spoken out in response to a Soviet newspaper article calling him a drunkard and “a man who holds nothing dear.” He said that he feared for the health of his wife, Zoya, aged 50, and hoped publicity would lead the Soviet authorities to give her his money, which he said they had so far refused to do. He hopes that she, his sons, Andrei, aged 27, and Vadim, aged 18, his daughter-in-law and his year-old grandson, Omitri — whom he has never seen — will one day be able to join him in New Zealand. Mr Sinilo says Soviet ships’ crews were told he had defected last September because he was an alcoholic who wanted to drink cheap vodka in New Zealand and now “sleeps all day somewhere under a bridge.” The real reason, he said, was because he had listed corrupt activities by people as high as a Soviet Deputy Minister of Fisheries in a letter to the Minister of Fisheries — a letter which never arrived — and that it had become clear to him that the only way to avoid arrest was to defect.

He told his story in a

long letter to a Russian reporter who attacked him in his local newspaper, the "Sakhalin Fisherman.”

In it, Mr Sinilo accused a Deputy Fisheries Minister, Nikolai Ivanovych Lysenko, and other officals and shipmasters of corruption. He wrote of practices such as using ships’ food money to buy expensive items such as tape recorders and cameras to take back to Russia. One ship’s crew, of which he was a member, discovered it had been eating sausage intended for dog food.

Mr Sinilo was the first mate and assistant political officer aboard the Soviet trawler Lesogorsk when he defected. He is now woking as a crewman in the Skeggs Corporation squid boat Ohau, based at Port Nelson. Interviewed through an interpreter, he said he had gone to the newspaper as “the end of the road.” The Soviet authorities had broken an agreement made with him in October at a meeting in Auckland, when they had said they would not allow newspaper reports to be written about him in the Soviet Union if he did not speak to the press in New Zealand. He had learned that his unpaid salary, about $4OOO, had not been passed on to his wife as promised. The newspaper article had caused her tremendous suffering. She did not believe it, but she felt ashamed and isolated. She

had not been well in the past and he was very worried about her.

Two weeks ago Mr Sinilo wrote to the Soviet Embassy in New Zealand expressing his concerns, but said he had received no reply. He said he was very lonely, but lived in hope that his family might be able to join him. He was careful about his activities and did not feel himself to be in any danger. The decision to defect, finally made just two or three days before he did so, had been the right one. Mr Sinilo said he was very grateful to Skeggs Corporation for offering him work and for the way he had been treated, and especially to the skipper of the Ohau. He sometimes had contact with Soviet seamen from the trawlers which were frequent callers at Nelson, and was working “very very hard” on English language. The “Sakhalin Fisherman” article, carrying the byline of Ludmila Vecherskaya, and Mr Sinilo’s letter of reply to her, were translated by the senior lecturer in Russian at the University of Canterbury, Mr John Goodlife.

Mr Sinilo said he had sent his letter to the reporter, and had also written to the Soviet dissident, Andrei Sakharov, appealing to him to get in touch with his wife and offer her some support.

The letter to Mr Sakharov had yet to be sent, he said.