The Kamchatka fishing collective farm named after Lenin is asking the Moscow Arbitration Court to recover 360 million rubles from the Federal Agency for Fisheries (Rosrybolovstvo), which is trying to deprive the plaintiff of quotas for catching halibut and macruruses, according to materials available to RIA Novosti.
The lawsuit was filed in court on April 30 and has not yet been accepted for consideration. Meanwhile, in the Far East, the parties have been conducting proceedings since 2024 on the claim of Rosrybolovstvo for the termination of contracts with the Lenin collective farm for the fishing of aquatic biological resources.
In 2018, the Agency concluded three agreements with the company: for the catch of macruruses in the North Kuril zone, for the catch of halibut in the Kamchatka-Kuril subzone and for the catch of halibut in the West Kamchatka subzone. The contracts were concluded before the end of 2033, however, referring to the fact that the collective farm used quotas of less than 70% in 2022-2023, Rosrybolovstvo demanded that the contracts be terminated.
The defendant in the arbitration court of the Kamchatka Territory stated that “the main factor in the non-development of halibut quotas in 2022-2023 is the decline in the number of main halibut herds due to the large number of killer whales.” According to him, the figures were also affected by the coronavirus and sanctions, which delayed the construction of new vessels.
In March, the court terminated only one contract on the claim of Rosrybolovstvo – for the extraction of macruruses. The defendant, the decision says, could not name the reasons for not meeting the quota under this contract. Under the halibut fishing agreement in the Kamchatka-Kuril subzone, the court referred to another judicial act, which established that the collective farm had mastered 82% of the quota in 2022, so it cannot be said that it had not fulfilled the standard for two years in a row.
Regarding the contract for catching two types of halibut – white and black – in the West Kamchatka subzone, the court found that the quotas were mastered by the defendant in 2023 and 2024 by 73% and 63%. This “indicates that the Lenin RC made the necessary attempts to fulfill its obligations,” the court noted.
The court took into account the defendant’s explanations that both types of halibut are mined simultaneously, but the proportion of black has decreased to zero.
“Under such conditions, the absence of black halibut fishing indicates the absence of this type of aquatic biological resources when the defendant carries out trawling operations to catch halibut in general,” the court said.
Both the plaintiff and the defendant have filed appeals against the decision, which have not yet been considered.
According to BIR-Analytik, the founders of the Lenin fishing collective farm are 195 Russian citizens.