Around one tonne of king crab claws were seized in Kongsvinger last weekend. This after customs officials stopped two large cars that were driving together on the E16 into Norway, writes Glåmdalen newspaper. The claws have an estimated value of NOK 1.2 million. According to the Norwegian Customs Service, the crab was caught illegally in Finnmark and transported in transit between Sweden. Not even legally. Morten Nystuen says it is not known who should have been the recipient of the crab claws. Photo: Bjørn Opsahl / news – It was the drivers themselves who said that the crab was caught illegally because they did not have a quota, says Morten Nystuen to news. He is section manager for the customs office in Kongsvinger. According to him, the persons were Norwegian, but he does not want to say where in the country they are connected. Will be linked to a criminal network news can now reveal that the police in Finnmark are connected to the case. They have launched an investigation into the two drivers. And according to the police, the two have been involved in large-scale crab fraud in the past. – Both people who were stopped are known to the police from one of the networks that were rolled up and investigated in 2019. The police will therefore have a focus in the investigation especially on the scope and possible organization of the new conditions, says police attorney Lisa Moon Sneve. The police may thus be on the trail of a new extensive crab scam. For the time being, Moon Sneve will not elaborate more on the investigation. news has also been in contact with the Directorate of Fisheries, but they refer to the police. A customs officer holds up king crab claws which are now being linked to fraud. Photo: Tolletaten Fraud revealed You have to go back several years to find a similar seizure carried out by customs officers, as was done in Kongsvinger last weekend. According to news’s knowledge, this last happened in 2019. Then customs officers at Polmak in Finnmark stopped a van on its way into Finland. There were 377 kilograms of crab claws in the car. This ensured one of the roll-ups that police attorney Lisa Moon Sneve shows above. Because almost at the same time, the police managed to expose two different criminal networks that ran large-scale king crab fraud. The network included people from all over the country. Many persons are later convicted. Some have received prison sentences. The main man in one of these networks was sentenced to three years in prison last year. In the verdict, it emerged that the man from Båtsfjord had fished 47 tonnes of crab illegally. He sold this further. The last of these cases has just been dealt with in court, but the verdict has not yet come. The king crab is lucrative and is sold to countries all over the world. Fishermen can get as much as NOK 1,000 for a crab. When the Norwegian Police Directorate presented its first threat assessment in 2021, they pointed to the fact that cheating and fraud in the fishing industry constitute a national threat. King crab east of the North Cape The king crab is a Pacific species that was released in the Murmansk Fjord in the early 1960s and has migrated west to Norwegian waters. For many years it was a plague and a nuisance for coastal fishermen in Eastern Finnmark, but now it has become a valuable resource. In 2002, commercial fishing for king crab was opened in Eastern Finnmark. The largest stocks are located from the Nordkapp and eastwards. Here there is a quota catch for crab, but currently only permitted for fishermen with a residential address in Eastern Finnmark, plus Nordkapp, Porsanger and Måsøy. West of the Nordkapp, there is free fishing with the aim of eradicating the crab.
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New large catch of king crab – being linked to the crab league – news Troms and Finnmark
