Russia's 'Crab King' given 17-year jail sentence in absentia for ordering murder

A court in Russia's Far East has sentenced a prominent local businessman known as the "Crab King" to 17 years in prison in absentia for ordering the murder of a competitor, Russian media reported on Friday.

A court in Russia's Far East has sentenced a prominent local businessman known as the "Crab King" to 17 years in prison in absentia for ordering the murder of a competitor, Russian media reported on Friday. Oleg Kan was the operator of several large fishing enterprises, including a group of crab companies, on Russia's Pacific island of Sakhalin, just north of Japan, the Kommersant newspaper said.

Kan's business specialised in catching and exporting Russia's Kamchatka crab, or red king crab, a multi-million dollar business. In 2005, an unknown person shot Kan several times. Kan survived, and suspected his business rival, Valeriy Phidenko, was involved and decided to take revenge, investigators found.

In October 2010, Kan invited Phidenko to a business meeting, and a hitman shot the Phidenko in his car when he arrived, according to the indictment cited by Kommersant. For years, Kan remained free, and his business empire continued to grow. But in 2018, he fled to Japan on a private plane following the release of a film about illegal crab fishing which implicated his enterprises, Kommersant reported.

In 2020, authorities ordered Kan's arrest, now 57, in absentia for orchestrating Phidenko's killing. Kan was also charged in a separate case with smuggling more than 3,000 tons of live crab from Russia to Japan, China and South Korea worth 2.6 billion roubles ($28 million), as well as evading up to 3.69 billion roubles in taxes.

Kan's whereabouts are unknown. Last year, rumours circulated in the local fishing industry that he had died in Britain. Kommersant reported that lawyers for Kan's family submitted a notarised copy of his UK-issued death certificate to a court, which refused to accept it. Russia's Prosecutor General's office considers his death to be a staged event.

($1 = 92.1325 roubles) (Reporting and writing by Lucy Papachristou, Editing by Andrew Osborn and Timothy Heritage)

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