THE PURGES’ VICTIM

The story runs that the USA-EU economic restrictions won`t affect the “ordinary” Russians at once. If they, of course, are not on the black list, are not on the vaction abroad, and they don`t get involved in politics and do not perform songs such as "Moscow! Bells are ringing! " somewhere in public places.

And here comes the bad news: in radius of economic destruction appeared a simple-minded hard worker, a citizen of the Russian Federation, a ship engineer from the "SERENA" (flag ATG, IMO 9294977) vessel. In fact, our chief engineer is a typical proletarian from the vessel with a flag of convenience, assigned to the Antigua and Barbuda, quite profitable for a German capitalist. The seafarer has been working since the end of March, and, as we know, he hasn`t been seen neither in Crimea nor anywhere else in Ukraine. 

But our guy came under the ban on banking transactions related to the transfer of dollars through an American bank.

Besides him, there are also crew members from Lithuania, Romania and Ukraine on board of "SERENA" – quite an international team. They all get their wages quite regularly, even when it was paid with the delay in the mid of Summer, when the bankrupted “Interesee” from Ems handed the ship over to the “MC-Schiffahrt” in Hamburg – every seafarer got his owed money on the bank account, except of one – the Russias` citizen.

In the words of Cornell Pancic controlling the "KRU Maritime SRL" recruitment agency: "We have never encountered such a situation, although there were always transfers through the United States banks. In case of your seafarer one month passed - and what we got is an automatic payments` blocking. Only after persistent requests from our side, we`ve received an answer, that in order to unlock the payment, we need to clarify the details, i.e. the type of transfer, the base, the detailed information for the vessel...

K. Panchichi assures us, of having given all the necessary data to the American bank and hopes for a rapid payment. 
It all happened after an engineers` wifes` visit to our office, seriously worrying and demanding to bring her husband back home immediately. After all, who, being in his right mind and sober will work for free for several months, especially in the area of Nigeria? Indeed, it should be paid pay extra double. 
In our case, the seafarer doesn`t even get what belongs to him... We believe that, nothing serious has happened yet. While crewing hopes that the USA correspondent bank is about to lift up the money to the employee.

By Vadim Mamontov, the ITF inspector, Kaliningrad