Marx Men Sink A Few Schooners With A 21-gun Salut!

ERIC ELLIS, Vladivostok

5/29/95

IT WAS John Elliott who wanted to "Fosterise" the world, but even in his wildest dreams he probably wouldn't have imagined the Royal Australian Navy helping. Vladivostok dignitaries - that is, the ones mostly identified by the former Communist Party apparatchik who doubles as Australia's honorary consul in this rusting seaport - will today toast the launch of Foster's Lager in the frosty Russian Far East.

Weather permitting, they will be taken in their finest shiny suits on board HMAS Sydney, which docked here yesterday, and be handed cold cans of the amber nectar by a group of frontier capitalists and Russian girls in blue-and-yellow Foster's leotards. The action will all take place on the helicopter pad of the aircraft carrier, this week making the first goodwill visit by an Australian ship to the headquarters of the Soviet Union's once mighty Pacific fleet.

But it is a goodwill visit of our times. The Soviet Union is history, Russia is in the painful throes of transformation, and Canberra's foreign policy thrust is all about sniffing out new markets and getting our businessmen offshore.

Enter the unlikely marriage of the Australian military and corporate Australia - with a little bit of intriguing political history thrown in.

The Foster's promotion is being handled by the Melbourne-based company International Food Processing and provides a curious tale of what goes around, comes around. IFP has been trading Australian food products into Russia - and the Soviet Union before it - for about 15 years - and claims this accounts for about 70 per cent of its turnover of about $70 million.

If the name IFP doesn't mean anything, the name Commercial Bureau - out of which it developed when two executives left - might jog memories.

This was the company owned by the late ASIO informer Mr Laurie Matheson. It found itself at the centre of a Cold War scandal involving a one-time secretary of the ALP, Mr David Combe, and his friend and luncheon partner, Mr Valeriy Ivanov, a Canberra-based Russian diplomat and suspected KGB agent.

The 1983 scandal ended Mr Combe's career as a lobbyist and political high-flier and led to Mr Ivanov's expulsion.

Mr Matheson took many secrets to his grave in 1986, after selling his company to Elders IXL, then controlled by Mr Elliott, who had bought Foster's brewers Carlton and United.

IFP is run in Vladivostok by a New Zealander, Mr Michael Murray, and is now the major importer of Australian products to Russia's Far East. Vladivostok stores proudly display the likes of Cottee's toppings, Slades soft drinks, Berri juices and Big M flavoured milks.

This week's trade exhibition on HMAS Sydney also involves Australia's erstwhile representative in Vladivostok, Mr Vladimir Gavriluk.

Set up in an impressive office with four staff - all paid for by the Australian taxpayer - honorary consul Mr Gavriluk vigorously denies he is running a business from the premises.

Mr Gavriluk is a former prominent member of the Communist Party, and was an employee of the State trading house FESCO, one of the powers in the Far East.

He clearly enjoys the diplomatic status of his job, despite his inability to remember the name of the Australian Ambassador to Moscow, Mr Geoffrey Bentley (he eventually got the name from his card file), who was arriving the next day.

When the AFR caught up with Mr Gavriluk at the weekend, he was about to go to lunch at Vladivostok's smartest hotel, having alighted from his limo which was double-parked on the wrong side of the road outside the hotel.

Clearly, Mr Gavriluk has friends in high places, many of whom will no doubt be slurping Foster's on board the Sydney today.