Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1085429
3 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 24 FEBRUARY 2019 NEWS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Even then, he said that after monitors are no longer on site to inspect the harvesting, the rules of the game change. "When the tuna is fished out of the cage and onto the reef- ers to be killed and frozen, a lot more unaccounted killing takes place after the monitors leave. If the freezers do not get properly examined by the department's monitors – and they do not get checked prop- erly – then you can rest as- sured that they will carry even more tuna than what is being recorded. "And what I can still not understand is why fisheries enforcement officials are not realising that some farmers are just dumping the head, fins and tail of the tuna at sea. It is quite incredible that this has never been picked up by them." The whistleblower insist- ed on anonymity, explain- ing how lifting the lid on the egregious practices of certain tuna ranching companies, car- ried with it dangerous conse- quences. "Millions of euros are involved here, and few, if anyone, is willing to risk eve- rything to speak about some- thing like this. Who can you trust in a situation where un- derpaid government officials end up having a price of their own?" Malta was only recently rocked by a scandal that started in Spain, after police released summaries of phone taps showing the Maltese fish- eries director Andreina Fene- ch Farrugia speaking intimate- ly to a director of the Spanish tuna giant Fuentes, which owns the Mare Blu company in Malta, on a Spanish phone- line paid by the Fuentes com- pany itself. Fenech Farrugia has since then been suspended and con- tinues to insist (Letters, page 19) that she has never accept- ed any bribes from Fuentes as alleged in the phone-taps' summaries published in the Spanish press. "Everyone in the business will tell you that Andreina was close to Fuentes… you can un- derstand why from the recent press reports," the insider said. "What I cannot understand is why fisheries enforcement officers were stopped, spe- cifically, from making surprise inspections at fish shops and restaurants where they can monitor their sales of tuna. When this decision was tak- en… private fishermen just went directly to the shops to sell undeclared tuna catches." Lax enforcement allows for gross abuse A 2009 mission report by the Internal Audit and Investiga- tions Department – an au- dit unit within the Office of the Prime Minister that also carries out investigations at the request of the European Commission – had shed light on allegations first reported by MaltaToday in 2008. At the time, MaltaToday was following up on an illegal ref- lagging exercise of tuna purse seiners by the fishing compa- ny Azzopardi Fisheries, and later on a gross inconsistency in Maltese tuna catches with the declared import figures presented by Japan – one of the major consumers of Blue- fin tuna. This was the start of an ex- tensive investigation into the laundering of illegal tuna catches, after MaltaToday pinpointed a discrepancy of over 6 million kg between in- ternational trade reports and the declarations of the Mal- tese fisheries department. While Japan's official statis- tical declarations to ICCAT (the international tuna con- servation authority), indi- cated that Malta would have exported to Japan nearly 12 million kg of tuna between June 2007 and March 2008, an industry intelligence re- port published by ATRT sug- gested that the total stock of live tuna in Malta's fish-farms at the time – and therefore available for export – could not have been more than 4.8 million kg. This figure was reached after subtracting this year's surplus, as well as a quantity of fish lost during a storm in October 2007, from an initial estimate of 6.4 mil- lion kg. The Maltese government in- sisted that Japan had wrong- fully recorded re-exports that had been transhipped through Malta, a claim to Japan in its official statistical export and re-export declaration. But the IAID report pub- lished in the House of Repre- sentatives by Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi last week shows that inspectors had in- vestigated similar allegations to those reported by Malta- Today. One of the findings con- firmed that caging figures for 2008 were not reliable. It said figures provided by Azzopar- di subsidiary AJD Tuna Farm differed from those provided by the fisheries department (FCD). Taking all the farms visited by inspectors, the total discrepancy turned out to be 149 tonnes of tuna, or 1,292 fish. Another finding was that fish which never actually came to Malta, from Turkey, was still written on a caging declaration endorsed by the FCD. An invoice from Malta Fish Farming to a company in Turkey and an ICCAT 'trans- fer at sea' declaration showed that the tuna was transferred onto a Turkish receiver ves- sel; additionally, no invoice was found for 175,000 kg of tuna sold to Turkey in 2008. Storm mystery One of the questions raised by the inquiry team was how some 272 tonnes of tuna had been lost to a storm in De- cember 2009 from the Ta' Mattew fish farms, while the Mare Blu farm had not suf- fered any damage. From data provided by the FCD's scientific officers, it was not easy to establish the weight of the tuna that was in the cages prior to the storm, although the team insisted this was close to 490 tonnes. The main issue was that 262 tonnes in one cage, which had been caged by an Algerian purse seiner, had never been authorised by the Algerian authorities, so it could not have been caged without the necessary documentation. The tuna was caged provi- sionally pending the docu- mentation, but the European Commission's directorate ordered its release on 21 De- cember. The FCD gave the operator the 31 December as a deadline for the tuna re- lease. On 20 December, a Europe- an Commission inspector was invited to Malta but was stuck in Milan because of stormy conditions and eventually re- turned to Brussels after hear- ing of the storm incident in Malta. That same day, the Ta' Mattew company informed the FCD that the storm had destroyed the farm, and the police took a statement from the farm owner and the FCD's director. The inquiry team met both the Ta' Mattew owner and his insurance broker, who showed them photos of the broken cages and dead tuna. According to the Met Of- fice, the weather conditions were not severe at the time, although the insurance bro- ker pointed out that the main problem was the strong un- dercurrents that destroyed the farms – building up over six days at strong speeds of three knots. The broker said the amount of lost tuna was 318 tonnes, for which the insurance firm paid out €3.9 million. IAID confirmed MaltaToday tuna reports in 2008 Lifting the lid on the egregious practices of certain tuna ranching companies, carries with it dangerous consequences