Fisheries case: Crown seeks $1.5m fine

TOTAL fines of $1.5 million would be an appropriate penalty for a group of Hawke’s Bay fishermen and their companies who admitted falsifying details of catch records, the Crown says.

The defendants, including Antonino, Giancarlo and Marcus D’Esposito and several of their fishing companies, including Hawke’s Bay Seafoods, pleaded guilty in June to more than 100 charges laid by the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI).

The men and their companies came under official scrutiny when discrepancies were found between the amount of fish they reported catching and the amount they exported.

The trial, in the Wellington District Court, is one of the longestrunning cases to be heard in New Zealand.

The sentencing is expected to run for several days.

MPI launched an investigation in October 2012 and the charges laid as a result included selling fish not recorded in returns filed with the ministry, and making false statements.

Initially 355 charges were before the court relating to 32 exports of fish, such as bluenose and trumpeter.

However, many of those charges were amended or withdrawn during the proceedings. The three defendants and their companies entered guilty pleas in June and were convicted of 130 charges.

In a summary of facts, the ministry said Marcus D’Esposito recorded the weight of bluenose caught and that weight formed the basis for all other reports through the Quota Management System.

The unreported catch of bluenose was then sold to Australian customers.

MPI said Nino D’Esposito regularly communicated with one of his skippers while boats were at sea.

‘‘In those circumstances, and as a director of the defendant companies, he should have known that the [paperwork was wrong] and he failed to take all reasonable steps to prevent or stop [that].’’

The ministry said that while Joe D’Esposito did not know of the actual misreporting, as a person responsible for monitoring the catch, he should have known the exports contained more bluenose than was reported as landed.

‘‘[He] failed to take all reasonable steps to prevent those sales.’’

Nino D’Esposito has been involved in the fishing industry for more than 40 years and his brother Joe has been in the industry for 30 years.

Both have previous convictions for breaching the fisheries law.

Marcus D’Esposito has been part of the fishing industry for about 10 years and has no previous fisheries convictions.

Crown prosecutor Stephanie Bishop told the court yesterday the high degree of commercialism was an aggravating factor in the offending.

‘‘$253,000 was the value of the misreported bluenose. But [fisheries penalties] with a deemed value of more than $218,000 [were also] avoided.

‘‘The Ministry for Primary Industries acknowledges the profits are lower than in [a similar case involving orange roughy], but this was significant . . . offending.’’

Ms Bishop said there was also a longstanding, settled pattern of conduct by the D’ Espositos and their companies.

‘‘Based on their years in the industry they knew how much bluenose they were entitled to catch annually.’’

From 2011 New Zealand’s bluenose fishery was a stressed resource, she said, and while the extra fish taken by the defendants may only have amounted to 12% of the total allowable catch, that was significant.

Ms Bishop said the defendants also had a high level of knowledge of the extent and effects of their offending.

They used their own document, rather than official MPI paperwork, to record the actual weight of their catches, she said.

‘‘This was their only opportunity to record the true weights. Those false catch documents led to flowthrough in other paperwork.’’

She said Marcus D’Esposito failed to take reasonable steps to ensure that did not occur, and he had a particular responsibility for doing so as general manager of Hawke’s Bay Seafoods.

‘‘He controlled amounts of bluenose reported to the ministry . . . as he knew the weights of bluenose falsely recorded in weighin sheets and he completed some of those himself.

‘‘He was fully aware that Hawke’s Bay Seafoods sold unreported bluenose to wholesale and other customers in relation to those underreported events.’’

That led to a high level of loss and damage to the fishery, and caused serious harm to MPI’s management of the bluenose fishery, Ms Bishop said.

‘‘As it is then based on false or misleading information. As a result it may be further overfished. That impedes the realisation of longterm benefits to New Zealand, including for iwi quotas.’’

Counsel for the defendants say $600,000 would be an appropriate total fine. — RNZ