Guilty plea over blackmarket paua
The director of a seafood company has admitted handing over wads of cash to buy hundreds of kilograms of blackmarket paua to sell in his store.
Giancarlo ‘Joe’ D’Esposito, a director of Hawke’s Bay Seafoods, would meet a man at the Napier premises of the company to pay cash for bags of minced paua between September 2014 and August 2015.
Unknown to D’Esposito, the man was an undercover agent working for the Ministry for Primary Industries as part of Operation River. The agent infiltrated the local fishing community in which the blackmarket activity was suspected.
He first contacted D’Esposito by calling him on September 17, 2014. D’Esposito told him to meet him at the Hawke’s Bay Seafoods premises that evening. That was the first of nine meetings at the premises in which paua was handed to D’Esposito in exchange for wads of folded cash.
He knew the man was not a commercial fisher, licensed fish receiver or fish farmer and that he was not buying legitimately sourced paua.
The minced paua, in zip lock plastic bags, would be weighed at the premises and D’Esposito would pay $20 a kilo, about a third of the wholesale price at the time. When the man asked for a better price, D’Esposito told him he could ‘‘get them legal for $25’’.
After the premises was raided by the ministry as part of a separate operation in late September 2014, D’Esposito told the man to ‘‘stop things for a couple of months until things go back to normal’’, but the third transaction took place just weeks later, on October 14, 2014.
In total, D’Esposito bought 457kg of minced paua and paid $9180 in cash. The wholesale value of the paua was $24,040. On September 1, 2015, the agent entered the Hawke’s Bay Seafoods fish and chip shop in Hastings and asked if he could buy a 1kg bag of frozen minced paua. The staff member went to a freezer in the store and returned with a bag and sold it to him for $60. The bag had identifying features that showed it was one he had sold to D’Esposito earlier. The following day, ministry compliance officers raided fishing opertions in Hastings, Napier and Mahia.
The operation uncovered 1.8 tonnes of paua and 600 crayfish, and officers seized one commercial fishing vessel, three recreational fishing vessels, one tractor, and 11 vehicles that were connected with blackmarket catch and sales.
D’Esposito and Hawke’s Bay Seafoods were among those charged, but had been granted name suppression. They have appeared in the Napier District Court on various occasions over the past three years.
Yesterday, D’Esposito appeared again and pleaded guilty to a charge of buying paua in contravention of the Fisheries Act. A lawyer for the company entered a guilty plea on its behalf. They will be sentenced in February.
Eight other people have been dealt with by the court on charges of illegally selling fish from Operation River.
They have received a range of sentences including prison, community detention, community work, $15,000 in fines and forfeiture of vehicles and cellphones and one ban from all fishing activity.
Hawke’s Bay Seafoods was bought in April by Kahungunu Asset Holding Company Ltd, which manages assets on behalf of Nga¯ ti Kahungunu Iwi Incorporated, and now operates as Takitimu Seafoods.