Judge says ‘greed’ led skippers to land £7m of illegal fish

SKIPPERS involved in a multi-million-pound “black fish” scam were greedy criminals, a judge has suggested.

The High Court in Edinburgh is hearing pleas for leniency by 17 fishing boat masters caught by Operation Sea Dog.

They face heavy fines next month after admitting landing catches of mackerel and herring which were far in excess of EU quotas.

Yesterday it was the turn of Victor Buschini, 51, of Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire, and Hamish Slater, 53, of Fraserburgh – both masters of the Fraserburgh-registered Enterprise.

Their haul of “black fish” was valued at £7.2 million between January 2002 and March 2005.

The hearing prompted an exchange between judge Lord Turnbull and defence QC Gordon Jackson, for Buschini, after the lawyer revealed the fisherman was earning around £160,000 a year.

Lord Turnbull said that even after being caught and subjected to quota deductions to make up for their over-fishing, the skippers were still making “a handsome living”.

“What must it have been like when they were under-declaring? Why was there a need to make that much money?” asked Lord Turnbull.

The judge added: “It doesn’t seem that far from other criminal conduct. I am not suggesting it is as morally reprehensible as all that, but when it comes to it, is it not just greed?”

Mr Jackson replied that because of the confiscation of the illegal profits and the cut in quotas and the costs involved, Buschini and the other skippers had come out losers.

“Every penny has been paid back. They shot themselves in the foot,” he said. “They have ended up a lot worse off than had they not done it in the first place.”

The lawyer added: “They have come out of it very badly.”

Solicitor advocate Brian Fitzpatrick, defending Slater, said the skippers had suffered because their catches were restricted at a time when prices were soaring.

Mackerel had gone from £400 a tonne in 2005 to an all-time high of £1,100 a tonne.

He said there was also resentment in the industry because Iceland and the Faroe Islands – outside EU rules – had massively increased their landings, by 6,500 per cent in the case of Iceland. The EU rules which the skippers had broken were supposed to be a conservation measure, he said.

He added: “If everyone stuck to international agreements there would be no threat to fish stocks.”

Mr Fitzpatrick said the combination of his share of the catch and the profits from the company which owned the Enterprise had given Slater earnings of £320,000 in 2010.

All the skippers passing through the High Court in Edinburgh this week landed their illegal catches – valued at more than £40m – at the Lerwick-based Shetland Catch Limited.

The court has heard that at Shetland Catch officials of the Scottish Fisheries Protection Agency monitored catch sizes on computer screens which had been altered to show lower weights.

The true size of the landings of mackerel and herring were shown in an engineer’s room where the officials did not go.

The level of fines is expected to be announced in Glasgow at the end of next month.