Boat seized for illegal fishing was UK-funded

Around £1.1 million from the Commonwealth Development Corporation was invested in the Sierra Fishing Company which owns the boat, the Marampa 803, through private equity firm ManoCap, its founder said.

Sierra Leone’s military captured the 200ft ship and its crew in mid-January after it was spotted trawling in waters reserved for local fishermen. Illegal fishing costs West African governments around £600m in lost revenue each year.

“We have asked ManoCap to undertake a thorough review with Sierra Fishing Company to establish why this happened and to report back to us with the details of the actions to be taken to ensure that this does not happen again,” a CDC spokesman said.

CDC, founded in 1948 with an aim to demonstrate “the power of enterprise and private capital to reduce poverty in the poorest places of the world,” invested £3m in ManoCap in 2009. CDC says its investments were self-financing, and it had received no new public funds since 1995.

ManoCap is a private equity fund manager operating in West Africa which aims to deliver returns to investors while creating local wealth and employment.

ManoCap founder Tom Cairnes said £1.1m of the CDC’s £3m investment went to Sierra Fishing Company, and that just £11,000 made it to the Marampa 803. He said the vessel’s management had been outsourced to a Canary Islands-registered firm, Taerim Ltd. “We took the decision to outsource management, and then didn’t spend time looking at what the vessel was doing,” he said, adding that the management would be changed.

UK-based Environmental Justice Foundation said: “There was a worrying failure to ensure the company CDC invested in conformed to expected standards.”