News / Shetland Catch fights compensation claim
THE LERWICK fish processing company at the centre of the UK’s largest black fish scam is resisting attempts to confiscate some £6 million in compensation, at the High Court in Edinburgh.
Shetland Catch has admitted making a profit of £6.157 million from illegal landings of herring and mackerel worth some £47.5 million between January 2002 and March 2005.
At the hearing which began on Tuesday and is expected to last several days, defence QC David Burns said that any profits made on illegal landings were more than wiped out by losses incurred due to a quota payback scheme, enforced by the European Commission.
A report before Lord Turnbull said that Shetland Catch had made total losses of some £11 million in the years following 2005.
He said the court should also take into account the thousands of pounds lost when Shetland Catch was shut down for three days during the investigation and the costs of re-structuring the company because of their losses.
The company pled guilty to having been involved in the scam in August 2010 but cannot be fined until the question of compensation has been decided.
Shetland Catch is the only company involved in the scam that had been unable to agree on a compensation payment under the Proceeds of Crime legislation.
Last December fishing boat skippers agreed to hand over a total of almost £3 million to settle confiscation demands in their cases.
And in February, seventeen skippers, including 13 from Shetland, as well as the former Alexander Buchan factory, in Peterhead, were fined a total of almost £1 million for defying quota regulations.
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