News / Shetland Catch face £6m compensation claim
LERWICK fish processors Shetland Catch are being asked to pay back more than £6 million in compensation in profits made from illegal fish landings.
The Gremista factory was at the centre of the UK’s biggest black fish scam, which has already seen 17 skippers ordered to pay millions in compensation and fines.
During a week of evidence and legal argument at the High Court in Edinburgh, prosecutors claimed that Shetland Catch should pay back £6,157,000 for profits they say the company earned from undeclared landings of herring and mackerel between January 2002 and March 2005.
Judge Lord Turnbull is expected to give his ruling on 14 June. Once compensation has been settled the company will face a heavy fine for its part in the scam, which involved hidden computers and false readings to fox inspectors.
In his final plea to the court on Monday, defence QC David Burns asked the judge to take into account the importance of Shetland Catch to the local economy.
The plant, which is the biggest of its type in Scotland and one of the largest in Europe, is a major employer in Shetland and was already struggling to cope with substantial debts, he said.
Mr Burns said the state had already received some of the illegally made profits in the form of corporation tax.
“It is not the case that the profits were being used to line the pockets of directors or shareholders,” he said.
Shetland Catch has admitted helping local skippers to defy quota rules.
Advocate depute Barry Divers said forensic accountants reckoned that more than a third of the mackerel and herring landed during that time was illegal and worth £47.5 million.
Mr Burns said the discovery of the scam meant fish quotas were drastically reduced turning profits into losses in subsequent years.
Last December fishing boat skippers agreed to hand over a total of almost £3 million to settle confiscation demands in their cases.
In February 17 skippers and a Peterhead-based fish processing firm were fined a total of almost £1 million for defying quota regulations.
Sentencing them, Lord Turnbull described the scam as “an episode of shame” for the industry.
Shetland Catch was brought to court by Operation Trawler, a seven year investigation by the then Scottish Fisheries Protection Agency which had become suspicious about the tonnage of mackerel and herring being landed.
Brian Horne
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