THE skipper and mate of Britain’s biggest fishing boat have been given two weeks to pay back almost £1 million gained from illegal fish landings in Denmark.
John Peter Duncan, aged 57, and Jerry Ramsay, aged 51, both of Ollaberry, Shetland, must pay £495,000 each as compensation for landing more than 7,600 tonnes of herring and mackerel in the most serious black fish scam ever to reach court.
However the two men must also reappear at the High Court in Edinburgh for sentencing on 14 November where they face what could be enormous fines.
The value of the fish landed illegally by their pelagic trawler Altaire was £3.4 million, but after costs it was agreed the men had only gained £990,000 from the affair.
Yesterday (Monday), at the High Court in Edinburgh, Lord Kingarth was told that £1.6 million of the haul had been eaten up by operating costs and a further £776,000 had gone to the Inland Revenue in tax.
Furthermore, the court agreed that as each of the men only owned a 14.29 per cent stake in the boat, they only received a percentage of its earnings.
Earlier this year both men had admitted breaking European fishing regulations by landing the fish in a Danish port and altering their logbooks to conceal the true figures. The matter came to light when Scottish Fishery Protection Agency (SFPA) officers raided the offices of their Lerwick agents LHD and seized records, comparing them to those held in Denmark.
The SFPA discovered that between 2000 and 2002 the boat had landed 17,085 tonnes of mackerel but only declared 10,031 tonnes. They had caught 1,012 tonnes of herring but only recorded 469 tonnes.
Earlier this year in Glasgow the two men pleaded not guilty to a fraud charge for the same fish, instead admitting a statutory offence by which they have avoided going to jail.
The men are part owners in the new Altaire III, built in Turkey and launched in Norway last year. It cost £12 million and at 76 metres long is the biggest fishing boat in Britain.
Yesterday the Altaire was lying alongside Collafirth pier, in Northmavine, where the fishermen have been based since the 1970s. Normally the vessel would be out catching mackerel after the season resumed at the beginning of the month. However, the bulk of UK entitlement for mackerel this year was taken at the start of
the year and the UK fleet of 28 boats, eight of which are based in Shetland, has already caught its reduced 2005 quota of 30,000 tonnes. The industry hopes this will be increased next year to 40,000 tonnes.
www.fishupdate.com is published by Special Publications. Special Publications also publish European Fish Trader, Fishing Monthly, Fish Farming Today, Fish Farmer, the Fish Industry Yearbook, the Scottish Seafood Processors Federation Diary, the Fish Farmer Handbook and a range of wallplanners.
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