The skipper in charge of Hout Bay Fishing Industries’ West Coast rock lobster operations was told to keep two sets of record books.
|||The shore skipper in charge of Hout Bay Fishing Industries’ West Coast rock lobster operations was told to keep two sets of record books: one to keep track of legal lobsters and the other illegal catches.
Details of how Cape Town fishing magnate Arnold Bengis, his son David and his business partner, Jeffrey Noll, ran an elaborate scheme, exporting illegal amounts of West Coast rock lobster to the US, are contained in a 2004 document by Jeffrey Ray, a special agent from the US who investigated the Bengis case.
Ray travelled to Cape Town a decade ago and interviewed witnesses.
One witness he identified as CW1 told Ray their job was to “steal as much lobster as (he/she) could”.
CW1, who worked for Hout Bay Fishing Industries from 1993 to 2001, the year the company was shut down, told Ray the company had kept two sets of record books.
The one set, Sheet A, was used to record the amount of West Coast Rock lobsters it would declare to officials.
The second set, Sheet B, was to record the total quantity of West Coast rock lobsters, including illegally harvested ones.
CW1 had said the portion of illegally caught rock lobsters would be offloaded when no official inspectors were present.
The witness told Ray all the legally harvested West Coast rock lobsters were exported live, while the illegally harvested lobsters were “killed and tailed”.
Frozen tails were then sent to the US for distribution.
CW1 told Ray that when he or she first started working for the company, Bengis had said that 70 percent of the caught West Coast rock lobsters should be legal, while 30 percent should be illegal.
This ratio had then changed to 50/50.
CW1 said it had finally become 30 percent legal and 70 percent illegal.
During the 1999 to 2000 fishing season, CW1 told Ray that only 7 percent of the caught West Coast rock lobsters were legal, while 93 percent were illegal.
This meant that 50 tons were legally harvested and 780 tons were illegally harvested. - The Cape Times