News / Norwegian skipper fined £20,000
A NORWEGIAN fishing skipper who admitted trying to smuggle more than 75 tonnes of mackerel out of EU waters was fined £20,000 at Lerwick Sheriff Court on Wednesday.
Frode Kjempenes, of Bulandet, north of Bergen, was leaving the UK controlled part of the North Sea last Friday when his 22 metre trawler Buefjord was boarded by officers from the Scottish fisheries protection vessel Hirta and escorted into Lerwick harbour.
The court heard that some years ago the 43 year old had been fined £14,000 for a similar case where he failed to declare the full size of his catch
Procurator fiscal Duncan Mackenzie said that when the Buefjord was leaving British waters through one of two designated sea channels, he called the UK fisheries call centre to declare his catch.
Kjempenes said he had 55 tonnes of the high value fish on board, when in fact there was 125.8 tonnes in his hold.
The entire catch was sold at the Shetland Catch processing factory in Lerwick, with the excess 70.8 tonnes fetching around £60,000.
Yet defence agent Tommy Allan explained that even though the extra fish had been sold, Kjempenes would not be seeing any of the extra cash due to the way Norway distributes income from overquota fish to a central organisation.
He said that during a two day fishing trip Kjempenes had caught his remaining quota of 55 tonnes in two hauls, but then been offered extra fish by a fellow skipper who had already caught his full quota.
The value of the extra fish to the Buefjord was that buyers on the Norwegian fishmarkets paid a premium for larger catches.
“If he was able to present for auction a larger quantity of fish he might raise the individual price per tonne he could expect to get for it,” Mr Allan said.
“The economic benefit of what he was doing was to raise the value of the catch that he legitimately had by being part of a larger sale.”
The lawyer also said the skipper was struggling with a new electronic log book and had been without sleep for two days. “He was extremely sleep deprived,” he said.
He also said that Kjempenes, a married man with one child and twins on the way, had lost between £30,000 and £45,000 by having the Buefjord detained in Lerwick harbour for five days.
Fining him £20,000, honorary sheriff Malcolm Bell said that he had noted that Kjempenes had already been fined £14,000 for “a similar crime”, but he took on board his financial circumstances.
“You tried to pull the wool over people’s eyes and to a large extent it was premeditated,” he said.
A second Norwegian fishing boat was escorted into Lerwick harbour during the weekend. The fisheries protection service is currently preparing a report for the procurator fiscal about the Sklinnabanken, which has also sold its catch of mackerel at Shetland Catch.
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