FISHING PERMITS

Will justice be done?

 

A verdict given by the National Treasury Prosecution states indisputably the absolute nullity of an illegal transference of fishing permits carried out in 1999 in Pedro Moscuzza S.A. firm’s favour, and support the legal proceedings conducted by the Fisheries National Director, Nélida Videla, who had been challenged by that firm.

 

This is a long and tortuous story, as every story of this kind. Those who insist on writing about them have to go up and down the rough grounds of not always subtle swindles intertwined with quotations from administrative law and with the evident unwillingness of some officials from the recent past to pay enough attention to what they were signing.

 

It is unavoidable to appeal to the reader’s patience and goodwill in order that we can go together through the whole process. We need patience in order to follow the plot and all its twists and turns. We need goodwill in order to fill some descriptive hole which sometimes is difficult not to omit.

 

This story starts on 11th October 1978, when Mediterránea S.A. firm was granted with a first precarious and provisional fishing permit for the Santa Eugenia fishing vessel.

 

Santa Eugenia was a freezer (factory trawler) vessel built in 1951, of almost 72 m in length, 1,250 cubic metres of hold –approximately 15,000 fish boxes to express it in “ice chilling fishing” terms- and 1,370 hp horsepower.

 

On 29th March 1984, this vessel was granted with the last precarious and provisional fishing permit for 60 days and, a month later, the owner firm asked the court to start the preventive suspension of payments proceedings.

 

However, the request procedure for a definitive permit was still kept under way and, in June 1989, a definitive fishing permit was granted to Santa Eugenia. Under its terms, the vessel was prohibited from catching hake or shrimp, restricted species since 1988. The representatives of Mediteránea S.A, firm were notified a month later and raised no objection.

 

Luis Angel Fernández appears

 

The matter seemed to have been cleared up. However, three years later –25th February 1992- Luis Angel Fernández –currently, a well known proxy for Pedro Moscuzza S.A. firm- presents himself as Mediterránea S.A. proxy, questions the permit granted to Santa Eugenia, and requests that it be transformed into an unrestricted one.

 

Nine days after his presentation, and without any kind of procedure mediating, the Fisheries National Director at the time granted that vessel a new definitive fishing permit, in which hake fishing was not restricted but from which shrimp fishing remained excluded.

 

The unusual speed was accompanied by a further difficulty: the signatory official did not have authority to perform that function.

 

In the meantime, Mediterránea S.A. firm bankruptcy continued under way in Comodoro Rivadavia Commercial Court which, six years later, on 29th December 1998, sends an official letter to the fisheries authority informing that Santa Eugenia vessel ownership along with its fishing permit had been transferred to Pedro Moscuzza S.A. firm. The letter also stated that such a permit had to be granted to the vessel/s pointed out by that firm.

 

However, the Court refers to a definitive and unrestricted permit, while Santa Eugenia permit was restricted. In a later official letter, the Court clarifies that the permit in question is the one in force at the time of the preventive suspension of payments proceedings; in other words, on 30th April 1984, when the permit was provisional and non definitive.

 

Luis Angel Fernández reappears

 

While these official letters are full of contradictions –which in fact would have prevented the execution of the Court order- on 12th January 1999 Luis Angel Fernández presents himself again before the fisheries authority, this time as proxy for Pedro Moscuzza S.A. firm, but without proving it properly. In addition, he requires that Santa Eugenia permit be transferred to Don Cayetano, Itxas Lur and Stella Maris I vessels.

 

It is worth mentioning that only just five months after, Fernández presents the power of attorney that gives him the right to be the representative of Moscuzza, and although he states that it was a renewal, no previous power ever existed. Besides, Itxas Lur and Stella Maris I vessels did not formally belong to Pedro Moscuzza S.A. but to joint ventures formed in the frame of the fishery agreement signed with the European Union; these ventures never provided any evidence of the share linkage among them.

 

Despite all these contradictions and only just three months after Fernandez’s reappearance –and two months before his power accreditation-, the fisheries authority approves again, with great care, Resolution No.182/99. This document grants everything requested, incurring itself contradictions and falsities in its decisive statements, since it repeats Fernandez’s arguments.

 

In this way, article 1 of the resolution refers to the transfer of a definitive and unrestricted permit in favour of the three vessels mentioned above, and in the following articles catch quotas are distributed among those vessels, excluding shrimp. These quotas were allocated as hold complements, a legal figure which was never authorized but used on repeated occasions in order to increase fishing effort.

 

The truth comes out

 

It is worth mentioning that this resolution along with a subsequent attached modification were questioned by the Head of Permits Section at the time, Nélida Videla (Fisheries National Director at present), who required that they be no longer valid and that an administrative indictment be presented in order to define responsibilities.

 

When holding office as Director, Videla asked that 1992 permit be declared null, that Resolution No. 182/99 be suspended, and that its revocation in terms of absolute and incurable nullity be required in legal headquarters.

 

In the face of this, the firm challenged Videla, but the National Treasury Prosecutor’s verdict, which dates from March 2003 and was apparently sleeping peaceably in a drawer of the Undersecretariat of Fisheries, restored the adequate state of affairs:

 

In the first place, it considers that “challenge” as inadmissible.

 

In the second place, it ratifies that the only permit that should be kept in force is the one granted in 1989, imposing restrictions on hake and shrimp.

 

In the third place, it supports the declaration of nullity of the 1992 “unrestricted” permit and of every subsequent legal proceeding, based on the numerous contradictions and falsities of the process. As a result, it urges that such a declaration be required in legal headquarters, since the wrongly granted rights have already been exercised.

 

Finally, it recommends the immediate suspension of the validity of those permits until justice declares their nullity.

 

The tip of the iceberg

 

It is noteworthy that this case is just one among many others in which triangulations and repurchases of licenses in bankruptcies, the conduct of dubious and incomplete legal proceedings, and officials’ suspicious speed have transformed the granting process of fishing permits into a “party” which has been denounced for a long time –see Godelman et.al.: “The Fishery Agreement with the European Union”, CeDePesca, December 1999.

 

The same vessels previously referred to went through such triangulations before receiving a hold complement from Santa Eugenia. Don Cayetano vessel, for example, transferred its permit to Stella Maris I, but, in turn, it recovered the permit through a transfer from an inactive vessel, Polo Sur, owned by Ventura, a firm which had gone bankrupt.

 

After starting operations with the permits of Siday and Don José Moscuzza, two much smaller vessels than Itxas Lur,  the latter was also allocated a quota through the transfer from another vessel, 12 de Octubre, also owned by Ventura firm.

 

All these operations were forbidden by several regulations, and the majority of them have been analyzed by the audit carried out by Buenos Aires University in 2000, which was later hushed up not only by the authority but also by the Federal Fisheries Council.

 

The Prosecution’s verdict makes it possible to cherish some hope as regards the regularizing of that process corrupted of every conceivable irregularity. Perhaps we can start to think that, in regard to fishing permits, justice will be done.

 

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