Chinese jigger 'Hong Pu 16' captured by the Navy (Photo: Navy)
Illegal fishing, selective memory and cheap politics
ARGENTINA
Tuesday, May 26, 2020, 06:00 (GMT + 9)
Deputy Juan Aicega (Pro or Cambiemos) expressed concern about the issue and presented a request for reports on foreign ships recently captured by the Prefecture and the Navy. But when his coalition ruled, he did not do the same in a similar case. He also did not want to know anything about the "José Américo", the illegal Moscow boat that caught more shrimp than anyone in 2019.
After the viralization of the images of part of the pirate fleet fishing within the exclusive economic zone, the subsequent capture of two vessels by the Navy and Prefecture, and the repentant return of the Chinese fishing vessel that Coast Guard Fiqué had had to letting go, now it is the political class that reacts to try to discourage the presence of these foreign ships on the brink of mile 200.
This week, details of the bill by the deputy from Chubut, Ignacio Torres, to modify the amounts of the fines provided for by the Federal Fisheries Law for those foreign vessels captured within the national jurisdiction, were revealed. Maximum figures that now reach 10 million pesos, established in 1998 and were never updated. But that is not the worst, the offender can raid and end up paying 10% from discounts and promotions for admitting guilt.
This is what the Portuguese ship “Galvao” is going to pay, waiting in Bahía Blanca for the end of the quarantine to determine the total catch. The Chinese jig "Hong Pu 16", captured hours later, will take advantage of the same legal scheme that promotes looting with derisory fines. We will never know how much fish the Lu Rong Yuan Yu 669 had stolen. The Chinese jigger escaped but within 10 days he turned himself in and anchored off the coast of Madryn, surely without any evidence of the theft on board.
The chinese jigger Lu Rong Yuan Yu approaching by the Coast Guard patrol vessel (Photo: PNA)
The project of the deputy of Together for Change establishes that the offender pays for the market value of the main species in the warehouse, with a minimum of 300 tons. For a potero it would be about 750 thousand dollars of flat. And the most important thing about the initiative is that they cannot be leveled and enjoy the additional benefits provided by the law in force since 1998 and updated in 2008, without addressing these situations.
Beyond that he had income on May 8, in the last hours an initiative of the deputy Juan Aicega was known; a request for reports to the Executive Power on the situation of illegal fishing, its protagonists and the resources affected.
For some of the doubts that the legislator wanted to know, it is enough to read the newspapers. Others with requesting the files of the Federal Justice and others are in full development of the file in the Directorate of Control and Inspection of the Undersecretariat of Fisheries.
Aicega is not a newcomer to the Chamber like Torres. He landed in the chamber in December 2017. We celebrate his sudden interest in the depredation of natural resources generated by the foreign fleet. They are not 14 billion dollars, as he points out among the bases of his request for reports, to which I had access, and which all the media replicated without the slightest objection to such nonsense. Checking was already ... (continues)
Author: Roberto Garrone / El Marplatense | Read the full article here (only available in Spanish)
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