FIVE more city residents have appeared at Manukau District Court on charges relating to a smuggling ring trading paua and abalone worth $1.3 million.
The five were arrested and charged over the past month as part of a joint Ministry of Fisheries and police sting on paua thieves and smugglers.
Operation Paid was conducted in the last week of May and apprehended 59 offenders, seized 24 vehicles and raided 69 properties in Manukau, Auckland, Wellington, Hastings and Opotiki. Sixteen other vehicles belonging to the offenders are still being located.
They will be seized once found.
The operation involved more than 130 Fisheries Ministry officers and 70 police (Times, May 29).
Operation Paid has laid 300 charges under section 233 of the Fisheries Act.
The five who faced a range of charges at Manukau District Court are: Thu Thuy Ho, 43; Xiangiang Chen, 27; Huong Ly, 46; Thin Thi Vu, 40; and Than Tuu Nguyn, 57.
Another associate, Yue Giu Li, 43, has appeared at the Auckland District Court, and Kim Core, 38, was charged at the Manukau District Court on May 28.
Paua or abalone is highly sought after in parts of Asia, says the Fisheries Ministry. It can fetch between $500 and $1000 a kilogram in its dried form in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
It costs about $200 a kilo in a New Zealand fish shop.
“The Ministry of Fisheries has been very successful in suppressing the illegal paua trade and denying these criminals opportunities to smuggle illegal paua out of the country,” says the ministry’s national investigations manager Shaun Driscoll.
Breaches of section 233 of the Fisheries Act carry a maximum penalty up to five years imprisonment and a fine up to $250,000.
“The theft of paua is a direct attack on the rights and natural heritage of all law-abiding New Zealanders,” says Mr Driscoll.
“It’s a criminal enterprise motivated entirely by greed, targeting paua stocks which are easily accessible.
“It deprives recreational fishers of the opportunity to access the resource.
“It’s destroying an iconic customary fishery and it’s depriving the commercial industry and the economy of millions in domestic and export earnings.
“If it’s allowed to continue on the scale identified in this and previous operations, it’ll destroy the local fishery.”
Operation Paid uncovered the theft of more than nine tonnes of paua (greenweight), which was taken from coastal areas of southern Hawkes Bay, Wairarapa and Wellington.
Then it was transported and traded illegally to contacts in Manukau and Auckland.
“This paua was on-sold to a number of buyers, who are central to this criminal enterprise,” says Mr Driscoll.
“The people involved in paua poaching rings like this are seasoned criminals, often members of gangs, who are often involved in other criminal activity.”
The Fisheries Ministry says the national commercial catch of paua in 2005 was 1059 tonnes, selling for $50.2m. It’s the country’s fifth most valuable fishery.
