No tuna farm operator which has cages in Maltese waters has exceeded the quota of tuna that they are allowed to hold in their cages, information tabled in Parliament by Environment Minister Jose Herrera reveals.
The information was revealed after the minister was asked by PN MP Edwin Vassallo for the names of the operators working in Maltese waters and for a list of each company who broke the established quotas.
To this, Herrera said that there were six companies operating in Maltese waters; Fish and Fish Limited, AJD Tuna Limited, Fish & Fish Ltd, Ta' Mattew Fisheries, Malta Mariculture Limited, and Mare Blu Tuna Farm. He added that none of these companies had exceeded the indicated capacity on their permits.
In a separate parliamentary question, Herrera also noted that in the last year and a half his ministry had not extended or increased the tuna quota for any company.
The news comes as a scandal related to the fisheries department rumbles on. The director of Malta's fisheries department, Andreina Fenech Farrugia, has been suspended following allegations that she demanded money from a major Spanish tuna operator through one Jose Fuentes.
Fuentes is the vice president of the Ricardo Fuentes e Hijos Group, whose headquarters is in Cartagena. It was founded in 1984 by his father, Francisco Fuentes. The Fuentes Group is made up today of more than 40 companies in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Croatia, Malta, Morocco and Tunisia.
The holding is dedicated to real estate investments, but the group's main activity is the fishing of tuna in the high seas with purse seiners, its transfer to fattening farms and subsequent national and international commercialization, and according to El Confidencial - which broke the initial story - is the world's largest tuna operator.
The group owns two Maltese companies - RF Malta Holding and Mare Blu Tuna Farm Ltd. The latter is dedicated to the fattening of bluefin tuna south of Malta.
Spanish authorities launched a massive operation into suspicions that Malta helped the Fuentes Group import undeclared tuna, bypassing quota restrictions. It is believed that the illegal trade reached up to €25 million.
79 people have been arrested so far in Spain. The brothers José and Juan Pedro Fuentes García, both shareholders of the holding company of the Grupo Fuentes companies, and two of its directors were detained during the Spanish Ucoma operation. All of them are on provisional release.
El Confidencial speaks about irregularities in Mare Blu's audited accounts. In 2016, the company had a turnover of €54 million and registered a profit of €4.7 million. The following year it had revenue of €56.6 million but reported losses of €7.5 million.
While the company was authorities to have cages for up to 3,000 tuna in Malta, it actually had the capacity for 9,000, El Confidencial reported.
Fenech Farrugia has since been suspended from her post as Director General, although she maintains that she did nothing wrong and has been "singled out" by the investigations.