The government’s ongoing battle to recover hundreds of millions of dollars in restitution from a US national convicted of poaching South African rock lobster could come to a head on Wednesday.
The Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said it was awaiting judgement in a forfeiture application against US national Arnold Bengis in the amount of $100m.
The Department had also succeeded in securing a restitution and repatriation of about R40m from Bengis through the American legal system.
In that judgement a US court ordered Bengis and his co-accused to pay restitution to South Africa for the losses caused by their importation of poached lobster to the US in violation of US law.
The lobster were poached in South Africa between 1997 and 2001.
DAFF spokesperson, Thembalethu Vico, said that after having spared no effort in convincing the American Court, the Department was positive that the forfeiture order will be granted by Judge Kaplan.
“We would like to reiterate that the South African Fisheries Resources belong to the South African communities and DAFF will spare no effort in fighting the scourge of Illegal Unregulated and Unreported Fishing,” he said.
“We are committed to promote the rule of law and to send a message that poaching of the Marine Living Resources does not pay and DAFF will stop at nothing to ensure that the full might of the law is applied against anyone who is found to be robbing the South African communities by stealing their invaluable fisheries resources, said Vico.
According to a 2015 report on IOL, the case against Bengis “stemmed from a single tip-off to the former Scorpions in 2001 that there was a container in Cape Town harbour, bound for New York that held illegally caught lobster.”
According to the report, in the same year, US officials seized another container of illegally caught fish packed by Arnold Bengis’ now-defunct Hout Bay Fishing.
Bengis pleaded guilty in South Africa in 2002 to 28 charges under the Marine Living Resources Act. His son David was also jailed for a year.
The case stemmed from a tip-off to the former Scorpions in 2001 that there was a container in Cape Town harbour, bound for New York,that held illegally caught lobster.
“The Scorpions alerted the US authorities which led to a massive national and international investigation that exposed the breadth and depth of corruption in the fishing industry, involving top company directors, boat owners, skippers and government fishery inspectors,” the IOL report said.
