"THE
COCAINE-ENVIRONMENTALIST CONNECTION"
(By Henk Brus, March 21st, 2006,
henkbrus@atuna.com)
This weekend I was shocked after reading an article published by the seafood
website FIS.com, which had the sensational head-line “The Tuna / Cocaine
Connection – Linking Fisheries To Crime”.
The first shock came from the title, my initial reaction was that this could
potentially become very damaging for our business, we had the dolphin issue,
mercury, and now this….
The article starts with the sentence: “there is no smoke, without fire”. This
is the same justification and reasoning that has been used by several
environmental groups over the last decades, enabling them to make any wild
accusation towards our tuna industry without providing any hard scientific
evidence or legal proof. Drugs and cocaine have been their favorite “juicy”
topic, when trying to manipulate politicians, media and the public against the
tuna industry. Now there you have a clear connection! With plenty of hard
evidence for its spread all over the internet.
After reading the 7- page on-line article, I can only come to the conclusion
that its writer the journalist Terje Engoe, has chosen to write a sensational
article, based on the “smoke & fire “ philosophy, lacking any fact, but in the
meantime making the wildest accusations against a leading tuna trading company
and its people. It has become clear to me that the journalist’s agenda has been
just the same as that of the many environmentalist groups: to misuse the global
popularity of tuna as a tool to get lots of free publicity and exposure for his
own organization.
The reasoning of FIS for a “tuna / cocaine connection” is largely based on
commentary published around 1998 on the website of the “Greenpeace Foundation”.
Although FIS emphasizes the value of this information by stating: “the worldwide
organization Greenpeace, over the years has won a high standing reputation”, it
forgot to mention that the Greenpeace Foundation writes on it website that they
are “proudly Unaffiliated with Greenpeace USA”. In other words: the
worldwide known Greenpeace has no involvement in this at all, and the
information comes from some dubious extremist “Greenpeace look-alike”, something
the writer failed to notice in his hunger for sensation. Actually since this
1998 “commentary”, not a single serious news article has ever been written by a
reliable news source on the issue. This has not stopped certain activist groups
from reviving this “lie” whenever it serves their agenda.
FIS writes that “big time organized crime players have bought into the Latin
American tuna industry over the past 25 years as an ideal front for their
criminal activities”. This accusation has also been used by a well-known
environmental group to keep Mexican tuna out of the USA. However the proof for
it is just based on incidents, a few cases in which some crooks used tuna boats
for transport. How often did they use trucks?
The writer fails to provide any evidence at all which shows there is a tuna /
cocaine connection. The reasoning he follows goes like this: cocaine comes from
S- America, mafia comes from Italy, S-America is major producer of cocaine, and
Italy a major consumer of tuna. According to his “smoke & fire” reasoning, he
automatically comes to the conclusion that if Italians import so much tuna loins
from S-America, it almost “logically” means that the Italian mafia is doing
business with the Medelin and Cali cartels. Again lacking any ground at all.
The accusation that Colombian drug cartels have invested money in the tuna
industry is also based purely on air – not a single fact is rendered. If we may
believe FIS, every S-American tuna canner is a potentially suspected drug
dealer, just because both cocaine and tuna are produced in S-America, dead
simple!
The fact that Europe’s yearly quota for pre-cooked tuna loins is mostly filled
by yellowfin imported from Thailand, by a US-based Tuna Trading company, whose
chairman is Italian-born, is “suspicious” for FIS. Without providing a shred of
evidence the reasoning is purely based on the thought that if you are born in
Italy – chances are that you are mafia. According to Mr. Terje Engoe: “many
people with knowledge of the mafia will say not a single piece of tuna is sold
to Italy, without its mafia getting a cut in profits. The bonds are tight”.
Again wild accusations, not even the slightest fact is provided to substantiate
this horrendous accusation, which basically makes any Italian involved with tuna
an accomplice of the mafia.
FIS publishes: “for anyone looking for the big (tuna / cocaine)
conspiracy, the tuna industry -more than any fishery- harbors the essential
structure”. The writer comes to this conclusion “because large quantities
caught in the S-Pacific go to Thailand”, he continues by writing that “from
Thailand containers of cans which are ‘supposed’ to contain tuna are
dispatched to markets worldwide. Also large quantities of cooked loins are
exported”. Again the writer insinuates that Thailand is routinely packing
cocaine instead of tuna and works together with the mafia, only based on the
simple fact that it exports canned tuna and pre-cooked loins to Italy. Also here
the writer just dreams up some story, accusing Thai processors of canned tuna
and loins being drug traffickers.
In order to gain credibility for his “tuna / cocaine” theory Mr. Engoe mentions
that “even representatives of the UN speak out clearly about the link between
fisheries and organized crime”. He refers to a statement made by Mr. Serge
Garcia in an article published by Associated Press July 19th, 2004.
Mr. Garcia, is identified in the AP article as: “a Frenchman who supervises
fish-monitoring programs of the UN FAO in Rome”. AP quotes Mr. Garcia,
referring to bluefin catches in the Mediterranean: “only one of these big tuna
can be worth as much as a Mercedes-Benz. How do you expect criminal
organizations not to want to be in it?”
As far as I know, this has been the only public statement ever made by any UN
employee on tuna and criminal organizations. The reasoning of Mr. Garcia, is
purely based on his personal view not that of the UN, and he also fails to come
up with any single fact. In any case, his comments certainly have nothing to do
with a tuna / cocaine connection.
In an attempt to provide evidence of a tuna / cocaine connection, the FIS
article sums up US Coast Guard reports of drug busts involving fisheries
vessels. Indeed, in 2001, a Mexican tuna purse seiner was seized with 10.5 M/T
of cocaine stored under frozen tuna, one of the most famous drug busts in USCG
history. Only based on the single fact that this was a tuna boat, this event is
used as evidence of a world wide connection. What if it had been a shrimp boat –
would we then have a world wide shrimp-cocaine connection?
FIS concludes its article with: “The tuna industry has not taken measures to
right whatever are self-evident wrong doings”, and also states “the tuna
industry is in need of cleaning up their image, but just how they are going
about this undermines the end results”.
I do agree that we, as a tuna industry, need to clean up our image. Probably the
first step should be to rid ourselves of environmentalists and journalists who
are misusing the popularity of tuna in order to meet their own hidden agenda.
The only way is to use the legal possibilities that we have as an industry to
force them to prove all their wild allegations and to come up with facts.
As a tuna professional, I feel this article not only damages many people in the
tuna business just because of their nationality, but it makes us all look like
accomplices in a world-wide conspiracy. I believe that the main problem of our
industry is that too many of us have remained silent too long, making our
industry an easy target for those trying to accomplish their own hidden agendas.
To me it is very clear there is no “Tuna / Cocaine connection”, but I wonder
what the FIS connection is, which motivates them as a seafood website to publish
such damaging nonsense, and what their hidden agenda is.
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