Black market paua ringleader jailed

The leader of a black market paua operation that took paua from the Kaikoura coast in covert night missions and sold it to members of the Nelson Asian community has been jailed for eight months.

Phuoc Van Tang, 49, a sickness beneficiary and Vietnamese national, was sentenced in the Nelson District Court yesterday.

His partner, Vouch Lim, 40, a Cambodian national living unlawfully in New Zealand, was sentenced to three months' home detention for her part in the racket.

The Fisheries Ministry alleged that Tang and Lim made about $4000 in a six-week period by poaching hundreds of paua many of them undersized between June 28 and August 6 last year.

Judge Denys Barry said the couple and a teenager drove to Kaikoura nine times and gathered paua, often in rough, cold conditions, before returning to Nelson.

Tang, who previously admitted one charge of obtaining a benefit by taking paua in a way that breached the Fisheries Act, and one charge of obtaining a benefit by selling paua in a way that breached the act, gathered the shellfish.

Lim, who previously admitted a charge of obtaining a benefit by knowingly selling paua in a way that breached the act, bagged the paua and took phone orders for it.

Fisheries Ministry lawyer Megan Alexinas argued that the couple should receive the same sentences and go to jail, due to the seriousness of the offending and the need to send a strong message to others.

She said black market offending was theft of a natural resource, and was stealing from New Zealanders who took the shellfish for commercial, recreational or customary purposes.

Lim's lawyer, Tony Bamford, said she played a lesser role in the offending. She faced only one charge and was "extremely remorseful".

Mr Bamford said Lim had been directed to take part in the operation by her husband, and because of her culture, she was bound to do what she was told.

Lim was applying for New Zealand residency and the offending was likely to affect her application, he said.

Tang's lawyer, Mark Dollimore, said Tang had been in New Zealand for 14 years. Before coming here, he had been in refugee camps. He had scars on his body from past assaults and suffered from memory loss.

The couple were caught last year after an undercover Fisheries Ministry investigation, dubbed Operation Raro.

Judge Barry said Tang dumped the empty paua shells in locations around Nelson, and once the sites were identified, more than 1100 shells were recovered, over 80 per cent of which were undersized.

Cash raised from the operation was used for living expenses and to possibly pay for costs in Lim's residency application.

He accepted that Tang played the larger role in the operation.

Judge Barry said the offending was serious, and represented a significant blow to attempts to preserve and develop paua stocks in the area by Maori and commercial fishers. Te Runanga o Kaikoura and The Paua 3 Industry Association had spent thousands of dollars reseeding the coastline with juvenile paua.

The judge said iwi were concerned about the impact the poaching would have on those initiatives, and were worried that kaumatua would no longer be able to gather paua easily.

A further nine members of the Nelson Asian community have been convicted and fined between $600 and $1800 each for buying the paua.

- © Fairfax NZ News