Malta’s fishing authorities were warned about hundreds of tonnes of illegal tuna as early as 2009, a European Commission fax leaked to the Spanish press has revealed.
The fax, sent to then-fisheries director general Anthony Gruppetta as well as a number of other top officials including the now suspended Andreina Fenech Farrugia, said that an EU inspector would be coming to Malta on December 21 and 22, 2009 to oversee the destruction of 262 tonnes of undocumented Bluefin tuna.
Just one day before the inspector arrived, the fish farm responsible announced that rough seas had wrecked tuna pens containing around 600 tonnes of the fish.
At this year's market prices we estimate to have lost €7.4 million," Ta’ Matthew Fish Farms Ltd. owner Ray Bugeja had told the Times of Malta at the time.
According to Spanish news outlet El Confidencial, the fish farm was never sanctioned for the hundreds of unregistered tuna.
Andreina Fenech Farrugia has denied wrongdoing.“Laundering illicit tuna by pretending pens were destroyed by bad weather is one of the industry’s classic ruses,” the news outlet wrote.
Ta’ Matthew Fish Farms was subsequently bought out by Malta Fish Farming in 2015.
Intense scrutiny
Malta’s tuna sector has come under international scrutiny following revelations, first published by El Confidencial, that Spanish police had recorded phone calls between tuna kingpin Jose Garcia Fuentes and several key officials, including Malta’s top fisheries official Andreina Fenech Farrugia.
Spanish police believe the Fuentes group used bribes and illicit documentation to launder thousands of tonnes of tuna into European markets.
Read: Tuna tycoon and Malta fisheries 'boss' phone calls
In one of the transcripts published by Spanish media, Dr Fenech Farrugia appeared to demand payment from Mr Fuentes.
Dr Fenech Farrugia was one of the fisheries department’s top officials before she was transferred out in 2011. She was subsequently returned to the department as its director-general in 2013, weeks after Labour returned to power.
Hours after El Confidencial first published transcripts of conversations between Dr Fenech Farrugia and Mr Fuentes, Environment Minister Jose Herrera had ordered her suspension.
Dr Fenech Farrugia has denied any allegation of wrongdoing and said that she had received payments from fish farm operators in her capacity as head of the fisheries department.