Minister Susi to take Chinese corporation to court

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta, Thu, September 17 2015


Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister is preparing to take legal action against China-based Pingtan Marine Enterprise Ltd. (PME) for alleged fish theft in Indonesian waters.

“We are working together with [Indonesian lawyer] Todung Mulya Lubis to prepare a case against PME,” said Susi as quoted by Antara news agency on Thursday.

Susi described PME as a fishing company that operated in the Cayman Islands, was run from an office in China and was listed on the Nasdaq Index in the US.

The minister said that PME’s ownership, trade and management dealings with four companies in Indonesia had violated the law to a serious extent.

According to the minister, her ministry will launch legal action against PME to stop the distribution of illegally caught fish. It will also seek to stop PME from profiting from such illegal activity as well as make sure that the illegal fishing is not being funded with public funds through the stock exchange.

Susi has previously asserted that there is global consensus that fish theft is a global problem that needs to be solved.

“Ambassadors have agreed that illegal, unreported and unregulated [IUU] fishing is a global enemy,” said Susi during the 2015 Coordination Meeting of the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry on Sep. 10, Antara reported.

Susi said that she had gathered ambassadors from neighboring countries at a lunch to explain her intention to fight IUU fishing in Indonesian waters.

The practice, said Susi, has been going for years and people now consider it normal – as if Indonesian waters were an international zone. This leads to other kinds of theft, of things such as diesel fuel.



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