Whistle Blowers Risk Lives to Stop Toothfish Piracy

A new international alliance of legal toothfish operators (COLTO) has been overwhelmed with the response to its campaign offering substantial financial rewards for information exposing toothfish pirates and their illegal operations.

Since COLTO was launched in Brussels just over a month ago, and details of the Wanted campaign were released worldwide, intelligence operatives working for COLTO have been examining data coming in from all over the world.

In countries such as Indonesia where intelligence work has identified that a large number of pirate vessels unload their illegal cargoes, take on crew, fuel and other supplies, COLTO operatives plastered Wanted Posters at sites it targeted as locations frequented by likely informants.

COLTO spokesperson Hamish Wylie, said COLTO was grateful for the help it had from local supporters.

"We know they were risking their lives to help us spread the message."

Mr Wylie, Chairman of Consolidated Fisheries Limited based in the Falkland Islands said today that, while COLTO was not willing to release details because of the potentially life threatening situation some of the informants were in, it was heartened at the response.

"COLTO has offered large rewards because it knows it is dealing with syndicated crime on a global scale," Mr Wylie said.

COLTO, which is a not for profit organization has more than 20 founding industry members from ten countries including New Zealand, France, South America, Spain, South Africa, Australia and the Falkland Islands.

It offered a reward of $US 100,00 for information leading to the conviction of fishers, companies, directors or employees involved in illegal toothfish operations.

Mr Wylie said information has been received through an international free call center set up by COLTO or from data left at a secure site on COLTO’s website.

" Because of the obvious danger inherent in being a whistleblower, informants have taken some time to come forward- naturally being very cautious and saying their lives and that of their families were at risk."

"Their information relates to a range of areas including names of boats, skippers and crews, sites where pirate boats are unloading their illegal cargoes and how the pirates evade capture by the authorities."

However, Mr Wylie said some informants had failed to leave any message or direction on how COLTO could contact them.

"As much as we would like to respond to all the informants, our hands are tied if they have not left details, so we urge these people to ring us again or leave contact information at COLTO’s secure website."

Mr Wylie said COLTO had obtained some very important and reliable information, which would help it achieve its objective of stopping the illegal catch of toothfish by unscrupulous operators.