Fishing boss says success the problem

By AUDREY YOUNG

The company accused of colluding with fisheries officials over scampi says it is the victim of commercial jealousy.

"We are fishermen, not conspirators," Simunovich Fisheries managing director Peter Simunovich told a parliamentary inquiry yesterday.

He accused his rivals of not being able to foot it in a tough industry and resorting to smear tactics to get a free ride.

"We weren't cut-lunch fishers. We had no special treatment. We didn't break the law. We were just better fishers.

"Perhaps we have done one thing wrong," Mr Simunovich told MPs on the primary production select committee.

"We broke the great unwritten Kiwi rule. We've been too successful. We are no longer little people. We need taking down a peg or two."

With Mr Simunovich was his father Ivan, a Croatian immigrant in the 1950s who started business with a fish shop in Glen Innes, and his sister, Donna, the company's human resources manager.

Simunovich Fisheries now has 16 vessels and an annual turnover of about $60 million - though it still owns the fish shop in Glen Innes.

It catches about 60 per cent of scampi.

"At the end of the day we are still a family-run company underpinned by family values," Mr Simunovich said.

The company has been at the heart of claims by rival Neil Penwarden that Ministry of Fisheries scampi permitting officials in the early 1990s favoured Simunovich.

Under law, the catch history at that time will determine allocations of $100 million of scampi quota.

Claims have also been made by former fisheries investigator Barry Nalder that he was suspended from his job to curtail an investigation he was conducting into alleged misreporting of catch by Simunovich.

Mr Simunovich said that when his company decided to explore the scampi fishery in the mid 1980s it was a small firm.

By 1987 it chartered four vessels and applied for commercial permits.

By 1990 Simunovich had spent around $10 million acquiring five boats.

"So we bought five boats and Mr Penwarden bought one," Mr Simunovich said. "Is it really any surprise that we developed the largest catch history?

"We were first. We took the risk. We did the hard slog. We spent the money. They came later. They want something for nothing and say that's fair. Well it's not."

Simunovich lawyer Alan Ivory told the committee: "Parliament is being manipulated."

Allegations of corruption and misreporting were "a sensational way of capturing Parliament's attention for the sole aim of undermining the legislative and legal process in order to get a bigger allocation of scampi".

He pointed to previous court decisions challenging scampi permits which had said Simunovich had done nothing wrong.

Simunovich director Vaughan Wilkinson, a former Ministry of Fisheries scientist, told the MPs that the ministry had not favoured Simunovich.

He believed Simunovich itself had been unfairly treated by the ministry.

He disputed previous evidence to the inquiry that commercial scampi permits were issued only from the northern office, which Simunovich dealt with, or that there were wide variations in scampi permitting policies among the regions.

He also disputed claims by former fisheries northern compliance manager Ron Chadwick that Mr Nalder's investigation into Simunovich stopped after Mr Nalder was suspended.

The ministry's own documents showed that investigator Peter Younger continued the inquiries, Mr Wilkinson said.

To questions from National MPs about why New Zealand First leader Winston Peters - who initially voiced claims of fisheries corruption - had been less vocal, Mr Wilkinson said the company had sought a meeting with Mr Peters.

It gave him the material and Mr Peters concluded in a statement that he had no claim against Simunovich.

"If the implication is, as others have put it - 'Did Simunovich provide campaign funds to Winston Peters?' - no it did not. If that's what you're driving at, no it did not."