Forensic accountants land a big fish

Forensic accountants, working with police and officers from industry regulator Marine Scotland, have caught a fish scam on a grand scale.

In what has been described by investigators as a widepsread and sophisticated fraud, forensic accountants followed the money trail and discovered tens of millions of pounds were unaccounted for.

Over three years, seventeen skippers illegally landed thousands of tonnes of mackerel and herring at the Shetland Catch factory, breaking European quotas set to prevent overfishing. 

Trawlermen lied about how many fish they’d caught, falsified logbooks and backed up the fraud by using rigged weighing systems on the packing floor.

The result, according to Crown Office spokesman David Harvie, was a multi million pound scam running into tens of millions of pounds in under-declaration of catches.

While the Scottish Fishermen’s Association tried to put the wrongdoing in the past, the skippers involved have been forced to pay back nearly three million pounds in profits.

The factory at the centre of the racket still awaits its fate, expected to be a payback from profits and a hefty fine.

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