Carlos Rafael Archives - Page 13 of 28

NOAA seeks lifetime ban for jailed New Bedford fishing mogul

January 11, 2018 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is seeking a lifetime ban from the fishing industry for jailed New Bedford fishing mogul Carlos Rafael, a revocation of the permit for his wholesale fish dealership, and a revocation of 38 fishing permits from 28 of his vessels. NOAA is also seeking new penalties in two additional cases unrelated to the one that put him in prison, according to a spokeswoman for the agency.

Rafael is serving a 46-month sentence after pleading guilty last year to falsifying fish quotas, false labeling of fish species, conspiracy, smuggling large amounts of cash out of the country and tax evasion. In September, a federal judge ordered U.S. Marshals to seize four of his fishing vessels and their fishing permits as part of a plea deal in the criminal case against Rafael, once the owner of one of the nation’s largest fishing fleets.

Rafael owned at least 44 vessels, including 10 vessels with scallop permits and 43 that also had lobster permits, the two most valuable fisheries in the Northeast. Many of those vessels continued to fish, even after he was jailed. But in November, NOAA regional director John Bullard ordered groundfish Sector IX, a fishing cooperative dominated by Rafael to stop fishing, saying the sector had failed to account for his illegal fish and hadn’t enforced its own rules. There are 60 groundfish permits in Sector IX, 22 of which were actively fishing.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Massachusetts: NOAA Moves to Revoke All Carlos Rafael’s Permits, New Charges Include Cheating on Scallop Landings

January 11, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — NOAA announced yesterday that they have filed a charging document to revoke all 38 of Carlos Rafael’s fishing permits, the dealer license for Carlos Seafood, and the scallop permits issued to two of Rafael’s scallop vessels.

The charges go beyond the criminal complaint of cheating on landings reporting, for which Rafael is already serving prison time. Out of 35 separate charges, 15 are new charges for violations in the scallop fishery.

NOAA claims that on four separate fishing trips in 2013, Rafael and related entities, along with two of his fishing vessel operators, filed false reports regarding the amount of scallops harvested by four vessels. For those violations, NOAA seeks to revoke permits issued to these vessels and a $843,528 penalty.

NOAA is seeking a total of $983,528 in civil fines.

Charging documents are how NOAA pursues a civil case before an administrative law judge.

They can include both NOVA (notice of violation for fishing activities) and NOPS (Notice of Permit Sanctions) and requests for civil fines.

Once the case is heard before an administrative law judge, the decision can be appealed to the NOAA administrator. If the parties object to the NOAA administrator’s decision they may then proceed to district court. However, according to lawyers familiar with NOAA procedures, the decision will not be set aside if it is supported by substantial evidence.

The civil action alleges 35 separate violations.

Counts 1-19 are based on Rafael’s conduct involved in his recent criminal case, specifically, the misreporting of species landed. For these violations, NOAA seeks to revoke the federal fisheries permits associated with the vessels at issue in the criminal case, but does not seek monetary penalties.

Counts 20-35 involve conduct unrelated to Rafael’s criminal case. Count 20 alleges that Rafael and related entities misreported where they caught yellowtail flounder in 2012. For this violation, NOAA seeks to revoke numerous permits involved and a $140,000 penalty.

Counts 21-35 involve misreporting in the scallop fishery.

It is important to note that before the administrative judge, normal rules of evidence don’t apply, and instead the ruling is made based on a preponderance of evidence.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

NOAA’s civil action against Carlos Rafael involves scallop permits

WASHINGTON — January 10, 2018 – Today, NOAA issued a charging document to Carlos Rafael, Carlos Seafood, Inc., 28 separate business entities related to Carlos Rafael, and two of Carlos Rafael’s scallop vessel captains, alleging violations of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

This case seeks to:

Impose $983,528 in civil monetary penalties;
Deny any future application by Carlos Rafael for any permit issued by NOAA under the Magnuson-Stevens Act;
Revoke the seafood dealer permit issued to Carlos Seafood, Inc.;
Revoke 38 commercial fishing permits; and
Revoke the operator permits issued to two of Rafael’s scallop vessel captains.

The civil action alleges 35 violations:

Counts 21-35 involve misreporting in the scallop fishery. NOAA alleges that on four separate fishing trips in 2013, Rafael and related entities, along with two of his fishing vessel operators, filed false reports regarding the amount of scallops harvested by four vessels. For those violations, NOAA seeks to revoke permits issued to these vessels and a $843,528 penalty.

John Bullard: Incomplete investigation by Rafael sector is ‘show stopper’

January 9, 2018 — John Bullard, the outgoing northeast region administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has provided a clue as to what he believes is needed to re-open groundfish harvesting in Sector IX, Carlos Rafael’s former fishing group.

“As far as we know, the sector’s enforcement committee has not yet completed an investigation of the sector’s operations issues or determined the full extent of the sector’s non-compliance,” he says in a column published in South Coast Today, a newspaper serving New Bedford, Massachusetts, the port city Sector IX calls home.

“That’s a show stopper.”

Bullard has heard plenty of criticism from the newly constituted board of Sector IX, the mayor of New Bedford, Massachusetts, out-of-work crew members and many others since he announced his decision in November to shut down all groundfish harvesting for the group nearly five months before the season was due to end on April 30.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

John Bullard: Sector IX board’s failure to act stopped its fishing

January 8, 2018 — For New Englanders, Atlantic cod is not just another fish. The Sacred Cod that hangs in the Massachusetts State House is testament to the cod’s place in our culture and history.

For centuries, we fished for cod, and, as we watched the stock decline, we tried various ways to protect the resource that is considered as much a birthright as a commodity.

In 2009, the New England Fishery Management Council under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, agreed to try a system called “catch-shares,” which worked well on the West Coast.

The idea was simple: figure out how much fish from a particular stock can be sustainably caught— the “total allowable catch”—and divide that among fishermen.

By allocating quota, fishermen would have more control over when and how they fish, and — fishermen could fish when the weather and markets were most favorable. Catch shares eliminated the “race to fish” once a season opens.

A catch-share system allocating shares to groups of self-selected fishermen called ‘sectors’ went into place in the New England groundfish fishery in 2010. Within these sectors, fishermen organized themselves, determined how to fish their quota, and established other rules by which they would operate.

All sectors then submitted an operations plan to NOAA Fisheries and, under that plan, were responsible for policing themselves. The primary responsibility of a sector is to keep within its quota and account for its catch.

While most sectors have done a great job meeting this responsibility, Sector IX failed miserably over many years.

The former sector president, Carlos Rafael, is now behind bars for years of falsifying catch information, such as calling catch of low-quota, high-value cod, high-quota, lower-value haddock. He also admitted to tax evasion and bulk money laundering, all from his fishing operation.

Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard Times

Phil Paleologos: Bullard’s Wrongheaded Assessment

December 29, 2017 — John Bullard is a likable guy. I know him to be an attentive listener and someone who must be applauded for his revitalization efforts through local historic preservation. But over the past five years, as one of five regional fisheries administrators of NOAA, John Bullard has made some wayward decisions, from imposing a moratorium on fishing cod to responding to the Carlos Rafael scam.

With little signaling, he sent shock waves through the fishing community when he announced he was prohibiting 60 permit holders connected with Rafael from going out to sea until next May and perhaps beyond that! Bullard was not willing to listen to all the parties who are losing millions and millions of dollars in our local economy. He told the Boston Globe, “That’s something the sector should have thought about when they were failing to do their job.” So much for his so-called inspirational essay in the Boston Globe appealing to our better angels.

John Bullard is more concerned with the debt that must be paid by our local sector for the unknown number of species overfished rather than the job-killing measures he approved!

Read the full opinion piece at WBSM

BULLARD: Blame Rafael, not NOAA, for Sector IX Shutdown

December 28, 2017 — When the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration closed down Sector IX to groundfishing back on November 20, many felt the organization was punishing New Bedford fishermen for the actions of “The Codfather” Carlos Rafael. It was Rafael’s vessels that went over catch limits as part of his overfishing scheme that sent him to federal prison.

NOAA regional administrator John Bullard told WBSM News that shutting down the sector isn’t about any kind of sanctions or punitive actions for Rafael’s scheme, but rather for cleaning up the mess he left behind.

“The basic responsibility of a sector is to report the catch, and to keep vessels within the limits for that sector for all the species of groundfish,” Bullard said. “To this date, we don’t know how many fish the vessels in Sector IX have caught. We don’t know how much they have exceeded the limits on some of their catch, and we think some of those overages are significant.”

Bullard said that since 2012, when NOAA went to the quota-based system, it has been each sector’s responsibility to keep track of its own catch.

“They can lease back and forth within a sector, they can lease fish from one sector to another,” he said. “That’s all designed to maximize efficiency and keep government kind of out of it, and allow the efficiency of the private sector to work. Mr. Rafael misused that system, and until we understand how much they went over and what species, we’re not about to let the boats go fishing again.”

Bullard said NOAA initially reviewed the sector’s operation plan back in May along with those of all the other sectors, as the fishing year begins on May 1.

“I decided at that time, that even though there were problems with Sector IX last May, we would allow them to continue operating because the trial had not taken place. We felt we should let them operate until the trial concluded,” he said. “We faced a lot of criticism for that decision.”

But once the trial was completed and Rafael was sentenced to about four years in prison, the decision was made to halt operations in Sector IX until the extent of the overfishing could be determined. As part of the shut down, the Sector IX vessels cannot join other sectors, or the common pool.

Read the full story at WBSM

Jon Mitchell: Ban costing Port of New Bedford $500K a day

December 22, 2017 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — In a letter addressed to NOAA, Mayor Jon Mitchell said the Port of New Bedford could be losing nearly $500,000 a day because of the groundfishing ban.

Mitchell referenced analysis prepared by Professor Dan Georgiana of SMAST, which stated the 25-day-old ban caused as much as $12 million (to date) in damage to the port.

Mitchell filed his letter Wednesday, the final day in which comments regarding the ban could be submitted. Andrew Saunders, the attorney for Sector IX, the Carlos Rafael fishing division that’s prevented from groundfishing, also submitted a letter Wednesday.

“It’s no exaggeration to say that hundreds of lives in New Bedford have been disrupted by the NOAA decision,” Mitchell wrote.

NOAA said it is still processing the submitted comments and wouldn’t comment on any submissions.

Mitchell doubled down on his plea throughout the Rafael saga: That innocent third parties shouldn’t be harmed for Rafael’s actions. NOAA Regional Administrator John Bullard revoked Sector IX’s operational plan on Nov. 20, which banned Rafael’s fleet from groundfishing. Bullard, a former New Bedford mayor, backed his decision stating deficiencies lingered within the sector.

Mitchell, a former U.S. prosecutor, presented a legal argument that should have prevented the ban. He cited National Standard 8, which states any prevention of overfishing should take into account the extent of adverse economic effects.

“I believe National Standard No. 8 would require due consideration of the socioeconomic impact that the notice of withdrawal of approval has on the member of Sector IX as well as the effected stakeholders in the Port of New Bedford,” Mitchell wrote.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard Times

Boston Globe: What’s fair in breaking up Carlos Rafael’s empire?

December 18, 2017 — Randy Cushman, a fourth generation fisherman in Maine, knows what the crimes of Carlos Rafael cost him.

Cushman fishes out of the bucolic village of Port Clyde, population 307, the sort of place many New Englanders might still associate with the region’s storied, struggling fishing industry. Last season, he had to pay $49,000 for fishing quota, most of it for American plaice, a species of groundfish commonly known as dabs. Cushman’s own allowance on the fish ran out after only four days on the water, forcing him to bargain with other fishermen for more.

Up the coast, Rafael had been catching dabs in the Gulf of Maine too. But in an elaborate criminal scheme, the New Bedford fishing tycoon, owner of about 40 vessels, was directing his captains to report dabs as other kinds of fish, often haddock, which is subject to much higher limits. Breaking the rules let Rafael evade the kind of payments that Cushman made. It also depressed prices by flooding the market with black-market fish. Worst of all, the scheme also meant fishing regulators were getting inaccurate information about how many fish Rafael’s empire was scooping out of the Atlantic, bad data that fishermen suspect distorted how scientists analyzed ocean trends, and Cushman believes skewed the way regulators set the amount each fishermen can catch before having to start paying.

“He definitely hurt my business,” Cushman said. Bottom line: “I should have ended up with more allocation on dabs,” he said.

Rafael, whose downfall came after he boasted of his scheme to undercover IRS agents posing as Russian mobsters, is now serving a 46-month sentence in federal prison. The made-for-TV story, complete with an illicit cash buyer in New York, bank accounts in Portugal, allegations of corrupt sheriff deputies, and broad hints that other players on the waterfront must have been in the know, has transfixed New England’s close-knit fishery. Rafael’s arrest has thrust arcane fisheries policies into the spotlight, touched off a political battle between Massachusetts and Maine about the future of his businesses, and raised questions about how fishing regulators can provide justice for his victims and prevent a scheme like his from infecting the fishery again. The feds have already seized some of his permits and four of his boats, but more punishments are widely expected. A spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Jennifer Goebel, said the regulatory agency was considering further sanctions against Rafael but that “it’s longstanding NOAA policy not to discuss pending enforcement matters.”

Read the full editorial at the Boston Globe

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford City Council seeks action on Carlos Rafael’s fishermen

December 18, 2017 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — The City Council took aim at former Mayor John Bullard and his decision to prevent Sector IX, the fishing division populated by Carlos Rafael vessels, from landing groundfish.

“It’s important that we get turn this around,” [Ward 4 Councilor Dana] Rebeiro said. “He’s a very reasonable man. He loves New Bedford. I know he’s very concerned about Carlos Rafael, as we all are, and the fact that he was able to do what he did for so long. But I think there has to be a way that we can make sure that justice is served but not at the expense of these families.”

The council agreed to send a letter to Bullard, the Northeast Regional Administrator for NOAA and the federal delegation asking for immediate reversal of the ban.

The ban took effect Nov. 20 as a result of Bullard believing the division still hadn’t addressed issues resulting from Rafael’s illegal behavior.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times