This Blue Paper spotlights the problem and draws from current promising practices for addressing organised crime in the fisheries sector to present practical opportunities for action – globally, regionally and nationally. One of the key challenges in this space is the development of a joint understanding of the problem at hand – shedding light on the pervasive impact of this shadow industry. We feel this Blue Paper provides a solid foundation of experience and best practice that can be used to develop solutions to be implemented immediately in conjunction with sustainable fisheries management strategies.

The forum, which gathered more than 80 participants from Large Ocean Nations (LONs) as well as from other countries, intergovernmental organizations and civil society, was opened by the Ministers of Faroe Islands, Palau, and Kiribati alongside high-level participants from the Nordic Council of Ministers and Norway.

In monetary terms, crimes in the fisheries sector – fisheries crime – are vastly profitable. A conservative estimate is that as much as USD 23.5 billion is lost to illegal and unregulated fishing each year. Still, the actual costs of fisheries crime to society, including tax crime and other ancillary crimes in the fisheries sector, far exceed the value of lost resources. Vulnerable coastal states lose out on revenue, employment opportunities and infrastructure development, and suffer the consequences of food insecurity, instability and loss of biodiversity.

This report is a joint effort between the INTERPOL Fisheries Crime Working Group (FCWG) and the North Atlantic Fisheries Intelligence Group (NA-FIG). It is a record of the conclusions and findings of a multi-disciplinary group of auditors, investigators and analysts who have come together at regular intervals over the last four years to analyse and discuss their experience and knowledge about flags of convenience and secrecy and their impacts on fisheries crime law enforcement.

The fisheries sector is a major global industry, with strategic importance for many countries. In 2010, fisheries and aquaculture provided fish with a total value of USD 217.5 billion. Developing countries are a major participant in this market, providing over 50% of the world fish trade, which contributes a greater amount to their net earnings from foreign exchange than meat, tea, bananas and coffee combined. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that over 500 million people in developing countries depend, directly or indirectly, on fisheries and aquaculture for their livelihoods. However, despite these positive statistics, the fisheries sector remains vulnerable to organised criminal activity that not only inhibits the ability of countries to enforce fisheries policy, but directly impacts the economic and social wellbeing of people in both developed and developing countries. A 2011 issues paper by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) focused on the role of large-scale organised criminal groups operating within the fisheries sector in the trafficking in persons, the smuggling of migrants and the smuggling of illicit drugs, weapons and illegal tobacco, but found evidence of vulnerabilities to a wide range of organised crime. This report, prepared by the OECD Task Force on Tax Crimes and Other Crimes, looks at the issue of tax crime in the fisheries sector, and the impact this has on the ability of countries to raise government revenue to fund public expenditure and development. Organised crime is rarely restricted to one sphere, and so a greater understanding of the ways to detect and combat tax crime, should also have a direct positive impact on the ability of countries to combat other criminal activity.