Trading as Frankton Ale House in premises near the BP roundabout, Frankton House Ltd was convicted on a single charge in Queenstown’s court last week after a two-day judge-alone trial.
The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) prosecuted its owner and director, Shichi Tang, after fisheries officers found a bag of 50 cooked blackfoot pāua in a freezer during a routine inspection in January, 2021.
Tang, who couldn’t show them an invoice for the pāua, was interviewed under caution after the officers suspected the pāua were under-sized and had come from "illegal sources".
He told them he hadn’t bought pāua since the previous inspection in June, 2020, and claimed some must’ve shrunk because they were "really old", or been nibbled on by crayfish in the water tank.
The report from the 2020 inspection showed there’d been only six paua on the premises at that time.
He was charged with unlawfully possessing fish for sale, failing to keep invoices and possessing under-sized fish.
Judge Duncan Harvey said Tang’s claim he hadn’t bought pāua since late 2019 meant the court had to "draw the inference this was either a lie ... or the paua had come from an illegal source".
However, because an officer had recorded the words "all seafood had invoices" in the 2021 inspection report, he had no choice but to dismiss two of the charges, despite his suspicions.
"I think it highly unlikely that a licensed fish receiver, commercial fisher or a fish farmer would ever supply under-sized pāua.
"But suspicion is not enough."
On the remaining charge, the evidence was clear, Harvey said.
A forensic scientist had given evidence that at least 20% of the pāua were under-sized, and he found the charge proven.
MPI counsel Alan de Jager sought a fine of $20,000 for the deliberate and "very serious" offending.
An element of deterrence was necessary, for Tang and the wider industry, to maintain the integrity of the quota management system.
Although the number of under-sized pāua was fewer than usual for such prosecutions, the offending had been profit-driven rather than being a case of someone gathering paua at the beach for their family, de Jager said.
Speaking through an interpreter, Tang said he had no money to pay a fine.
The restaurant got into difficulty during the Covid pandemic, when he’d lost 95% of his Chinese tour group business.
He’d finally been "kicked out" of the building in 2023 by his landlord after failing to keep up with the rent.
Now living in Christchurch, he was working as a driver, had a child to care for, and owed Inland Revenue about $70,000.
Harvey said the courts had to take such offending seriously or the "very existence of paua beds in this country is put at risk".
However, he applied a small deduction to reach the final sentence because not all the paua were under-sized, and weren’t on the restaurant’s menu at the time they were found.
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