Tiger Woods' most famous mistress got married Sunday in Las Vegas.

Rachel Uchitel's two-year nightmare is over.

Tiger Woods' most famous mistress got married Sunday in Las Vegas.

The chapel wedding took place two years, almost to the day, after Woods' last outing in Sin City before his world -- and reputation -- unraveled six weeks later. The golf great was spotted celebrating at Tao Las Vegas' star-studded four-year anniversary and Lavo's one-year anniversary.

Uchitel, a former host at Tao, was in Marbella, Spain, at the time, orchestrating some of Woods' activities.

Her decision to invite Las Vegas night-life regular Ashley Hollingsworth Samson to Marbella led to Samson's $25,000 paycheck from The National Enquirer for going public with Uchitel's romance with Woods.

Uchitel and boyfriend Matt Hahn, a former Penn State football player, got married on impulse Sunday while in town to attend the wedding of their friends.

The Uchitel-Hahn wedding took place at the Little White Chapel, where Britney Spears married childhood friend Jason Alexander over New Year's weekend in 2004. Bruce Willis and Demi Moore tied the knot there on Nov. 21, 1987.

Uchitel and Hahn, with 12 friends, danced into the chapel at 11 p.m. to Beyonce's hit "Single Ladies," according to TMZ.com. After the wedding, they departed to Katy Perry's "Waking Up in Vegas."

It was anything but an all-night celebration for the newlyweds. They were back at her grandmother's by midnight, according to TMZ.

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Spain Regions Race to Sell $1.3 Billion Property This Year

 

Catalonia and Andalusia, two of Spain’s largest and most indebted regions, are trying to sell $1.3 billion of real estate by the end of the year as the country tries to slash its budget deficit and keep borrowing costs from ballooning. “We put the cream of the crop in the portfolios to ensure the sales are completed,” Jacint Boixasa, director of assets for Catalonia, said in interview in Barcelona. “Our target is to sell 550 million euros ($742 million) of real estate by year- end, which is relatively little time.” Spanish regions, which control more than a third of public spending, will play a pivotal role in the nation’s effort to cut its deficit to 6 percent of gross domestic product this year from 9.2 percent in 2010 as the country tries to avoid following Greece, Ireland and Portugal in requiring a bailout. In August, Moody’s Investors Service put Spain’s credit rating on review for a downgrade, citing the worsening finances in the regions. Catalonia is trying to find buyers for 37 properties including the Barcelona stock market on Paseo de Gracia, Spain’s fourth-most expensive commercial street, as well as the Catalan Agriculture Ministry on Gran Via. Jones Lang LaSalle and Madrid- based real-estate consultant Aguirre Newman are advising the government on the sales. Andalusia hired BNP Paribas SA to help raise at least 400 million euros selling 76 properties including the cultural department in Granada and youth centers in Malaga, according to the region’s treasury department. The government will pay around 30 million euros a year to lease the buildings after the sale

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Alleged hit-run death case on hold until next year

 

trial over an alleged hit-and-run death of a man in the rural area of Darwin has been put off until March next year. Hells Angels member Nicholas Frank "Shonky" Cassidy has been charged with causing the death of Levi Griffiths, whose body was found on the side of the Stuart Highway at Coolalinga last month. It is alleged he was hit by a utility and that his body was moved. Darwin Magistrates Court heard today that more than 100 witnesses will be called in the case. The court was told that all of the prosecution's forensic evidence has not been handed in yet. Cassidy's bail was continued.

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OUTLAW bikies are believed to have put a $500,000 price on the heads of gang members who allegedly shot the son of a former Finks member.

Former Finks Bikie gang member Mark Sandery outside the Adelaide Magistrates Court.

South Australian police are aware of the offer, which leaves them in no doubt club members want to handle reprisals for the shooting of the 11-year-old without their intervention.

Mark Sandery's son was shot twice in the leg after armed intruders forced their way into a Semaphore house on Friday night. Police have received no co-operation from witnesses.

A source told Melbourne's Herald Sun: "The Finks are offering $500,000 to bring this bloke into any clubhouse in Australia. Every crook in Australia knows about it."

The Advertiser understands the Women's and Children's Hospital, where the boy is recovering, remains on high security alert, with some staff said to be terrified there could be further outbreaks of violence.

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tattoo-faced sex offender living in Springfield, Missouri may win the prize for scariest mugshot ever with this menacing photo.

What a difference a few years make.

A tattoo-faced sex offender living in Springfield, Missouri may win the prize for scariest mugshot ever with this menacing photo.

Michael Campbell, 36, has been in and out of jail since the mid-nineties but as his 2008 mugshot shows, he still has found time to get his entire face etched in ink - including a pentagram emblazoned on the centre of his forehead.

Before and after: Convicted Missouri sex offender Michael Campbell's booking photos in 2003 and 2008 show two very different looking men

The before photo was snapped following an arrest in 2003 for theft in Jefferson County, Colorado and shows Campbell sporting three facial tattoos, including Pit bull dog in the centre of his neck.

Five years later, following a second arrest in Jefferson County, he appears as a completely different looking man - with a mosaic of demonic markings on his face. 

 

 

 

A pentagram etched on his forehead, and the markings of a skeleton on his nose are frightening additions, along with the surprisingly whimsical addition of a polka dot bow tie tattooed in the centre of his neck.

Campbell, a Colorado native, has been in and out of jail for over a decade. In 1995, at age 20, he was convicted for the attempted sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl. 

Most recently he was arrested for going within 500ft of a playground or public pool. Campbell was booked on Sunday and later released.

According to the Missouri sex offender registry, Campbell also has tattoos on his back, left and right arms, chest and abdomen.

But he is not alone in the competition of scariest mugshots.

Caius Veiovis, 31, has undergone extensive implants to create horns on his head and had the number of the devil - 666 - tattooed on his forehead.

Veiovis' terrifying mugshot was released last month when he was arrested as part of a gang who are said to have kidnapped and murdered three Hells Angels. The horn-headed Satan-worshipper is said to have drank the blood of one of his victims.

And in June, the mugshot of 26-year-old Randon Reid, arrested in Phoenix, Arizona, showed a man with manic eyes and a scary gurning smile taken into custody after shots were fired at a grounded plane parked at Deer Valley Airport.

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Spain's first ever retirement home for gay and lesbian residents.

A landscaped, luxury home is envisaged

A short train ride from central Madrid is a scruffy plot of land covered in weeds and surrounded by wire fencing. In just a couple of months work is expected to start to transform the site into Spain's first ever retirement home for gay and lesbian residents.

Spain has been at the vanguard of Europe in terms of gay rights in recent years, but activists say reforming laws has been easier than changing attitudes.

"Gay old people have to go back in the closet when they enter retirement homes," explains Federico Armenteros, who runs the December 26th Foundation in Madrid.

It is named after the date in 1979 when the law used during Gen Franco's dictatorship to imprison homosexuals - or to send them for "cure" with electric shocks - was repealed.

"For many years, a lot of people believed that homosexuals were sick and sinners," Mr Armenteros says.

"That is more pronounced among older people, and hard to change,"

So the foundation has been working on a solution.

'Insulted and alone'

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

I have to make myself as invisible as possible - go back in the closet - so they don't notice me”

Jose Maria Herreras

It has formed a co-operative, recruited architects and designed a luxury, landscaped retirement complex - complete with 115 apartments, gym, spa and restaurant.

There is space for yoga, Tai Chi and dance classes - and plans to house archive material for the first research centre on the history of the gay rights movement in Spain.

Designed to be "gay-friendly", the Foundation says the home will be open to anyone regardless of their sexuality.

Jose Maria Herreras describes it as a dream come true.

He looks relaxed, sitting at street cafe in Chueca - the gay heart of Madrid. But Jose is 65 and lives in a retirement home. He says his life has been miserable ever since the other residents discovered he was gay.

"They started to steer clear of me and insult me," he explains.

"They called me 'queer' and it made me feel awful. My room has two beds but no-one wants to share with me. So I'm alone and it's bad.

"I have to make myself as invisible as possible - go back in the closet - so they don't notice me. And I spend as much time outside the home as possible."

For now the site of the home is just wasteland

Gay rights activists believe that experience is widespread.

Predominantly Catholic Spain was among the first countries to legalise gay marriage and adoption.

Gay pride celebrations in Madrid are among the best-known and most extravagant.

The formerly run-down neighbourhood of Chueca now has a thriving gay scene including clubs, saunas, bars and bookshops.

But four decades of Gen Franco's right-wing dictatorship meant that change came late to Spain and has spread slowly.

'Anti-camp law'

"We only started fighting for our rights in the 1980s," explains Mili Hernandez, who opened Madrid's first gay and lesbian bookstore, Berkana, in 1993.

"Until 1979 there was a law that [they] could take us to jail just for walking on the streets and being a bit camp."

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

I think we should go to the homes and ask for our rights”

Mili HernandezSpanish gay rights pioneer

The 1980s Aids epidemic was another setback for equal-rights campaigners.

"Now we have [some] of the best laws in the world for homosexuals, but we didn't have enough time to change mentalities," Ms Hernandez says, and points out that there are still very few high-profile, openly gay role models in the country.

"We're still in the closet," she says.

The bookstore owner sympathises with the problems of gay pensioners in care but she would prefer a different approach.

"I think we should go to the homes and ask for our rights. Ask for a double room, and tell them we are gay. We should try to insist."

But plans for the alternative home are already well advanced.

"It's too tough to make people who are suffering now wait until society changes and the discrimination ends - when people whisper about you and call you names, and won't enter your room," argues Federico Armenteros.

"These things are shrinking but unfortunately they exist."

He and his partner have already signed up for an apartment.

"I'll be living in a quality place, with people who respect, understand, love and care for me," Mr Armenteros says.

"Usually, when you end up in a home you're just another number. But this is something completely different."

'Social need'

A flat at the new complex should also work out considerably cheaper than the average retirement home.

How the home should look eventually

That is largely because a sympathetic local mayor has granted a low-cost 75-year lease on the land.

The co-operative system means members will cover 40% of the home's costs in advance while remaining funds will be sought from the banks.

For the architects who have drawn up the plans - for no charge, so far - the project makes sound sense.

"This is a project which will actually happen - that's important because we've done a lot of unnecessary building in Spain," says chief architect Julio Touza Sacristan, walking the plot with his sketches and artist's impressions.

But he also got involved because he saw a social need for the residence.

"I'm not sure everyone would like to be associated with such a project," he says.

"We're not as modern as we think we are in Spain but we think this is really necessary."

For Jose Maria Herreras, the place cannot be built quickly enough.

"This is somewhere where everyone will be equal," he says. "It's a totally different home where we won't have to hide who we are. We will be people. I will be free again."

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Spain judge frees 5 suspected of financing terror

 

Five Algerians suspected of financing al-Qaida's North African branch have been freed by a judge who said there was no significant evidence against them. The judge ordered the men to stay in Spain, report to judicial authorities twice a month and declare any change of address. The men are being investigated on suspicion of providing logistical and financial support to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM. The arrests took place Tuesday in the northern Basque and Navarra regions. Mohamed Talbi, Hakim Anniche, Mounir Aoudache, Abdelghaffour Bensaoula and Ahmed Benchohra have not been charged. National Court Judge Fernando Grande-Marlaska said Saturday that there was no evidence the men had sent "significant sums to Algeria" or that the recipients were "persons related to terrorist activity." The five men had also been under investigation on suspicion of maintaining contacts with radical Islamists in France, Italy and Switzerland. Police seized a large amount of documents and computer material as part of their probe. AQIM operates in Algeria and emerged in the 1990s from armed groups fighting the Algerian government after the army stepped in to cancel the 1991 elections in a bid to stave off a victory by an Islamist political party. The group declared allegiance to al-Qaida in 2006, changed its name and renewed a campaign of bombings and kidnappings across the Sahara. AQIM is currently holding four French hostages, and French officials have called it the biggest terror threat to France and its interests. Dozens of suspected radical Islamic militants have been arrested in Spain since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in New York and Washington, and again after the 2004 commuter train bombings in Madrid.

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EU subsidies fuel Spain’s ravenous fleet

 

Decades of overfishing have left Europe’s fish stocks in peril and its fishermen in poverty. It’s an impasse paid for by EU taxpayers. Yet a proposed revision of the EU’s fishing law, hailed as sweeping reform, is rapidly losing momentum. A look at the industry’s biggest player - Spain - shows what officials are up against. Billions of euros in subsidies built its bloated fleet and propped up a money-losing industry. All the while, companies systematically flout the rules while officials overlook fraud and continue to fund offenders, an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has found. “Spain has earned its bad reputation,” said Ernesto Penas Lado, director of policy and enforcement at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries. “The problem is others don’t have the reputation and deserve it just as much.” Spain may not be alone. But as the EU’s most powerful fishing fleet, it is the starkest example of a failed EU policy, critics say. The Spanish fishing industry has received more than €5.8 billion (more than $8 billion) in subsidies since 2000 for everything from building new vessels and breaking down old ships to payments for retiring fishermen and training for the next generation, an fresh analysis by ICIJ shows. Subsidies account for almost a third of the value of the industry. Simply put, nearly one in three fish caught on a Spanish hook or raised in a Spanish farm is paid for with public money. ICIJ’s analysis is the first in-depth look at just how much public aid Spain has received for fishing - primarily from EU taxpayers, but also from Madrid and regional governments. The country has cornered a third of all the EU’s fishing aid since 2000, far more than any other member state. The central government doles out even more for things such as low interest loans and funding for its largest industry associations, which in turn lobby the EU for more industry subsidies, records show. Since 2000, the sector has avoided paying €2 billion in taxes on fuel to the Spanish Treasury. Public monies also fund a surprising range of services. More than €82 million ($114 million) has been spent to promote the fishing sector through advertising and at trade shows. After fishing vessels were hijacked by pirates in the Indian Ocean, Spain in 2009 changed its law to allow vessels to hire private security forces onboard, and then it helped foot the bill to the tune of €2.8 million. The root of the problem, regulators say, is that out-of-control subsidies encourage countries to build up already oversized fleets that are rapidly depleting the seas. “Fish are not an unlimited resource,” said fisheries economist Andrew Dyck of the University of British Columbia. “When the public purse is the only thing propping this industry up, we are paying for resource degradation.” The EU Commission itself recently concluded that “too many boats continue to chase too few fish.” It blamed the situation, in large part, on subsidies. Fish, not human rights One of the most controversial forms of public aid pays for foreign fishing licences. With its own waters increasingly empty of fish, the EU buys rights to the fishing grounds of developing countries such as Morocco, Mozambique and the Ivory Coast. Green groups, fishing experts and some EU politicians have criticised the agreements, saying European fishermen take advantage of poor countries that often lack knowledge and resources to protect their fish stocks. And key agreements cost more than they return on the value of fish. This is the case with Morocco, where each euro invested returns only €0.65 in value added, according to a study funded by the EU. The Spanish industry has received more than €800 million ($1.15 billion) in foreign licenses over the past decade — about two-thirds of the EU licences overall, according to the ICIJ analysis. The agreements have the support of Carmen Fraga Estévez, the European Parliament’s most powerful legislator on fisheries issues. A sharp-tongued politician with an encyclopedic knowledge of the industry, Fraga served as fishing secretary in Spain and has held a seat in the parliament’s committee on fisheries - which she now chairs - for 17 years. Her loyalty to the industry appears to be so deep that when she had to choose between human rights and fish, she voted for the latter. “The fisheries committee has to discuss fisheries issues, not human rights,” she was quoted in the press as saying when in 2009, the committee for the first time voted down a fishing agreement. Days before the vote, 157 civilians died after Guinea’s totalitarian regime opened fire on pro-democracy protesters. The agreement would have handed the Guinean government €450,000 ($639,000) a year for fishing licences. Fraga Estévez declined requests for interviews from ICIJ. Spanish member of the European Parliament (MEP) Josefa Andrés Barea said the subsidised foreign fishing licences are vital. When Spain entered the EU in 1986, very few Spanish vessels were allowed in the Union’s waters. So fishing in foreign waters was - and still is - the only way for many ship owners to make a living. And if Spain isn’t fishing, she said, less savory global players will scoop up the catch instead. "There's a fundamental problem here, which is that major [fishing] powers like China will be there if we're not. And they don't have any rules,” Andrés said. “They're much more predatory than we are." Fewer fish, poorer fishermen EU waters are among the world’s most exploited. Scientists say three quarters of assessed fish stocks are overfished. Eels once served as a delicacy are so depleted scientists doubt they can recover despite a Europe-wide rescue plan. Irish Sea Cod, Baltic Sprat and West of Scotland herring are all dwindling. The trend stretches across the globe. In 2006, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that 75 percent of the world fish stocks were fished to the very limit of - or beyond - sustainable levels. In its latest report, from last year, that figure had risen to 85 percent. “Europe has a long and dark history of overfishing,” said Boris Worm, one of the world´s most renowned marine biologists, working at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada. In a 2003 study, Worm showed that industrialised fishing has, since 1950, emptied the oceans of nine out of 10 fish longer than 20 inches such as salmon, cod and halibut. Fewer fish mean fewer - and poorer - fishermen. Across the EU, the sector often costs taxpayers more than it produces. According to a recent report by the environmental group Oceana, at least eight countries received more money in public fisheries aid in 2009 than the value of their landed fish. The fishing industry was the only segment of Spain’s economy that shrunk in the 2000s. The northwestern region of Galicia more than anywhere else in Europe relies on the industry - and the subsidies - to stay afloat. Yet the area lost a third of its fisheries-related jobs in the decade leading up to 2006. In the Galician port of Vigo on the Atlantic coast, more fish pass across the docks headed for consumers’ plates than in any other port in the world. Coastal towns are riddled with signs boasting subsidised fishing projects. Politicians include the sector as a central theme in their campaigns. The industry’s power was propelled by the 1960s push for industrialisation by the fascist Franco regime. Franco himself was an avid fisherman and a Galician by birth. “Economically the [fishing] industry is between the tomato and the potato. But politically it is more important than any other industry,” said EU’s head of fisheries control Valérie Lainé. The sector “has always been protected by the government - without the industry, Vigo would be dead, Galicia would be dead.” The powerful Galician industry group ARVI, which boasts of its close ties to lawmakers, acknowledged that fishing would not be viable without public funding. In a recent position paper, it encouraged politicians to support subsidies to modernise outdated vessels, fish in foreign waters and build new on-shore cold storage. Meanwhile, subsidies steadily flow to the region, but sometimes only make things worse. Víctor Muñiz has relied on fishing for decades. He used to own vessels, as did his father before him. Not anymore. Now they operate a fish processing plant in the Galician town of Meaño. The factory was renovated in 2009 with EU subsidies to process and freeze up to 300 tons of fish per hour; it was expected to employ 100 people. But the brand new machinery stands silent. “There should be 10 trucks with mackerel here,” Muñiz said in a bitter tone as he walked through the 8,000 square meter plant in April. But within 20 days of the start of the season, most vessels had already scooped up their entire mackerel quota. Muñiz said the quota is too low, but his major frustration is that too many factories like his were subsidised in the first place. “You present a €2 million project, and they give you 60 percent. You’ve told them how much fish you're going to produce and what kind. Somebody should have told the processing plants: ‘No, sorry, this is the quota for mackerel.’” Policy in a shambles By 2006 it was clear that EU’s fishing policy was in a shambles. Fleets were bloated. Stocks were crashing. Researchers commissioned by the EU drafted a series of reviews of the community’s fisheries law - the Common Fisheries Policy, which will govern the fleet for at least a decade. One little-known document is informally called the “Frankenstein report” because of its damning conclusions. It lays the blame squarely on influence-driven subsidies: The sector would be broke without them. Swedish Green Party MEP Isabella Lövin said the key problem of the EU fisheries policy is that it was “modeled after agricultural policy. You provide fertilizer and farming equipment, you get more vegetables. So they used the same model in fishing - you increase the number of boats, you get more fish. But it doesn’t work that way,” she said. “You end up with less fish.” Subsidies over the past decades built a bloated EU fleet that plundered fish stocks. Efforts to reduce the capacity have focused on paying companies to break down old vessels. But that reduction has been undercut by subsidies given to modernise existing vessels, enabling them to catch more and more fish. According to the 394-page “Frankenstein report”, EU-countries need to cut capacity in half and severely restrict - and adhere to - quotas for fish stocks to recover. But Spanish Fishing Secretary Alicia Villauriz said policymakers must consider more than capacity. “You cannot make a statement saying: If you reduce the fleet everything will be more profitable. You'll also destroy a lot of employment.” Any transition, she said, would need to happen slowly. That the European fleet was bloated was nothing new - calls to cut it down began in the 1980s. But the aid kept rolling in to build new ships and modernise old ones. “The sector has managed to attract more financial resources than would be justified under normal conditions,” the “Frankenstein” report said. The EU researchers also found that groups set up to advise the Commission on a new fishing policy - largely made up of industry representatives - consider the platform “mainly as a channel for political influence, and secondly as a forum for discussion” of the new law. In short: They were lobbying for their interests instead of trying to find solutions. The EU-commissioned “Frankenstein” report concluded that EU policy did “not provide the right incentives for responsible fishing, or may even induce irresponsible fishing.” Turning a blind eye Protected stocks worth as much as €16.7 billion ($23 billion) are illegally traded worldwide every year - making the black market in fish more valuable than smuggling stolen art. Many of the players in the illicit trade set up shell companies in places that do not adhere to international conventions protecting the oceans. Spanish nationals register more vessels to “flag-of-convenience” countries than any other besides Panama, Honduras and Taiwan - which are themselves considered nations where a ship-owner can register their boats without having to adhere to strict tax or safety requirements, and can operate without oversight. It is rare for the commission to take a member state to court. The European Court of Justice - Europe’s highest court - has found Spain guilty three times of failing to implement EU fishing laws. Spain has refused to enforce catch limits, police its fleet or impose adequate punishment, the court ruled. One of Spain’s most widely criticised shortfalls is policing its port of Las Palmas on the Canary Islands off the Moroccan coast. Illegal shipments of fish plundered from West African waters regularly filter into the EU through the port, according to multiple investigative reports. Fishing secretary Villauriz said control in Spain is expensive because of the sheer size of its industry - more than 10,000 fishing boats, 3,084 miles of coastline and 47 major ports. “But that doesn't mean we're not taking care of our obligations in control matters” she added. The Spanish Ministry of Environment, Agriculture and Fisheries told ICIJ that inspections have nearly doubled since 2004 to 9,323 in 2010. That’s still far from the number of inspections other countries are carrying out - the United Kingdom logged nearly 50,000 inspections in 2004. But some things don’t appear to have changed. The number of inspectors in the port of Vigo - Europe's largest fishing port - remains the same as in 2003, when EU officials blasted Spain for the measly number of national inspectors at its ports. Today four inspectors oversee more than 700,000 metric tons of fish a year - that’s nearly 20,000 kilos of fish per inspector for every hour of every day of the year, including Christmas. Subsidised offenders Spanish officials, like those in many other EU countries, do not take into account whether its nationals have been involved in the illegal fishing trade before doling out public aid. Neither Spain nor the EU will make public information about offenders who have been fined for illegal fishing - also called Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated fishing (IUU). But a sliver of insight can been gleaned from a database of appellate court rulings. ICIJ reviewed every court case adjudicated since 2000 in which subsidised companies unsuccessfully appealed fines imposed by the Spanish government. In more than 80 percent of cases in which the appellant could be identified, firms continued to receive subsidies after the court had upheld penalties, the analysis shows. There’s only one case in which the ministry of fisheries tried to prevent a company from receiving subsidies, according to ministry officials. That Spanish ship-owner so exemplifies the quagmire as to make it a near cliché. Government officials and international regulators have repeatedly targeted Vidal Armadores for its alleged involvement in a decade-old international network of pirate fishing vessels, court and law enforcement records show. Brussels demanded multiple times that Spain recover subsidies and “take action against” Vidal Armadores. At least through 2010, however, Spain and the EU continued to pay the firm — at least €8.2 million ($12 million) since 1996. Last year the government finally fined the company and cut off aid, but the case is pending appeal. In an interview with ICIJ, one of the firm owners, Manuel Antonio Vidal Pego, denied allegations of illegal fishing and said the company was entitled to the subsidies it received. Like Vidal Armadores has in the past, seafood giant Pescanova targets Patagonian toothfish - sold in the US as Chilean sea bass. Unlike Vidal Armadores, Pescanova is a member of an association that fights illegal fishing. In Spain, it boasts a trusted motto: “Lo bueno sale bien,” translated as “Good things go well.” But the company has its own troubles. Last year, Pescanova’s US subsidiary pleaded guilty to illegally importing $1.2 million worth of toothfish. While that case — nicknamed “Operation Toothless” — was pending, the US Department of Justice launched a second investigation into another allegedly illegal importation. The status of the second investigation is unknown. Pescanova is one of the Europe’s three largest seafood companies, with a fleet of around 100 boats fishing worldwide and annual sales of €1.53 billion (more than $2 billion). Yet, since 1995 the company has pulled in more than €175 million ($250 million) in subsidies, according to the ICIJ analysis. Pescanova repeatedly declined requests for interviews from ICIJ. “We've had 50 years of positive history,” said spokesman Angel Matamoro during a brief phone exchange. “I don't think you're asking about themes that will promote our image.” Regarding the US investigations, he said, “Whatever we had to say, we said it to the US court. The company follows scrupulously the law in every country it’s in.” One firm that broke the law and continued to receive aid is Albacora, one of the largest tuna companies in Europe. The company’s boat Albacora Uno last year was fined $5 million - the largest fine in US history - for illegally placing fishing gear in US waters multiple times during a two-year period. The boat was built with subsidies and used subsidised fishing licenses. And even after the US fined the firm, Spain granted Albacora €1.8 million ($2.6 million) worth of subsidies to fish in foreign waters. The Spanish ministry of fisheries told ICIJ it had fined Albacora but will not deny the company further aid. Albacora director Jon Uria said the 67 infringements were an “isolated” incident. The company was unaware of the infractions, he said, until the US government alerted executives. In his view, the fine was disproportionate to the offense. A radical reform? Javier Garat is the Spanish industry’s most visible and eloquent lobbyist. He was born into the family that co-founded Albacora. Garat is now a shareholder of the company, but he says that does not influence his lobbying. In his meetings with officials, he often requests subsidies for the sector. “That money has generated wealth,” he said. “It’s been used to modernise an obsolete fishing sector” so that today “we have better, more modern, more secure vessels.” Garat heads Spain’s powerful lobbying group Cepesca as well as the Europe-wide industry group Europêche — both of which operate with EU subsidies. In the halls of the ministry of fisheries in Madrid, the word is that Garat will be appointed Spain’s next fishing secretary following the November elections. Following closed-door meetings at the ministry in April, Garat and Spanish Minister of Environment, Agriculture and Fisheries Rosa Aguilar announced that the ministry and Cepesca were devising a “common roadmap to defend Spanish interests” in the overhaul of the EU fishing policy. After two years of deliberation, the European Commission presented its proposed legislation in July. No one but the commissioner herself appears satisfied with the draft. But the negotiations have just begun. Political alliances and lobbying will determine the final language to be voted upon before the law goes into effect 1 January, 2013. Garat called the reform draft “cowardly.” He said the commission succumbed to pressure from environmentalists and biased media “without taking into consideration the repercussions on the fishing sector.” In his view, the state of the fish stocks is not as “catastrophic” as commission officials appear to believe. Yet it seems the industry’s efforts have staved off its worst nightmares. Nothing came of ambitions to make overfishing a crime, as happened in the US under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, or to require quotas be consistent with what scientists say is biologically sustainable. There was no proposal on how to limit the oversized fishing fleet or to implement quotas in the fishing agreements with foreign countries. EU’s top fisheries official, commissioner Maria Damanaki, told ICIJ her proposal is “radical.” She said Brussels will stop directly subsidising the industry. “Now we are going to give money in a very prudent way and under very strict conditions,” she said. “And we are going to ask for paybacks in the case of illegal fishing.” Damanaki also highlighted proposed changes in the fishing partnership agreements. “We are going to call them sustainable fisheries agreements because we're going to fish only for the surplus — if there is any surplus,” she said. “Also, we're going to respect human rights in these areas.” Given the hype, Green party MEP Loevin said, “I had expected a clause on human rights.” But the human rights clause originally in the legislative text was missing from the final proposal. Loevin ran for office on a ticket pledging to change the fishing policy. She said the proposal is a lot less radical than she had hoped - especially as the coming negotiations will water it down even more. “The law can't allow for politicians to compromise with the environment when long-term environmental goals clash with short-term profit,” she said. Ernesto Penas Lado, director of the European Commission’s fisheries policy unit, said the mindset in Spain and among fishing nations globally is that no single country feels responsible for the fate of the fish in the sea. “It’s the tragedy of the commons,” he said. “Because the resources belong to no one, they belong to everyone.” In the EU, 27 countries have to come to a consensus on a common fishing policy. There’s no mentality of making a sacrifice for preservation, Penas said. “People think: Whatever I do not fish, my neighbor will.”

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Spain's Gold Rush

 

Magdalena Gómez knows the solution to her hometown's suffering. Like roughly 20% of the adult population in Tapia de Casariego, the 27-year-old mother of two is unemployed. She has seen many of her neighbors, desperate for work, move away from this corner of northwestern Spain in search of opportunities in bigger cities. Which is why, even though she knows that a sizeable portion of Tapia is opposed to it, Gómez supports the construction of a new mine. "We don't have anything else here," she says. "We need that gold." There's a gold rush under way in northwestern Spain, and Tapia is just one of the places trying to figure out what to do about it. With gold prices skyrocketing, deposits that have lain untouched for decades, if not centuries, are suddenly looking awfully appealing to international mining companies. And with the Spanish economy in profound crisis, the jobs that those companies promise — even if they're not permanent — are looking just as irresistible. But as the controversy dividing the town of Tapia suggests, not everyone is convinced that the benefits are worth the risks.

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Spain's fishy practices cast shadow on seas

 

Some quotes stay with you forever. One that's stayed with me came from Rafael Centenera, a general assistant director in Spanish fisheries ministry, when I interviewed him in Vigo, Europe's busiest fishing port, in 2007. "For sure we are friends of fish," he said. "But still more, we are the friends of fishermen." The reason these 16 words have stayed with me is that they encapsulate perfectly the approach to managing fisheries that has held sway for many years in most of Europe and indeed much further afield. What it implies is that a bit of restraint and conservation is fine - so long as it doesn't get in the way of fishermens' profits. What that stance implies in Spain has been laid out more clearly than ever in a new report from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). According to their analysis, Spanish fishing has been subsidised to the tune of 5.8bn euros ($7.8bn, £5bn) since 2000. Those subsidies have spanned the scrapping of old boats and the building of new ones, and just about everything in between. And the number is so high that one in every three fish landed by Spanish boats is paid for in subsidy, ICIJ calculates. European fisheries are a tangled business To anyone who's familiar with the issues, the findings won't come as any surprise; but it is nevertheless striking to have the scale of the subsidies laid out so starkly. Incidentally, on that same trip to Vigo, everyone connected with the industry claimed there were no subsidies, that everything had been ended. One skipper then undermined the case by telling me how little he had to pay for his diesel. The website fishsubsidy.org has also documented the scale of public support across the EU. The world's fishing fleets are just too big, a number of reports have concluded Among other things, it has produced a list of vessels that were first subsidised in renovation, and then in destruction. In one Spanish example, money was awarded to the boat Mikel Deuna Primero for modernisation. Just 17 days later, more money was allocated for scrapping it. The ICIJ report also mentions that fishermen found guilty of fraud or other offences have continued to receive subsidies. And this theme is taken up in another new report, this time from Greenpeace. It concludes that a single family of fishing barons has amassed about 16m euros in subsidies, despite a series of arrests and convictions for offences such as smuggling, illegal shark-finning and falsifying records. Maria Damanaki, Europe's fisheries commissioner who's leading moves to reform the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), says the accusations are being investigated. World leader Spain isn't the only country that supports its fishing industry with subsidies that in theory do not exist. Ernesto Penas Lado, director of policy and enforcement at the European Commission's Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, tells the ICIJ: "Spain has earned its bad reputation; the problem is others don't have the reputation, and deserve it just as much." But if European fisheries are to be put on a sustainable footing, Spain is the key nation. That's partly because it operates by far the bloc's largest fleet, and partly because it traditionally leads the process of political lobbying designed to ensure that authorities prioritise fishermen (at least, the big industrial companies that organise the lobbying) above fish in their hierarchy of friendship. But there's a huge disconnect here; because ultimately, keeping fishing at unsustainable levels is anything but friendly to fishermen. Fishing methods have moved on - but regulation appears stuck in the dark ages As the World Bank made clear a few years ago in its Sunken Billions report, the huge overcapacity of the world's fleets actually make the industry much less profitable, with about $50bn being poured into the sea every year. Cutting the overcapacity and allowing stocks to recover will in the end make for a financially healthier proposition. That's a reality that the authorities in Spain (and other countries) have routinely ignored. The situation has barely changed in years, with changes wrought in long-term management plans for species such as cod just a drop in the ocean. CFP reform - due to be completed in 2013 - is the biggest opportunity to put things right that there has been in years, and the biggest there is likely to be for many more. Yet pressure for reform from the "usual suspects" such as Greenpeace frankly appears unlikely to bring about major change, because the pressure has been there for years and has pushed governments only a small distance. So what might make a difference? One window of opportunity could be the financial mess in which Spain finds itself - not on the scale of Greece, but mentioned whenever the "who's next after Greece?" question gets asked. Some of its economic indicators are around the European average, but 20% unemployment is anything but - the highest in the bloc, in fact. If research is showing that cutting fishing capacity would increase revenues, why not demand Spain trims its industrial fleet as a condition for economic aid? If that brings just one of the World Bank's sunken billions into Spanish ports every year, that's one less billion the rest of the eurozone would have to find. The other window is surely provided by that unemployment figure. An industry that favours big industrialised fleets with a powerful lobby over small-scale, artisanal operations is inherently less sustainable from an ecological point of view, because fishermen who do not have the capacity to move somewhere else when stocks are depleted are more likely to look after their fishing grounds. It's also much worse socially. Globally, artisanal fishing snares less than half the world's total catch, yet provides 90% of the jobs. So a switch from large-scale industrialised fleets to small-scale localised effort would create employment, as well as increasing the chances of creating a more sustainable industry - which in turn means more profits down the line. Sounds like a way to be a better friend to both fish and fishermen; but don't hold your breath.

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