It’s been awhile since we’ve heard much from Minister of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Susi Pudjiastuti, who made serious waves in years past with her mission to rid Indonesia’s waters of illegal fishing boats and making a spectacular display of blowing up the boats they’ve caught.
In fact, Susi’s approach has already proven successful at decreasing illegal fish poaching, so there hasn’t been a need for any more fishing boat fireworks lately. But Susi has still been quietly hard at work uncovering corruption under the sea and in the government, most recently revealing a massive lobster smuggling operation, allegedly involving a civil servant found to have Rp 195 billion in his bank account.
“The message from [Minister Susi] is that there is one civil servant involved. They have savings of up to Rp 195 billion and that’s not right,” said Rina, head of the ministry’s Quarantine, Quality Control and Safety of Fishery Products Division (BKIPM) as quoted by Metro TV today.
Rina did not reveal the identity of the civil servants allegedly involved in the lucrative lobster smuggling operation or the details of the crustacean-based crime. But she did say that Susi had ordered her to investigate the case to see who else could be involved in looting the lobsters from Indonesian waters.
On February 22, the police, the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries and the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights announced that they had thwarted the smuggling of 65,699 egg-carrying lobsters out of Bali, Lombok and Surabaya that could potentially have cost the state up to Rp 7.06 billion. It is believed the lobsters were being sent to Vietnam and nine people were named as suspects in the case.
Reader Interactions