The court of appeals in Chile’s southernmost city of Punta Arenas has ruled to fully acquit Nicos Nicolaides, the former CEO of salmon-farming firm Nova Austral, of all charges levied against him for supposed crimes committed when he worked at the firm.
The move reversed a criminal conviction issued in July 2025 in which Nicolaides and other former Nova Austral executives were sentenced to prison and ordered to pay fines for alleged environmental crimes committed between 2016 and 2019.
The executives had been accused of not only falsifying mortality reports, for which Chile’s National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service (Sernapesca) began investigating Nova Austral in 2019, but of also having the company stock salmon beyond legal limits. The prosecutor in the case said that the accused individuals had introduced sand and chemicals into the waters at the company’s salmon farms located in Alberto de Agostini National Park to cover up pollution caused by that overproduction.
The former Nova Austral executives were also accused of participating in deceitfully obtaining CLP 59 billion (USD 62.5 million, EUR 54.5 million) for the firm through bonuses, using the nation’s Navarino Law to do so. Under the Navarino Law, the government offers a series of tax and customs benefits for industrial companies that operate in southernmost Chile’s Magallanes region.
Chile’s State Defense Council filed a claim for compensation on behalf of the nation’s Treasury related to this accusation, but in 2025, a court dismissed the filing, saying the window of time allowed for the filing of such claims had passed.
The Punta Arenas Court of Appeals’ unanimous ruling has now revoked the previous conviction for water pollution, determining that environmental impact on hydrobiological resources could not be proven, and confirmed the acquittal for subsidy fraud.
Regarding the latter acquittal, Nicolaides’ legal team was also able to prove that the questioned bonuses from the Navarino Law were obtained from legal production cycles and came prior to the facts investigated, ruling out any type of fiscal deceit.
“This decisive ruling affirms Mr. Nicolaides’ innocence, establishing that the alleged environmental offense did not exist, and upholds the decision of the Punta Arenas Oral Criminal Court, which acquitted Nicolaides of the offense of subsidy fraud, given that neither fiscal damage nor the deceit inherent to that offense was proven,” Alejandro Espinoza, who is Nicolaides’ lawyer, said in a statement. “This ruling puts a definitive end to this process that we always considered unfounded, with the civil lawsuit filed by the Treasury also being rejected.”
The ruling sets a precedent that environmental criminal prosecution requires rigorous standards of proof and cannot be based solely on regulatory faults, Nicolaides’ legal team added.
After Nicolaides stepped down in 2019 over the accusations of environmental wrongdoing, Nova Austral completely restructured its executive staff and sought to strengthen its internal practices and controls.
The firm also underwent a change of ownership in September 2024 following its judicial reorganization, whereby the Larta Investment Group took over as sole owner. Nova Austral now has a different management team, new shareholders, and a different board of directors than those in place at the time of the events outlined in the case.
