A criminal court in Punta Arenas, Chile, has found former executives of salmon-farming firm Nova Austral guilty of environmental crimes but has acquitted them of fraud charges.
The court has unanimously ruled that defendants Drago Covacich, a former regional manager at Nova Austral, and Nicos Nicolaides, the former CEO of the firm, were guilty of the repeated crime of water pollution between December 2016 and June 2019. Further, the judges unanimously issued a guilty verdict against Covacich as perpetrator of the crime of providing false information to the supervisory authority investigating the pollution.
In a majority ruling, the court also found that defendants Isaac Olivet-Besson and Rigoberto Garrido, former area managers at the firm, were guilty as accessories to the crime.
According to prosecutor Sebastián González, the court accepted the public prosecutor's arguments that environmental crimes were committed between 2016 and 2019. The prosecutor alleged that besides the falsification of mortality reports, for which Nova Austral came under investigation in 2019 from Chile’s National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service (Sernapesca), the company had stocked salmon beyond legal limits, and the now-convicted 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 the pollution caused by that overproduction.
“These events … are extremely serious and have been proven in court,” González said on ITV Patagonia. “This ruling fully validates our claims: Significant environmental damage was proven – the result of abnormal operations – concealed with false statements.”
For these crimes, the prosecutor has reportedly requested sentences ranging from three to five years in prison, as well as fines that could reach an amount equivalent to around CLP 686 million (USD 728,000, EUR 634,000)...
