Out-of-court fines of € 1,3 million have been distributed to poachers over the last two and a half years by members of the Thera Service and the Ulamos Police Poisoning Unit based on the new amending legislation that provides for extermination fines for all offenses. Since the implementation of the new strict legislation, in July 2017, a total of 418 out-of-court settlements have been issued to date. The data provided to the Parliament by the Ministers of Interior and Justice, Nikos Nouris, and George Savvidis, respectively, demonstrate the meager results of the Police Trafficking Assault Unit, on the basis of which the Chief of Police, Kypros Michailidis, recently decided Oulamou.
In particular, following a question from ELAM MP Linos Papagiannis, the Minister of Interior, Nikos Nouris, informed the Parliament in writing on 24/1/2020 with the following:
- Based on the amending legislation that came into force in July 2017, a total of 418 out-of-court settlements have been issued and served. Of the 418 out-of-court settlements, 344 (82,3%) were issued for cases reported by members of the Thera and Fauna Service, while the remaining 74 (17,7%) relate to out-of-court issues issued by members of the Ulamos Police Poaching Unit.
- 54 of these cases are considered particularly serious, as they are related to poaching during the night, poaching of the wild, possession of prey during a closed hunting season, or possession and use of iron traps and wire catches to catch hares. Eighteen of these cases involved poaching or carrying weapons overnight.
Besides, based on the data recently submitted to the Parliament by the Minister of Justice and Public Order, George Savvidis, it is revealed that from 1/1/2019 until 13/11/2019, the police officers of Ulamos Pataxis Smuggling made only 10 complaints.
That is, there is, on average, one complaint per month. In the year 2018, a total of 39 complaints were made by the Police Poaching Unit, which was founded in 2007 and was dissolved last November. It is noted that the Police continues to act in support of the staff of the Thera Service. For this purpose, a contact point of the MMAD (s.s. the deputy commander) with the Thera Service has been appointed and a 24-hour telephone line of complaints is operating.
The complaints in the Parliament
The Movement of United Cypriot Hunters in a letter to the President of the Republic on 11/11/2019 complained, among other things, that the Police Poaching Fighting Squad was disbanded after pressure from politicians linked to poachers who supply them with illegal prey. In his statements the other day, the president of the United Cypriot Hunters Movement, Nikolas Prodromou, claimed that the real reason why the Police Poaching Squad was disbanded was because "they did not want them to work".
Following a suggestion by MP Giorgos Perdikis, the above complaints will be put under the microscope of the deputies of the Environment Committee, as the issue was registered for ex officio examination. Explaining the urgent need to discuss the issue, George Perdikis in his letter to the chairman of the Environment Committee and AKEL MP, Adamos Adamou, states the following: “I have received the attached letter from the United Cypriot Hunters Movement in which the ministry complains The Ministry of Justice and the Police Headquarters decided to terminate the operation of the Ulamo Pathakis Patrathria. According to the letter, the decision to terminate the operation of Ulamos was taken after the complaint of marked poachers. If the information in question is valid, this decision is considered extremely dangerous and the effects on the Cypriot fauna may be irreversible. I believe that the Parliamentary Committee on the Environment should register and discuss this issue as soon as possible ".
Extinct fines
According to the provisions of the current legislation, the usual offenses that occur during this hunting season, ie hunting without a permit and hunting in a restricted area, are punished with extrajudicial fines starting from € 2.000 and increase depending on the extent of the offense and their combination with other offenses. At the same time, the extrajudicial fine for poaching during the night is punished with an extrajudicial fine of € 25.000.
Recently, a 24-year-old poacher was fined € 26.000 when members of the Thera Service located a killed hare in his vehicle, which was stopped in an area of Kokkinotrimithia. He was issued an extrajudicial fine of € 25.000 for the offense of killing prey during non-hunting hours and an extrajudicial fine of € 1.000 for the offense of possession of prey without a hunting license. A second poacher who was found to be laying wire to catch hares in the area of Agios Kononas in Akamas was fined € 10.500. Also, several hunters were punished with extrajudicial € 500 due to the use of prohibited hunting methods and in particular the use of a machine that reproduces the voices of birds. As we have been duly told, most poachers pay the extrajudicial fine in order to avoid being brought to justice where the amount of extrajudicial killings increases while at the same time, they risk being sentenced to prison.
Source: Liberal