Suspended Fishing Company Owners Skip Town Without Payingff
30 October 2007
Palau The business license of Palau Marine Industries Corporation has now been revoked for failing to remit $100,000 in back taxes according to the Government of Palau, Department of Revenue and Taxation Chief Ricardo Bausoch.
But the government will probably never see this money, as PMIC General Manager, Danilo Celes has told island new sources that “the owners ran away already and left a long time ago.â€
PMIC’s business license has also been suspended subject to the payment and all 35 tuna fishing boats licensed under the company have been ordered to return to the MalakalHarbor wharf and cease fishing. But Celes says those boats are long gone.
Celes says when owners Tai Jung Fei and his father Tai Chin Long left Palau, they “stranded†the nearly 30 mostly Filipino employees of the company without making any arrangements for their repatriation to the Philippines, owing months of back pay to employees and having no food in their living quarters.
He added that the entire PMIC operation is shut down and all the fishing boats and fishermen have also left Palau as “they aren’t owned by PMIC but (are) only under contract so they just left.â€
A women who answered the news reporters calls to PMIC’s office simply said, “We are not doing anything, we are just here in the office.â€
