conservas dani implicated in morecambe tragedy

From The Independent, re the death of 19 Chinese cockle pickers in Morecambe Bay:

The intensification of the industry has been driven by Conservas Dani, based in Vilassar de Mar… Dani’s products are a household name in Spain by virtue of the fact that Espanyol, the club chaired by the company’s wealthy owner, Daniel Sanchez Llibre, carries the distinctive Dani logo on its shirts… [T]he company was starved of countless Spanish cockles after the Prestige oil tanker disaster destroyed Europe’s finest cockle and mussel beds near its principal canning plant at Carnota, in Galicia… In the same year, the firm began its relentless pursuit of British cockles, moving into Britain under the trading name of Dani Foods by buying an old family-run cockling firm, Jones, in Penclawdd, South Wales… Until Dani moved in, cockling opportunities for the Chinese and their gangmasters had been limited by the British cocklers’ intense dislike of the Chinese work ethic… For the British gangmasters who employed Chinese cocklers, Dani’s arrival provided a major opportunity… “Dani seemed to want to buy every cockle in Britain,” said one source… [I]n the week before the Morecambe Bay disaster, Dani was asked by British cocklers not to buy Chinese-picked cockles.

Josep Sánchez Llibre, another member of the family and a parliamentarian in the group that ruled here until the elections, is currently under investigation in the so-called Cas Treball case for fraud relating to regional government subsidies and illegal party financing.

Trevor @ 15 February 2004 1:05 AM

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Comments

1. Geoff
   1:06 PM on 15 February 2004

   Strange that, a Welsh cockling firm called Jones.

2. John B
   5:07 PM on 15 February 2004

   Brother Josep is also tied up in the cas turisme fraud, involving the recent supposed suicide of ex-politico Joan Cogul in Manila. Josep Sanchez Llibre and his UDC party boss Josep Antoni Duran Lleida stand accused of masterminding the misappropriation of an estimated 36 million euros of EU and Catalan public funds. The figures are detailed in the book Tots els homes de Duran, la corrupcio poli­tica de Catalunya, by Josep C. Verges (Llibres de l’Index). Duran Lleida sued Verges for libel, and lost.

3. Trevor
   5:26 PM on 15 February 2004

   … and these people are from the social class that likes to spends Sunday lunchtime moaning about mafiosi from Eastern Europe and South America.

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