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Greenpeace on Thursday accused Japanese whalers of stealing meat from the country's annual research hunt in the Antarctic and selling it on the black market.

The environmental group said it had filed a criminal complaint with the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office against 12 crew members, using a box of meat it obtained as evidence.

Greenpeace said a four-month investigation had found that crew of the Nisshin Maru factory ship had smuggled the meat ashore in bags designated as personal luggage and passed it to traders to be sold illegally.

It said the 12 crew members had sent at least 47 boxes containing a total of about one tonne of the meat, worth some 14 million yen (about R1 017 688), through a parcel delivery service after the government-sponsored mission.

The ship's operator, Kyodo Senpaku, said there was a decades-old custom of giving crew members "souvenir" meat to distribute to neighbours.

But the firm was "worried" that some wrongdoing may have taken place, a company official said.

"There is suspicion," said the official who declined to be named.

There was no immediate reaction from the government, but the state-backed Institute of Cetacean Research, which commissions the whaling, said that crew members were given meat as a "gift."...