Pirates? What Pirates?
A growing problem the shipping industry would like to ignore
After they were set adrift in a lifeboat, the crew members of the tanker Suci caught one last glimpse of their ship steaming away--only it was no longer the Suci. Its funnel had been repainted black, and it bore a new name, Glory II. Still aboard were a cargo of 2,611 metric tons of diesel fuel, two of the ship's engineers, and a band of masked, knife-wielding pirates who had boarded the ship just six hours out of Singapore. A fishing boat rescued the crew 16 hours later, and the pirates freed the engineers 3 1/2 weeks into their ordeal. As for the Suci, its whereabouts remain unknown.
Every year, modern-day buccaneers plunder the cargoes of hundreds of oceangoing merchant vessels. Their booty can be just about anything: commodities such as sugar and paint, consumer goods such as cars and cameras, cash--or the ships themselves. Last year in Guayaquil, Ecuador, two men pretending to be port officials were served drinks by a hospitable shipmaster in his cabin; the two guests returned the favor by pilfering $2,710 from a safe after drugging the master. That was small change compared with the take of six bandits last year in Hong Kong waters. After storming a barge carrier, they transferred five containers of frozen food onto another boat. The cold cuisine may have netted the thieves more than $300,000.
Typically, thieves board at night while the ships are in port. Most are small-time pilferers, but organized criminal gangs, some equipped with high-speed boats to overtake vessels at sea, are staging increasingly sophisticated--and sometimes violent--attacks.
Audacious. "There is no doubt that attacks on vessels have become more audacious, more violent," concludes a recent report from the International Maritime Bureau, a London-based agency affiliated with the International Chamber of Commerce. In late April, pirates boarded a tanker in Santos, Brazil, held the crew at gunpoint, and threatened to blow up the vessel if the crew resisted. The pirates got away with $18,000 in cash and valuables. Owners generally advise crews not to risk their lives by resisting pirates, but in several recent incidents crew members have been wounded or killed. One of the most violent attacks occurred in February 1996 when pirates shot nine crew members to death aboard a fishing boat near Basilan Island in the Philippines.
Indonesia is one current piracy hot spot: Merchant ships have to slow down to navigate its narrow channels, and thousands of islands offer a haven for escaping bandits. Other hot spots include Brazil, notorious for its lax port security, and Africa, especially from Mauritania to Angola.
The IMB estimates that losses from piracy reach $200 million a year. That is still substantially less than the toll taken by other forms of maritime theft. One increasingly popular scam involves so-called phantom ships. A syndicate will buy an old freighter, set up a network of dummy offices, and forge documents. When an unwitting shipper consigns a cargo to the fake company, the ship sails off, changes its name, and unloads the goods on the black market. The IMB informally estimates that these and other scams cost at least $1 billion a year.
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