Presenter: Now Simon, when we talk of piracy in the st century most of us think of illegal copying and computer fraud but you’re actually someone who specialises in the good old-fashioned type of piracy at sea. When it comes to pirates on the high seas, though, surely you’re only talking about isolated incidents in certain areas?
Simon: Not really.
Last year, for instance, 285 incidents were reported to the International Maritime Bureau and sailors were murdered during those incidents. Of course,
we’re not talking about pirates that carry swords between their teeth. Modern practitioners are armed with the latest automatic weaponry. A ship will be
targeted weeks in advance and, together with their arsenal of weapons,
pirates will also
have exact details of cargo, composition of the crew and routes to betaken to the destination port.
Presenter: So you’re having to deal with gangs of some sophistication.
Simon: Exactly. Over the years, I’ve seen them change from petty thieves looking to steal
cans of paint and the like, to huge multinational corporations organised like Microsoft. To obtain the sort of details I mentioned earlier, you obviously have to have a sophisticated network of communications in place and a few corrupt insiders in shipping companies on your payroll. Another change is that today it is often the vessel itself rather than the cargo that is the object of the pirates attention. More often than not, a ship will be sailed out to open sea while the pirates repaint it and reflag it with a flag of one of the many countries that allow ships to fly what in shipping circles is called a flag of convenience. This term is applied to many tiny
third-world countries which, fora sizeable fee, allow ships to register
to sail under their flag,
often without any checks on the origin or seaworthiness of the vessel. To avoid detection, pirates will fly such flags basically exploiting this vagueness in the regulation and registration of ships to their advantage.
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