The Crimes at Sea That We Don’t See

Learning about maritime crime

Photo: Grace Levy

While reading The Outlaw Ocean by Ian Urbina one comes across a number of crimes that happen at sea and the challenges of addressing them due to nuances of maritime law, lack of stricter policies, and the ambiguity of existing ones. These range from petty crimes like stealing boats to serious offenses such as human trafficking, workforce exploitation, drug smuggling, and many more. Yet surprisingly, these maritime malpractices rarely make headlines or appear as cover stories.

Considering that 90% of the world’s goods are transported to us by sea, as their everyday consumers we should at least be aware of the violations that take place in the ‘deep blue’. The extent of maritime crime stretches as far as international waters do, while the challenges with addressing them are complex and appear to this day rather uncharted.

Let’s take a look at some common maritime crimes that you may or may not have heard of.

Row, Row, Row Someone’s Boat …

Boat theft, just like stealing a car, is considered property theft. However, unlike stealing a motor-vehicle, the logistics of such an endeavor appear to be easier, while the recovery of a stolen vessel is, on the contrary, a more complex process.

When a vessel is sold at a judicial auction it becomes clear of liens and previous debts against it. Additionally, boats can get their “hull identification number and paperwork altered” in order to be resold to new owners. This anonymity aspect makes ship theft an attractive venture.

The complications of chasing stolen ships by police, thanks to maritime law, also add to its appeal. In The Outlaw Ocean, Ian Urbina explains that

maritime authorities can pursue, intercept, board and seize a foreign-flagged ship on the high seas only if the pursuit started in the authorities’ territorial waters and they kept the fleeing vessel in visual contact the entire time.

Visual contact mostly refers to actual sight of line, as opposed to that of a radar or satellite. To keep the story short, “tens of thousands of vessels of all sizes are stolen around the world each year.” While larger crafts make great use for drug smuggling, smaller boats are resold to unsuspecting buyers.

Anonymous and Convenient

Laundering money through boats and yachts is another common issue. Yachts, in essence, can be viewed as “mega-million-dollar, tax exempt, movable assets.” A recent example of such ‘money-washing’ is the scandal involving the Equanimity luxury yacht.

According to U.S. investigators, the yacht was allegedly bought with funds diverted from the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) state investment fund. The original price of the yacht paid by Low Taek (or more commonly known as Jho Low), the financier who carried out the looting and purchase, was $250 million USD. Altogether, Jho Low is believed to have laundered a total of $4.5 billion USD from 1MBD.

As most super-yacht builders scrupulously protect the anonymity of clients, yacht purchases become a popular way to launder money and avoid taxation. Vessels, in general, are prone to exploitation for such malpractices because “a ship may be bought in one country, flagged to another, and parked in a third,” which makes it “difficult for countries to trace the origins of the money invested in a ship.”

Modern Slavery

Photo: Grace Levy

A more disturbing and worrisome common crime at sea is human trafficking on fishing vessels. It is part of the larger problem of maritime-related human trafficking, among migrant trafficking and forced labor in the seafood processing industry.

Labor costs, being some of the highest in the industry and at the same time most flexible, become susceptible to illegal manipulation. These factors, and the nature of the high seas create conditions favorable for human trafficking and forced labor on fishing vessels.

Modus Operandi

Workers are lured through a coercive and deceptive system into being held hostage to work on fishing vessels all around the world. The modus operandi begins with brokers, with or without legal credentials, who attract potential workers. Since brokers are often of the same nationality and speak the same language as the victim worker, as well as they can reside in the same village and be part of the same community, while often being unaware of the trafficking that will occur from their activities, it is very difficult for the worker to identify an illegitimate broker.

After recruitment, the victim is led to sign multiple contracts with different parties. Deceivingly, the initial contract outlines terms originally offered by the broker, yet the final contract offers diminished terms of employment and is often even in another language. An important aspect of luring the worker into forced labour is through creating debt bondage. This happens at various stages of the process and in numerous ways:

• when a worker cannot pay the advance/recruitment fee the recruiter will provide a debt facility;
• when recruiters facilitate obtaining proper documentation such as passports and visas they pass the fee onto the worker in the form of debt;
• when the agency provides travel, accommodation and food the costs are once again added to the debt facility

The goal is to bind the worker with unsustainable levels of debt which will allow the recruiter to subtract from wages to pay off the outstanding amount . Threats of violence and of debt being passed onto family, as well as violence itself are used if the worker complains, attempts to end their contract, or escape.

Intentional Marine Pollution

Many of us have seen outrageous photos of tonnes of plastics collected from oceans and footage of oil spills from oil and gas super-majors, but few of us have heard about the 810,000 tonnes of oil waste annually dumped intentionally and illegally by commercial vessels. This results in significant damage to all kinds of wildlife: reduction of seabird population; poisoning of slow-moving shellfish habitats; either death of fish or loss of their reproduction abilities caused by harmful oil toxins; death of mammals, reptiles, and amphibians inhabiting nearby through either suffocating from oil ingestion or eating wildlife poisoned by oily waste.

While this environmental abuse constitutes as much as 12% of maritime pollution and there are strict international regulations around illegal oil dumping, it is to a large extent attributed to oil bunkering. Vessels commit this crime by illegally discharging oil waste on high seas outside of any specific jurisdiction. This pollution takes place along regular shipping routes or at night time in areas of recent oil spills, making it challenging to identify and trace back to the offending vessel.

Photo: RomAna

What Happens on the Ocean should not Stay on the Ocean

With a very broad stroke we sketch the outlines of a very intricate and multifaceted issue of maritime crime. The violations and malpractices that are attributed to this domain are numerous, each being a beast of its own. While their differences and nuances are extensive, they have two main common denominators.

The first is the number of challenges that maritime law poses to addressing these crimes. While states sign and ratify international treaties, they often “fail in taking the appropriate legislative measures to give teeth to these international instruments.”

The second common denominator is the lack of media coverage and consequently public attention around these issues. Or, perhaps, this proposition should be reversed. Either way, this topic requires raised awareness and so we say:

To Be Continued…

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