Fishing vessels are perfect for crime
Crime in the fishing sector is not limited to illegal fishing, but also money laundering, drugs and human trafficking, the FishCRIME syposium heard.
|||Cape Town - One in four fish caught globally is caught illegally on fishing vessels that provide “the perfect hub” for transnational organised crime networks, delegates to the FishCRIME symposium in the city heard on Monday.
Crime in the fishing sector was not limited to illegal fishing, but involved other crimes including tax evasion, forged documents, money laundering, drugs and human trafficking.
Fishing vessels were perfect for transnational crime because they were mobile and for the most part were out of sight of the authorities, according to a FishCRIME document given to delegates. Vessels were also built with huge storage areas, ideal for storing illicit goods - whether they were drugs, arms, wildlife products, blood diamonds or people.
Because fishing vessels were exempt from the International Maritime Organisation’s ship identification number system, the identity of fishing vessels was easy to change and hard to track.
Service vessels that delivered goods to and from fishing vessels enabled fishing vessels to stay at sea for years at a time.
The symposium, hosted by the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, brought together government officials, law enforcement agencies and civil society groups from more than 30 countries - the first time such a mix of representatives have come together internationally to try to establish a networking mechanism to address the global criminal syndicates in the fishing sector.
Gunnar Stolsvik, who heads the Norwegian government’s advisory group against organised fisheries crime, said the focus of fisheries crime was often on the vessel or the country it came from.
“We tend to look at a vessel as if it has its own behaviour, but someone, somewhere, is telling that vessel where to go and what to fish and what to do with it.
“The question to ask is: ‘Which companies and which individuals are behind the vessel?’ We have to move beyond looking at the vessel and the country, because some of these groups are transnational. They play with jurisdictions by using them. It is basically the people we are after,” Stolsvik said.
Sandy Davies of Stop Illegal Fishing said the concern a decade ago had been about over-fishing. This had changed to include concern about a whole range of criminal activities in the fishing sector perpetrated by international networks.
“There are whole syndicates out there. They don’t come to port, transactions are at sea, and because no one can see it, it is difficult to track. This symposium is to see how better we can track the individuals involved.”
Cape Times