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Pirate Victims Finance More Attacks With $100 Million in Ransom
A few years ago, Somali pirates menacing Africas east coast sometimes demanded tens of thousands of dollars for the safe return of a hijacked vessel and crew. Now they often seek $1 million or more. The reason: Ship owners keep paying. If you do pay, you are continuing to encourage future attacks, said Pat Adamson, an official at MTI Network, a London-based crisis-management company that has advised the owners of most of the hijacked ships. Unless there is a cash payment, your seafarers will lose their lives. A fresh example of owners acceding to ransom demands emerged on Nov. 22, when Mare Maritime Co. SA said it had paid a sum it declined to disclose to free its Greek chemical tanker, the MV Genius, and 19 crew members almost two months after Somali pirates seized them in the Gulf of Aden. Last week, pirates demanded a record $25 million for the Saudi Arabia-owned Sirius Star seized off the coast on Nov. 15 -- $1 million for each crew member. The ship also holds more than 2 million barrels of crude worth about $100 million, probably covered by insurance. Negotiations on that ransom are still ongoing, said Andrew Mwangura, head of the East Africa Seafarers Association, said by phone from Mombasa. Hijackings by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden region have leaped this year, with more than 581 crew members taken hostage from January to September, compared with 172 in all of 2007, according to the International Maritime Bureau. Before the Sirius Star incident, ransom demands had hovered between $500,000 and $2 million, up from tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years, said Chatham House, the London-based international affairs group, in a report last month. The increasing income does more than just make the pirates more brazen. The more ransom they receive, the more sophisticated their operations become, said Will Geddes, managing director of ICP Group, a London-based security company. Geddes estimates Somali pirates may have accumulated $100 million in ransom since the 1990s, booty that will make their attacks more effective. These boys can buy some fast, powerful boats, which can get them out quickly and easily into the channel, he said. The Somali pirates also have access to the perfect arms fair -- Mogadishu, the capital of a nation wracked by civil war since the 1991 ouster of Mohammed Siad Barre. It occurs to me that 'supply' of piracy will never saturate the demand side of the equation; the willingness of shipowners to pay ransoms, and piracy may well be a permanent feature of the region for the foreseeable future or at least until Somalia gets sorted out, which won't be any time soon. Posted by: phil_b 2008-11-24 |
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