THE WIFE of a ship’s officer was discharged from Johannesburg’s Milpark Hospital recently after suffering severe facial and bodily injuries during a pirate attack on a cargo vessel sailing down the west coast of Africa. “Pirates boarded the vessel and beat her up in front of the crew as an intimidatory means of getting what they wanted from the ship’s cargo,” Captain Muku Mukundan, a world authority on maritime fraud, told FTW during a visit to South Africa last week. “Piracy on the high seas is on the increase. It has been recorded off both the east and west coasts of Africa and we had a recent case in the waters off Madagascar. But it is in the south-east Asian region, where there is little control of the sea lanes, that it is at its worst. Indonesia has a poor record in this respect. “These attacks are carried out with military precision. The best equipment available is used and the pirates know what they are doing. They do it without provocation, as well. Often bodies of crew members are found in the sea or washed up on beaches. There is also the matter of phantom ships which are involved in huge frauds, and operated by massive syndicates. We know of eight such vessels, which change their names from port to port. One vessel we have traced has had 20 different names in the past year or two,” he said. “The syndicates employ their own crews, pay off customs and harbour officials in various places, and load cargo which never reaches its planned destination. “It has proved to be a lucrative business to the operators, who are known to pay huge bribes. We have a structured description of each of these vessels, but the service is so slickly run by professional fraudsters that containing them has become a serious problem.”
