Africa’s High Seas of Crime, Where Criminals Rule the Waves

Illegal activities on the ocean around Africa are rampant, turning it into a vast crime scene that poorly resourced law agencies are struggling to stop.

A masked Somali pirate stands near a Taiwanese fishing vessel that washed up on shore after the pirates were paid a ransom and released the crew, in the once-bustling pirate den of Hobyo, Somalia, on Sept. 23, 2012. Farah Abdi Warsameh/AP Photo

JOHANNESBURG—A lack of state and industry accountability has turned the oceans around Africa into the world’s biggest transnational crime scene, according to one of South Africa’s leading crime researchers.

Carina Bruwer of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Pretoria, South Africa, told The Epoch Times that the world’s seas, which cover 70 percent of the Earth, have become central to global illicit trade and that African oceans are some of the best examples of this.