The Rise of Environmental Crime: A Growing Threat to Natural Resources, Peace, Development and Security

vessel movement and ownership, seriously undermine law enforcement action.

over crimes, such as drug and weapon trafficking, murder and trafficking. In March 2016 both Australian and French navies have detected fishing dhows filled with weapons headed for Somalia. 157 Recently a youtube video depicts the ramming of smaller fishing vessels and the execution of a number of men clinging to a sinking raft in what appears to be an organised attack by persons on board a fleet of tuna long-liners. There are also concerns about connections between illegal dynamite or blast fishing and explosives used for terrorist activities in Tanzania and rebel groups in DRC. A common denominator of all of these cases is that the criminal activities are difficult to detect and the offenders are difficult to investigate and prosecute. The jurisdictional limitation to pursue these vessels and the persons on board them, coupled with the difficulty of identifying vessels,

By contrast to IUU fishing, “Fisheries Crime” is a term applied to the enabling crimes or associated criminal activity conducted by national or transnational organised crime busi- ness models in fisheries value chains. It includes crime in the whole fisheries sector from harvest to processing, to logis- tics, transport, trade in the products, branding (including food fraud) and the traditional fraudulent criminal activities of nationals committed in multiple jurisdictions such as conspiracy, extortion and bribery. At every stage in the fish- eries sector value chain criminal abuses of registries, customs regulations, government documentation, tax frauds, forced labour, labelling fraud, and secrecy jurisdictions are regularly exploited to maximise the criminal profits from IUU fishing.

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