Transnational organized crime is seamless on land, air and sea, but mostly sea. According to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (The Global Illicit Economy – 11 March 2021) there are 811 million 20-foot containers handled in ports worldwide (2019) amounting to 19 trillion euro of international trade (2019) generated by 5,400 free trade zones worldwide.
More than 90% of global trade goes via containers, but only around 2% is controlled.
The 2018 World Atlas of Illicit Flows states that environmental crime – which includes wildlife crime, fuel smuggling and the illicit mining of gold, diamonds and other natural resources – is now the largest source of income for non-state armed groups and terrorist organizations, accounting for 38% of the financing of conflicts.
The Mediterranean is the crossroads of key world traffic routes: although it represents barely 1% of the world’s maritime surface, nearly 20% of the world’s maritime traffic transits through it, 25% of line services on containers, 30% of global oil flows, 65% of the energy flow for EU countries.
Despite the small dimension of the Mediterranean, a substantial part of global stability and security is played here. A great number of the world’s crises originate in this region. Against this background, criminal networks continue to increasingly adopt sophisticated means to bypass detection and interception mechanisms.
Started in 2018, the Central Mediterranean Security Initiative, a joint initiative between Malta and the United States, brought together the representatives from Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, France, Italy, and Malta to discuss export control related issues within the context of the challenges faced in the central Mediterranean. Since then, Cyprus and Greece joined. Malta’s plan is to be as inclusive as possible and invite more countries to join.
Any Mediterranean country excluded from this initiative weakens the regional cooperative approach needed to address adequately the threats posed by regional and global organized crime. To be effective, our fight against transnational maritime organized crime has to take a whole government approach at a national level, seek cooperation at a regional level but also at a global level. It cannot be one-dimensional and left to law enforcement entities, customs personnel and security services. We need to fight transnational organized crime using economic, cultural, political and environmental tools.
Experience teaches us that the maritime trade routes, both licit and illicit, bring our seas and oceans together and we are as strong as the weakest link. We need to cooperate across different regions to be at least as effective as those who run global organized crime on land and at sea.
Fragmented fight against united crime
The challenges we are facing in the Central Mediterranean can no longer be credibly faced by single or a small group of states. If a commodity is being transferred between ships on the high seas in violation of international law, it takes the cooperation of a number of states to react: the flag state of the vessel; the state who suspects this illicit activity is taking place; perhaps vessels or other assets nearby that can directly assess what is going on. Increasingly, these sorts of controls need to happen rapidly, before the commodity is disposed of – perhaps not leaving a trace on the vessel. In one sense, the competent authorities in the region are playing “catch up” with criminals engaging in these illicit activities.
Malta is mobilising support for a proposal to blacklist and de-flag ships in illegal maritime trade. We are one of the largest shipping registers in the world. What use will it serve if we de-flag a ship but then another state re-flags it and allows it to carry on its illegal activity? We want the whole world to share information about ships and then cooperate not to allow them to run and hide under the flag of other states once they have been active in illegal maritime activity.
We also need to share resources in our fight against transnational organized crime. Some years ago, thanks to our cooperation with Italy, France and the United States, Malta seized a large shipment of tramadol pills worth over USD 1 billion. We needed and were given help to destroy the cargo in incinerators we do not possess.
We also need to share laboratory facilities to be able to test suspicious cargo. We need to help train our people to be able to cooperate and work across borders as efficiently as the criminals themselves. So, it is necessary to hold regional meetings, rotate locations and bring people from different areas to talk together, share experiences and then agree on joint transnational action. All this needs to be supported by the right political will as our people on the ground become very demoralized if they see that their work, often risky, leads to nothing, getting the impression that transnational crime can continue with impunity.
Our action must lead to prosecutions, seizures and the destruction of illicit material as well as freezing of assets.
Geopolitical regional and global rivalry make regional and global cooperation against crime difficult. To make matters even more complicated, only 16% of the Mediterranean Sea is classified as territorial waters and falls under state jurisdictions. The rest belongs to no one and everyone and like the Wild West facilitates lawlessness.
While criminals are agile transnationally, using all the technologies, operational spaces and corrupt political and business networks available to them, most of the fight against them is still dependent a lot on national capabilities and political will. Failed or dysfunctional coastal states also weaken the fight against transnational organized crime.
The Mediterranean is today in a state of disordered multipolarity (‘Maritime Security in the Mediterranean – Deciphering the Security Puzzle – Konrad Adenauer Stiftung – 2021). It makes it difficult to establish effective regional security. While regional and globalized crime is cohesive, the fight against it is fragmented. The situation risks getting worse as neighbouring countries continue to contest overlapping areas instead of exploiting them together for their mutual benefit.