Kenyan lawyers and security agents suspected on conducting business with pirates

Allegations have surfaced suggesting that Kenyan law firms, security, aviation and shipping firms are conducting business with pirates operating in the Indian Ocean as the former facilitate the ransom discussions and payment. Somali pirates are being paid over US$ 80 million as ransom every year, and it is thought that some of that amount goes through Kenya. The International Maritime Bureau estimates that the world economy is losing up to US$ 18 billion per year due to piracy, which is running rampant due to an ineffective central government in Mogadishu. Millions of dollars exchange hands between pirates and ship owners, according to the programmes coordinator of the Seafarers Assistance Programme (SAP), Andrew Mwangura, whose group works to defend the right of crews stuck on hijacked boats. The World Peace Foundation has released a report which claims that Kenya is a country whose firms are strongly responsible for the piracy taking place along the Somali coast. The Foundation is an international think-tank joining scholars, diplomats, lawyers, military officers and maritime partners collaborating to end piracy. According to the report, some 1,500 pirates are active in Somalia, an enterprise organised in seven syndicates with a ‘few bosses’ in charge of the associated ventures. Mainly, they are all headquartered in Kenya, Dubai, Lebanon, Somalia and certain European countries. Thus far, the heftiest ransom the pirates had obtained so far was US$ 7 million for the release of a Greek oil tanker earlier in 2010, the report informed. A maritime official on condition of anonymity admitted knowledge of a select few law, security, aviation and shipping companies in Mombasa and Nairobi involved in negotiating the release of hijacked vessels and the payment of ransoms. He explained that the ransom money comes from agents of hijacked ships in Nairobi or Mombasa and is then transferred by air or sea to the pirates. Sometimes, the ransom payments go on during the small hours of the night under tight security from Nairobi to Mombasa before going on a ship that will transport it to Somalia, he said. “Once such missions have been accomplished, the pirates pay the law, security, aviation and shipping firms involved through their agents in Nairobi and Mombasa through an unofficial money remittance system called Hawala,” he told The Daily Nation. Hawala is a trust-based system originally used extensively by a network of money brokers in the Middle East and Africa, but now accepted in Europe and North America