Its not all about Terrorism

TT Club takes one such case as an illustration, and spells out the lessons to be learned.

It is now some nine months since the ISPS Code became mandatory. Ports and terminals have rightly focused much attention on implementing its requirements, trying to ensure that terrorists cannot surreptitiously introduce items into the transportation chain that will at some stage present a threat to the state or the general public. Meanwhile, out there, others are still concentrating their efforts on removing cargo from those same ports and terminals, intent on separating it permanently from its owners.

It is too early to tell what the overall effect of the ISPS Code has been on the amount of theft from ports, but one thing is clear: it hasn’t stopped it. Organised criminal gangs are continuing to target the transport chain. Their actions are seldom opportunist, but carefully-planned attacks on specific loads. They know exactly what they are targeting and even have their own distribution networks ready to move cargo into parallel retail markets.

Unfortunately, the weak point is often the human element, with individual workers, who know how the system works and what cargo is moving through the terminal, being subjected to blackmail or similar pressures and induced to circumvent all the operator’s carefullyplanned security measures.

The ingenuity of criminal gangs is well demonstrated by a recent case reported by the TT Club’s investigation arm, Signum Services Ltd. While this involved smuggling, it demonstrates how much gangs are prepared to invest in penetrating a terminal’s or a shipping line’s defences.

MIS-DESCRIBED AS SOMETHING INNOCUOUS In this case, a gang wished to smuggle cargo into a country in Southeast Asia (let us call it “B” to spare any blushes). In country “A”, a container was booked from a shipping line for shipment to country “C”. The shippers either knew or requested that the container would be transhipped in “B”. The contraband was loaded in this container, but mis-described on the manifest and bills of lading as something completely different and entirely innocuous.

Meanwhile, somewhere in “B”, another part of the gang ordered another container from the same line, also for shipment to “C”. When this container was brought to the gang’s warehouse, it was stripped of its identification then re-numbered to match the container which was on its way from “A”. The change in identification went as far as the CSC plate, but while the painted renumbering was done “professionally”, in a way that looked very similar to most other containers’ markings, close examination of the CSC plate revealed it to be a forgery.

The gang remained confident that hardly anyone would check a CSC plate, as long as the number on the container was valid. So cargo that corresponded to the originally-declared consignment was loaded and the unit sealed with a genuine shipping line seal.

Once the first container arrived from “A”, the gang delivered the second container to the terminal and switched it for the original one, which was taken out against forged release documents while the replacement container was duly shipped to its declared destination in “C”. The only difference was that the seal number did not correspond to the one originally documented but if there were any query an inspection would show that the cargo was in conformity with the bill of lading.

Somebody would have cursed an unknown associate in another part of the supply chain for the apparently incorrect seal number, but nevertheless would have amended the details; that would have been the end of the matter. As far as the terminal and the line are concerned, the container that arrived from “A” has been shipped to “C”, while in fact the contraband cargo in the first container has now successfully evaded the Customs control in “B”. The gang is now in possession of a container with which it can work the same scam again ? and again.