I think that everybody who watches news from time to time has heard about frequent accidents with Somali pirates. A decade before they were not as active as today, which has driven public’s attention towards the issue. But do you know who they are and what modern day piracy is like.
First of all, the pirates of today are not adventure seekers who travel all over the world, they are rather bandits who long for easy money by all means. Pirates are well equipped with modern weapons, mobile phones, and all necessary gadgets. The most frequent places of their activity are the areas of Singapore and Indonesia, the Red Sea and the Indian Sea.

You may wonder how such a phenomenon can exist in a civilized and highly developed society. The reason is most pirates have ties to organized crime and to the government. At least, pirates from Somalia, the Far East and the South Chine Sea definitely do.
By the way, it was estimated that an annual financial loss due to piracy is as much as $ 13 – 16 billion. Meanwhile, what ship owners are able to return through insurance companies is only 30 per cent of a loss. Besides, there are a lot of cases of crew kidnapping. It is supposed that in 72 per cent of attacks, pirates take a crew. Then they demand a dizzily high ransom for hostages. An average ransom is $ 120,000. So some ship owners prefer to hire a security organization at about the same cost to protect their ship, crew and cargo.

What makes me really surprised is that now there are almost no laws against pirates. So if pirates are captured, they are released very soon after just being questioned. Due to such little deterrent, pirates’ “business” is flourishing. And that is not the only breach in the modern society, remember Shocking Facts about Modern Slavery. It is high time to stop it.