Zarejestruj swój jacht
Snipet:
https://tvpworld.com/82224073/unclea...ug-traffickers
Poland’s
interior minister has said
regulations governing maritime vessels are “too unclear,” following revelations that drug traffickers are using Polish-flagged boats to transport drugs across the Atlantic.
The warning comes after a Financial Times report revealed that Polish vessels under 24 meters have become popular with smugglers working the trans-Atlantic
trade owing to lax
regulations on boat registration and those governing who can board vessels at sea.
According to the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre - Narcotics (MAOC-N), an initiative of eight EU
Member States (Belgium,
France,
Germany,
Ireland,
Italy,
Spain, the
Netherlands and Portugal) and the United Kingdom, co-financed by the European Union's Internal
Security Fund, Poland has failed to adapt its regulations to international law to allow other countries to board Polish-flagged vessels at sea.
This means Polish boats have “de facto immunity” from arrest, according to Julien Garsany, Brussels’ UN representative of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
“When other countries see a vessel flying the Polish flag and [it’s] suspected to be involved in drug trafficking, they basically have no one to authorize them to board it,” Garsany said.
. . .
Since Warsaw introduced a new registration system in 2020, the number of registered boats has increased from 2,000 to almost 77,000.
“It’s
cheap, it’s superfast and it doesn’t require much information. So obviously the criminals will try to register on that. It’s a fantastic business,” an MAOC-N analyst told the Financial Times.
The matter is serious because the MAOC-N is observing a huge increase in cocaine smuggling from
South America to West
Africa.
Since 2021, the organization has reported the seizure of 19 small Polish vessels carrying a total of 18 tons of cannabis, 13.5 tons of cocaine and 56 kg of MDMA (ecstasy). The boats were stopped off the coast of
Portugal,
Brazil,
Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau.
Polish response
In response to the revelations made in the Financial Times article, Tomasz Siemoniak, the Polish
interior minister, said the use of Polish boats results “from unclear, apparently too liberal regulations on floating objects. “We need to look into this and make changes quickly,” he said. Poland's
Health Ministry said that Warsaw aims to enable inspections of Polish-flagged vessels by the end of the year. “Competent authorities in Poland are working on legislative changes… which will allow them [the police] to issue such permits,” the ministry told the Financial Times.