Can smuggling be tackled with IMO SOLAS container weighing?

In Italy’s Gioia Tauro port, it had been reported that the Ndrangheta crime syndicate relies on men whom it has placed in key ports along cocaine trafficking routes. A ‘Ndrangheta member strategically placed at a port who opens up a container bound for Gioia Tauro, and hides cocaine parcels inside it. His counterpart in Gioia Tauro is then informed of the container’s number. When it arrives at the Italian port, the crime syndicate rushes to empty it before customs or police are able to check it.

Police in the Netherlands and Belgium in 2012 discovered a container computer hacking scheme where criminals smuggled two tons of cocaine and heroin, a machine gun, a suitcase stuffed with $1.7 million, and hard drive cases turned into hacking devices inside containers.

A mix of international drug gangs and digital henchmen actually started this plot in 2011.

Drug traffickers first recruited hackers to penetrate computers that tracked and controlled the movement and location of shipping containers arriving at Antwerp’s port.

The simple software and hardware hacks—using USB keyloggers and more sophisticated purpose-built devices—allowed traffickers to send in drivers and gunmen to steal particular containers before the legitimate owner arrived.

The scheme was first noticed in 2012, when workers at a container terminal in Antwerp began to wonder why entire containers—said to contain cargo like bananas and timber—were disappearing from the port. In January 2013, the plot appeared to culminate in a daring raid in the province of Limburg, near Antwerp. A truck that had left the port and was unwittingly carrying containers stuffed with drugs was attacked by suspects armed with AK-47 assault rifles. According to police, the gang had assumed the driver, who was not killed, was from a rival drug gang.

In June 2013, a joint operation by Belgian and Dutch police resulted in raids on more than 20 homes and businesses, where they seized six firearms, bullet-proof vests, and 1.3m euros in cash inside a suitcase. Fifteen people are now awaiting trial in Belgium and Holland, including two suspected hackers. Police did not say where the containers originated.

Most cargo owners or shippers don’t have a clue as to what to do to secure a container from tampering by smugglers and terrorists, who, could possibly use them to conceal dirty bombs.

The cyber attack began with simple social engineering: a spear phishing attack through emails that tricked employees into installing malware.

The container companies discovered the initial breach and installed a firewall installed to prevent further attacks. But police say the suspects managed to get onto the physical premises to install key-logging devices directly onto the keyboards of computers, allowing them to gain wireless access to keystrokes typed by staff as well as screen grabs from their monitors.

The gangs also reportedly built their own hardware, concealing small homemade devices inside normal hard drive cases and power strips. These allowed them to access and remotely control data on the shipping companies’ computers, and to gain security codes so drivers could pick up particular containers.

There were reports that Police inspecting shipping containers have found cocaine stolen away inside frozen sharks.

Shipping containers are thought to be integral to large drug smuggling operations. The iconic intermodal freight container was introduced in the 1950s as a way of standardizing the way goods are moved around the world. Rising in parallel with computers, containerization is how ninety percent of our stuff moves around the world everyday. But that scale—some 450 million containers are shipped annually—means that customs officials tend to inspect only around two percent of those shipments per year.

Estimates about the use of containers by smugglers are rough.

But a report in 2012 by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found that the ships unwittingly involved in the trafficking of drugs, guns and other substances, like those used in building WMD, are primarily commercial lines based in Germany, Greece and the US.

“Containerization provides trafficking and proliferation networks with the same cost- and time-saving transport mechanisms that have allowed the world’s multinational companies to deliver their products quickly and cheaply, penetrate new markets and expand their global customer base,” the SIPRI report concluded.

In one demonstration, a group of researchers using cheap radio equipment showed they could hijack a system used to track shipping vessels worldwide, causing fake vessels to appear, real ones to disappear, and to issue false emergency alerts. In another, GPS researchers proved they could hijack a ship’s navigation system and actually steer it—a technique they’ve also used on drones.

Simpler computer exploits of shipping systems have also been discovered. An investigation by Australian authorities in 2012 revealed that drug gangs were able to use public databases to track which shipping containers in port were under inspection by police, allowing them to abandon those shipments.

And the technique used in Belgium isnt’t completely new either: in season two of The Wire, a drug gang in Baltimore hires dockworkers to alter the computer records of containers with drugs that have been planted inside.

A requirement to weigh containers may therefore be a convenient way of identifying shipments that might contain illicit drugs.

A containerload of hollowed-out boards stashed with cocaine might not weigh much less or much more than a normal load of the same boards.

Some shippers have also caution that the weighing requirement would impose added costs on some carriers, without doing much to improve security.

It is estimated that there is probably a minimum cost of $100,000 to purchase a portable scale for port. The cost to install a more sophisticated scale would be much greater.

Every additional requirement a port lay down does put extra cost onto the terminal handling operation, and may even slow down the operation, as some operators pointed out.

Hence, no matter what permissists claim on containers weighing, it may actually help to tackle smuggling globally.

Can you think of other types of smuggling that Customs globally will find container weighing invaluable in deterring smuggling?

The bidding battle for Terex has ‘officially’ begin.

With Asciano bidding battle just ‘closed’ with CIC as key investor, Zoomlion has secured financing for Terex bid of US $3.3 billion, topping the bid from Konecranes.

“Given the uncertainties involved with the merger and proposed acquisition (by Zoomlion), the decision was made to halt information sharing, work on integration, and synergies between the businesses, until further clarity can be had on the course of action,” Terex said.

Terex views Zoomlion’s bid as a realistic alternative since it had stopped integration work with Konecranes.

Zoomlion has offered $30 per share in cash for Terex, versus the Konecranes offer of 0.8 share for each Terex share which Terex shareholders stand to receive under the deal that was agreed upon in August.

Terex shares jumped as much as 9 percent after the news of the halt in Konecranes integration work, and were still up 4.2 percent at $23.02 in early afternoon on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday. Konecranes shares ended trading down 5.3 percent at 20.20 euros ($22.5) in Helsinki.

According to Chinese press, Zoomlion first reached out to Terex to express interest in Q4 2015 and made its latest offer on Dec. 4.

What do you think?

Bidding battle for Australia port & rail group Asciano

The offer for Asciano took an interesting turn with Asciano’s board endorsing of the Qube higher offer at A$9.05 billion. (A $9.24 per share) on 9 Feb 2016.

Brookfield infrastructure Partners will be forced and put into its matching rights  or give up the bidding war.

The Canadian Brookfield has already indicated on 7 Feb to Asciano that it is prepared to raise its cash and stock offer, probably to A$9.28 per share.

We probably will see some interesting port mergers news from down under soon.

Let’s keep watch.

Interesting to see CIC, GIC, Canadian Pensions Fund, probably even Qatar Investment Authority all taking their bets on Aussie port assets.

CIC declaration of interest in Aussie rail assets put all into focus of Chinese money and Chinese rail coming to Australia. Part of that ONE BELT ONE ROAD?

In the mist of all these mixed news from the port sector, lots more acquisitions are made possible.

We heard recently that the Chinese J20 has gone Low rate initial production with 2102 & 2101 and the numbers probably should get up to 24 by end 2016.

Then I hear of stealth missiles kh-101 from Russia, which I think the Chinese should also be thinking of producing.

Stealth Train Russian ICBM, Chinese version, etc

Stealth Bomber – New B3 bomber from US; Y20-style of Stealth bomber from China ?

Stealth Helicopters – stealth version of UH60 Black Hawk from US and maybe China and Russia will follow (?)

Stealth Drones, X47B, and chinese ones? anyone?

Stealthy ships like LCS from US, and …

Stealthier submarines ?? – Black Hole Russian Sub…

Stealth fighter jets – F22, J20, F35, J31

Looks like the fifth generation of stealthier military weapons are coming on-line.

With the Singapore Airshow starting from 16 Feb, more to look out for indeed.

The arms race is real and stealthy weapons are red-hot.

Lots of conspiracy theories abound for oil price to have crashed in this new year to below USD 30 a barrel.

Some of the cited reasons are :-

1. US and Saudi Arabia in a conspiracy to punish Russia.

2. Slowing demand for oil, in particular from China, where 50% of the global oil exports go to. At 6.5% economic growth for 2016, China will still demand a respective size of world’s oil.

3. OPEC and US shale gas – conspiracy goes that the oil countries are pushing prices to below US 30 and causing massive bankruptcies in the shale oil business which needs oil to stay at US 60 to be profitable.

4. Iran – the return of Iran will result in a definite over supply and thus the further fall in prices.

Further to the above, what’s important is also highlight that perhaps OLD oil money is challenging new ENERGY money by drastically crashing the prices of oil to make new energy efforts not viable.

The recent ignorance of the downward adjustment of retail oil prices (ie pump prices remain unchanged) in China when prices dropped further is perhaps a recognition that low oil prices may KILL off new energy products SALE in china.

Vast amount of money – maybe more than USD 100-200 billions – particularly from China are being poured into clean energy such as hydro, solar, wind, nuclear.

China is the world leader in many of these fields today and has a strong interest to ensure the success.

Interestingly, after so many years of “investments”, none of the oil majors are heavily involved in new energy. Thus, the conspiracy goes, the Paris Accord on 12 Dec 2015 was probably a major reason for a FURTHER crash of oil prices, as oil producing countries such as US and Saudi Arabia see a big threat from the new energy efforts from China.

Hang on to 2016 as this year will certainly be as exciting or even confusing as the one just ended in 2015.