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| Haradhere |
Merchants Bank of California said it planned to stop wiring the funds to Somalia on February 6, following in the footsteps of a string of other banks that cut off the service since giants Wells Fargo & Co. and US Bancorp ended such transfers nearly a decade ago.
The one-office Carson bank had become a last resort for about a dozen money-transfer businesses that collect funds in U.S. offices and disperse them in Somalia, which has no connections to the international banking system or to such services as Moneygram and Western Union.
[August 16 2013 Somalia pirates a career change, security guards]
Somalia, once a bastion for piracy, has experienced a decline in ship hijackings. You might wonder what happened to most of the pirate leaders. The UN report has the answer: "To date, neither Mogadishu nor Puntland has seriously prosecuted and jailed any senior pirate leaders, financiers, negotiators, or facilitators." Some former pirates have become security guards for the unlicensed foreign ships illegally fishing on Somali waters. Pirates have always blamed these foreign ships for their own criminal acts of piracy. Now, the pirates have undergone a career change and are joining their arch enemies. Security protection in the high seas has become a booming business in Puntland validating the notion, "if you can't beat them, join them."
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