Interpol question

Not sure what is meant by international gambling.

Smuggling, is it people smuggling or alcohol etc? Is it getting stopped as they get to Customs and Excise or breaking up the gangs?

Not completely up to date with EU regulations, but EU countries have their own control over these areas. If it is gangs, I would suspect it would to do with MI6 in the UK.

Yes, it's MI6 in the UK

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Intelligence_Service

It's the Economic Intelligence Department you'll be interested in.

JustAnotherWriter, I'm going to take this thread over to the Experts forum. You'll get even more great responses, I'm sure.

Interpol is an information cleariung house. They have no arrest powers or investigative authority in any country.

Gambling in international waters is not illegal, per se. If it is done on a flagged ship, that is, a ship registered to a particular country, that country's laws pertain and if their laws were violated they would have jurisdiction.

It is quite common to have a perfectly legal gambling operation or other "criminal" enterprise beyond the 12 mile limit off shore. There have been many cases of operations like that being done. One of the more famous was the illegal pirate radio stations transmitting rock and roll into Britain during the late fifties of the last century. (I love saying that. Am I dating myself?)

Smuggling would come under the laws and investigative agencies of wherever the smuggling was occurring. Here in the US it would be the Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) unit of the Department of Homeland Security.

J.A.W.

If you're looking for France, you might like to check this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direction_centrale_du_renseignement_intérieur

There's been quite a bit of re-shuffling recently, same as with the United States and its Department of H.S.

As far as the situation goes: unless the ship is flagged, there isn't really any operating jurisdiction in international waters. What happens on the pirate ship, stays on the pirate ship, so to speak. Now if the citizens of a particular country are involved, i.e. it's known that a U.S. citizen is being held hostage, then that can become a military/Navy operation such as happened recently with the hijacking of the Maersk Alabama.

If such a ship is in international waters, but still reasonably close to, let's say China or North Korea, the navies of either country might decide to round it up on general principles. Not because they had jurisdiction, but just because they could.

Hope that helps.

Have a look at this for the UK
http://www.soca.gov.uk/

justanotherwriter, as Budman has said, there are plenty of ships that go out into international waters for gambling purposes. It's MASSIVE, MASSIVE (did I mention it's big?) business here in South Florida, with at least five or six ships that I can think of offhand.

Of course, fighting over people dying, well that hasn't been really legal in the Western World since the gladiator days.

But I would say this to you, write the story first. Don't worry about legalities, or laws, or anything like. Get the story first, then see what the law is. If it matches up, great. If not, fudge it up to fit the story. As my wife always tells me when I have this issue, "It's fiction, right? So make it up!"