Brazen Financial Fraud in History
Two Bloomberg Businessweek journalists Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel, unravel the deception, expose a £77 million oil tanker insurance claim on the high seas and raise questions of the morality of London Shipping money. In July 2011, the oil tanker Brilliante Virtuoso was drifting through the treacherous Gulf of Aden when a crew of pirates attacked and set her ablaze in a devastating explosion. When David Mockett, a maritime surveyor for Lloyd’s of London inspected the damaged vessel, he was left with more questions than answers, but soon after his inspection, he was murdered.
Dead In the Water is a shocking expose of the criminal inner-workings of International shipping an old-world industry at the backbone of our global economy. Through first-hand accounts of those who lived the hijacking from members of the ship’s crew and witnesses to the attacks, to the ex-London detectives turned private investigators seeking to solve Mockett’s murder-award-winning reporters weave together the astounding truth behind one of the most brazen financial frauds in history.
It pits innocent seafarers and a maritime surveyor against people who seem to have deliberately set fire to the Brilliante Virtuoso, a Suezmax oil tanker.
Insurance investigators who were determined to resist a $77 million fraudulent insurance claim are set against those who advocate settling the claim as the path of least resistance, still-unsolved murder.
In July 2011, the Brillante Virtuoso, carrying 1million barrels of oil from Kerch in Ukraine, to China, was attacked by a group of armed men just in Aden in Yemen, the area patrolled by Somali pirates. The attackers made their way onboard and after the crew abandoned the ship, it became clear that the vessel was on fire. There was little initial resistance to the idea that the incident was a pirate attack. It looked like a freak mischance that the attackers in contrast to other pirates set the ship on fire.
David Mockett who lived in Aden gained access to the vessel but struggled to match the evidence he found on board with the story the insurers have been told. Two weeks later Mockett was killed by an explosion in his car.
In July 2019, London’s Royal Courts of Justice, Justice Teare considered whether the cause of fire absolved the various insurers and Lloyd’s of London syndicates that had insured the vessel from paying out to the vessel’s owners or Piraeus Bank, which had financed it.
The 80, 000 words judgment concluded the “orchestrator” of the events that led to the ship’s loss was Marios Iliopoulous, the Athens-based ultimate owner of the vessel Iliopoulos. Iliopoulos in a previous court hearing had denied involvement in any such conspiracy, as Illipoulos was questioned by the City of London Police, and released without charge.
The apparent readiness of some of the lawyers and insurers involved to settle the claim suggests a corrosive willingness to neglect the moral aspect of the Institution’s functioning.
The tenacity of two former police officers Richard Veale and Michael Conner hired to investigate the circumstances around the fire, having received help from Allan Marquez, a crewman on the Brilliante Virtuoso, and Dimitrios Palkakis, a witness to the behaviour of the salvage company involved.
Dead In the Water: Murder and Fraud in the World’s Most Secretive Industry by Matthew Campbell and Kit Chellel. Portfolio $27/Atlantic £18.99, 288 pages.