This is a story about
one of the most audacious financial frauds in history. A very complicated conspiracy involving a $100 million oil tanker and also the murder of someone involved. We now know that David
Mockett had sort of stumbled into one of the most lucrative
maritime frauds in history. He was assassinated with a bomb that was meant only for him. This is the story of a single oil tanker that was attacked and burned in what everyone thought
was a piracy incident, but turned out to be something
much darker and stranger. My assumption was that the days of Pirates of the Caribbean
are ancient history and everything cleans up. But the more we dug into what
happened to this one ship, the more criminality we found. This story really exposed
just how corrupt and lawless, frankly, the global
shipping industry can be. My name's Kit Chellel. I'm a senior writer with Bloomberg and with Matthew Campbell,
we are the authors of "Dead In The Water." Brillante Virtuoso was kind of a workhorse of international trade. It was like thousands of other oil tankers just taking a million
barrels of from one port to another over and over
again, several times a year. And the Brillante was very large. It was a 275-meter-long vessel, which believe it or not, does not put it among the
very, very largest oil tankers and container ships, but it's huge. It's almost three football fields. And on this particular journey, it was heading from Ukraine to China and had just passed through the Suez Canal and was sailing out into the Gulf of Aden. Now, the Gulf of Aden sits
between Yemen in the north and the Horn of Africa,
Somalia, in the south. And at the time of this
voyage, summer of 2011, piracy was at its absolute height. There have been two more pirate attacks off the coast of Africa, bringing the number to
eight in the past 12 days. What used to go down several
times a week is that, you know, little fast-moving
boat carrying seven or eight guys with AK-47s
would come up alongside these gigantic cargo ships carrying hundreds of millions
of dollars worth of cargo. And they would, you know,
clamber their way aboard, take control of the vessel and
then take it back to Somalia and demand millions of dollars in ransom. Any sailors on board such a vessel would've known that they were
heading into waters where if pirates succeeded in getting aboard, they and their vessel
could be taken hostage and perhaps taken to
Somalia and held there for ransom for months or even years. Which is why there was this extra measure taken for security. They decided they needed
a secure, you know, a security detail to go with
them through the Gulf of Aden. It was nearly midnight, and there was a couple
of sailors on watch, both Filipino guys, and
they spotted on the radar a small craft approaching. At first they had no idea what
it was or what was going on, and of course they were terrified. But when the small boat approached they used a loud speaker to shout down, and the guys on the little vessel said, "We're security. We're
the security detail. Can you lower your ladder
so we can come aboard?" Within seconds of them
arriving on the ship, they started waving their rifles around and commandeered the vessel, and it became clear very quickly this was a terrible
situation for all the crew who were rounded up and
locked in a TV room. And then for the next couple of hours, they were sort of stuck in darkness, just listening and waiting, you know, dreading what might be happening. Their worst fear was that
they'd be taken off to Somalia and locked in some prison, awaiting ransom payment to be paid. So they were all, you
know, completely terrified. The ship started to move and then there was a loud explosion, and smoke started pouring into the TV room where all the crew were waiting. And when they came out, they
saw that these armed men had disappeared, apparently fled, and left the Brillante Virtuoso carrying a million barrels of oil burning. So when a large commercial vessel is destroyed or seriously damaged, this whole industry of
people swings into action. And that's because a
damaged commercial vessel that might be carrying,
you know, 100, 200, $300 million of cargo or more, that might itself be worth
$100 million or more. It is also, above all, a liability. That vessel is insured,
and that insurance policy could be valued in the many,
many, many millions of dollars. So among the very first
people who were brought in when there is a big marine accident, are what's called maritime surveyors. And a maritime surveyor
is kind of like the person the insurance company would send if you had a tree fall on your house. The insurance company
needs to, first of all, make sure that a tree actually
did fall on your house, assess the damage, figure
out if you, you know, perhaps pushed the tree onto
your house intentionally, write up a report, and
basically, all being well, that report is favorable and then your claim is paid. So a marine surveyor essentially
does that on massive scale. And in the case of the Brillante Virtuoso, there was a very good marine surveyor, a British guy who happened
to live in Yemen, in Aden, which was the nearest city to
where this incident occurred. So David Mockett is this
big, brash confident guy with a booming laugh who
lives an expat life in Yemen. And he knows the area very well, he's been there for a long time. And he's also, you know,
an expert in shipping. He was once a master mariner
with a commercial navy, and he's got decades of
experience doing this work. So, you know, it's a problem, it's difficult to try
and get out to a vessel 10 miles off the coast
of Yemen that's ablaze. But for someone like David Mockett, it's something he's more
than capable of doing. So he hitches a ride on a fishing trawler to get out to the Brillante Virtuoso. But he did have some initial trouble getting on board the Brillante. It was a bit slow to get permission. And the way that works
is that when there is a marine accident, typically
a vessel then becomes the property of what's
called a salvage crew. And salvers are the 911
service of the high seas. When a vessel runs into
trouble, comes to grief, salvage crews race to the scene to try and keep it from sinking,
pull it off rocks, whatever needs to be done. And from that point on, the
ship is the responsibility of salvage crews, who ultimately
work for the ship's owners. I think David Mockett
would've known pretty early on that there was something suspicious about what happened to
the Brillante Virtuoso. One of the things he noticed was there was no evidence of a
rocket-propelled grenade strike. Supposedly an RPG had started the fire. David saw no evidence of this. He was confused by the
fact that the pirate attack had occurred in the middle of the night, which is not typically how
Somali pirates operate. They would usually strike in daylight. He didn't notice any evidence
of weapons being discharged, bullet holes or anything like that, which again, was was part of the story. So he didn't have any positive
theory of what had occurred. He just had certain suspicions that there was more to it than the
initial accounts suggested. And when he arrived and
spoke to the salvage crew, their attitude was kind of strange. They sat down and had dinner one evening, and the salvors were
quizzing David Mockett about what he was doing
in a place like Yemen. And the Greek salvage captain said to him, "You should be at home
with your grandchildren. You shouldn't be in a place like this." David Mockett went back
to his office in Aden and started the process
of sending his reports back to London so the insurers could get a clear idea of what happened. And in those early reports, you can see that he's suspicious
about the whole thing. And indeed he tells his employers, "I need to go and find
out what's happened." He's going to go and talk to
his local government contacts. He's going to dig a bit deeper and try and find out the true story, but he never gets a chance to do that. So on July 20, 2011, about
two weeks after the attack and fire that all but destroyed
the Brillante Virtuoso, David was working in his
office in Aden as usual. He typically got to work
very early in the morning, you know, between 7 and 8. He would work until lunchtime,
and he would go home, have lunch at home, stay
home for a few hours and then return to work later in the day. And, totally normal morning,
he drove to his office, parked. And when it came time
to go home for lunch, he got up, walked out the hall,
climbed into his Lexus SUV and turned the key,
drove out of the car park of this small office building,
where he had his workspace, and then onto a very busy road, one of the main roads of Aden, actually. And he hadn't gone more
than a couple hundred meters when a bomb that had been placed under the driver's seat detonated, killing him instantly. There wasn't a big explosion. It was a very targeted
incident in a way that really, you know, people afterwards
could only explain as being assassination. Whoever placed that bomb
wanted to kill David Mockett. So the British government
did take some action, as it does when a Briton is killed abroad. The Foreign Office did try and
ascertain the circumstances of what had occurred. Ultimately, the Met police
sent an investigator to Aden to liaise with the Yemeni
police, but really, there was not much the
British government could do. Yemen at this time was
incredibly dangerous. There were no British
diplomats in Aden whatsoever. There was no British presence at all. You know, after the
death of David Mockett, there was a there was an
inquest into his death, and the coroner found that
he'd been unlawfully killed but didn't know who had done it. There was no evidence as
to who had killed him, but there was evidence at that inquest that he'd been targeted because he was on the verge of uncovering
a criminal conspiracy. But after that finding, you know, there was no police action.
There was no full investigation. It was all just sort of forgotten about. The only thing that was left
was an insurance dispute. So when a large vessel
like the Brillante Virtuoso is destroyed, or effectively
destroyed in this case, insurance companies,
specifically insurers who operate through the Lloyd's of
London insurance market, are on the hook for a great deal of money, perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars. In this case, the vessel itself, what's called the hull insurance, was worth about $80 million. There was also $100
million in cargo insurance because the oil on board
was insured separately from the vessel itself. So this is a very large liability, even for big insurance
companies, even at Lloyd's, which is the world's most
important insurance market where they deal in huge transactions. And of course, if you are on
the hook for that much money you generally would
not want to pay it out, unless you're very confident
that the claim is legitimate. In practice, they might settle,
you know maybe pay you 50%, or maybe come to some
other amicable arrangement. What they're very unlikely
to do is to go to court to try and fight you about it. However, in the case
of Brillante Virtuoso, these London insurers, looking at this huge bill
with which they were faced and looking at the circumstances
of what had occurred, and also taking into account
the death of David Mockett, who was one of their own, a creature of the Lloyd's world
and of the maritime world, they decided to fight and
to go nose-to-nose in court. And this insurance dispute had become, you know, overtly hostile. The Greek ship owner is a
guy called Marios Iliopoulos, and they decided they weren't
going to pay his claim on the basis that they didn't believe it was a genuine act of piracy. And so it sets the scene for this high-stakes London lawsuit, which turns out to be the
best chance we're going to get to really understand what happened here. The owner specifically was a
man named Marios Iliopoulos, who was a prominent Greek shipping tycoon, owned a fleet of oil tankers, also the owner of
something called Seajets, which is one of the most
popular fast-ferry services linking Athens to places
like Mykonos and Santorini. And one of the fun things to
know about Marios Iliopoulos is he has a hobby. He's a rally driver and a
very successful rally driver. He's known in the rally
world as Super Mario. He tends to do quite well in rally races. Really a pursuit that
requires nerves of steel and a certain disregard for risk, which would probably come in
handy in the shipping business. Even years after the event, no one had got a satisfactory story out of the captain or the chief engineer of the ship. No one had sat down and
interviewed the salvage crew. Any evidence of what happened to the ship had been destroyed. The ship was sent off to a
scrapyard and torn to pieces. So the insurers had an enormous
challenge on their hands to prove that this was an act of fraud rather than an act of piracy. When you're seeking to invalidate in court an $80 million insurance claim, or a nearly $80 million insurance claim, you need a huge amount of evidence. And one of the things you do is you hire private investigators. And there is a small
universe of these guys, typically ex-police, who do
a lot of insurance cases. So in this case, there were
two private investigators who were hired named Richard
Veale and Michael Conner. And they were digging
deeper and deeper into what had happened to the ship and what happened to David Mockett. And they were doing, you know, the work that should have been done in the immediate aftermath of the attack, which is find the sailors,
find the maritime officials, find the witnesses to what happened, and talk to them and get their stories. One of the whistle-blowers
who came forward to tell the truth about the fraud on
the Brillante Virtuoso was working with the salvage crew and arrived at the scene
shortly after the attack, and was there as the salvage crew ensured that the fire didn't go out, that the ship was completely destroyed and that the insurance fraud
had a better chance of success. But because he was based in Yemen, because he knew the ship owner and because he knew the
the salvage captain, had known them for several months, he witnessed all these events happening. He witnessed the planning. He knew that a vessel was
going to come to Yemeni waters and be attacked and destroyed
in an insurance fraud. He had absolutely vital
information for the police and for the insurance investigators. But he put his life at
risk by revealing it. He had a life in Greece, and
he had to flee in terror. You know, he had to get
taken away by armed guards and put on a plane to the UK. And, you know, when he
gave evidence in court, the Greek whistle-blower was
flanked by police officers from an unknown location. Like, he's still living in hiding. They also were able to
interview a member of the crew who admitted later on that
he had faked his story because he'd been threatened
by Marios Iliopoulos. So piecing all this evidence together, they were able to assemble
a body of evidence that they felt was strong enough
to really fight this case. The judge takes a few weeks
to hand down his decision, but when he does, you know,
it's a damning indictment of the ship owner. He says that Marios Iliopoulos
is a dishonest witness, that he disgracefully threatened
members of the courts, and that he's not telling
the truth about, you know, what happens to the ship and
what happens in the lawsuits. And his misconduct is so serious that this claim is thrown out. A prosecution of David
Mockett's murder by the UK was always gonna be a very long shot. This crime, the murder,
occurred in a faraway land where Britain has no presence,
obviously no jurisdiction. So expecting a British
prosecution for that act, I think was always
going to be a long shot. What I am much more surprised by is that no British law enforcement agency has seriously pursued a prosecution in what a London judge
has now ruled was a fraud. One of the reasons that
the police struggled to get to grips with what
happens in maritime fraud is that it takes place in the cracks between the traditional
areas of law enforcement. In this case, you had a
Greek-owned ship carrying oil that was being traded
out of Cyprus to China, crewed by Filipino sailors, flying the flag of Liberia in West Africa. So you've got seven or eight
different nation states already involved, and the question is, who prosecutes this crime? Whose job it is to deal with this? And the reality of law enforcement is that actually no one wants the job. It's incredibly difficult to investigate and prosecute any fraud
that happens out at sea. And so most police forces around the world just decide that it's not for them to do, and they can't do it. And in the case of the Brillante Virtuoso, the police were interested.
They were given evidence that something untoward had happened, and they decided it was
going to be too difficult to prosecute a case. No one has ever been prosecuted. No one has ever been charged for a very significant fraud that was attempted against
the Lloyd's market, one of Britain's most important
financial institutions. David Mockett spent a
lifetime either working at sea or in far-flung ports around the world. And, you know, he was
looking forward to spending, finally spending some time
with his wife and his daughters and their grandchildren who loved him. And, you know, the tragedy
of the Brillante Virtuoso is that he was killed before
he had a chance to do that. Iliopoulos did actually do OK financially, out of this, believe it or not. One of the things that
happened was that the bank, which had loaned the money to Iliopoulos to buy the Brillante
Virtuoso, wrote off the debt in the course of this litigation, concluding that it would
never be recovered. So from the debt side,
he was free and clear. By destroying the vessel
with a fire, he was able to, you know, escape debts of in
the region of $60, $70 million, and the ship was losing
enormous amount of money and was coming to towards
the end of its life. So from a purely financial point of view, destroying the Brillante Virtuoso was the best thing he could have done. Part of me has expected
people in the shipping world to come out and say, "It's not that bad. You know, it's not as bad as this one ship makes it appear to be."
But no one's done that. And, you know, unfortunately I think, there is this criminal
underbelly to global shipping that is thriving. And there seems to be very little that anyone can do about it. And the more you dig, the
worse it seems to look.
