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Grit Nation
Dead in the Water - Matthew Campbell
Welcome to Grit Nation.
I'm Joe Cadwell, the host of the show, and on today's episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with the co-writer of a newly released book titled Dead in the Water, a true story of hijacking murderer and a global maritime conspiracy. His name is Matthew Campbell, and he's an award winning reporter and editor for Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine.
Together he and his co author Kitt Chellel, have put together a page turner of a book and a real triumph of investigative journalism.
We'll open our conversation as Matthew gives us an overview of the role international shipping plays in global economics, and how modern day pirates differ from the romantic Jack Sparrow Pirates of the Caribbean archetype.
Next we'll uncover the insurance scam surrounding the suppose it pirating and actual scuttling of the ship brilliant virtuoso, an oil laden super tanker with an estimated worth of $170 million off the coast of Yemen, Africa will then introduce a host of characters that add color to the pages of Matthew's book, including pirates, salvors private investigators, and a sports car racing Greek shipping magnate known as supermario.
And we'll wrap up our conversation by discussing the life and suspicious death of David Mockett, the Lloyd's of London ship surveyor who died in a car bomb assassination shortly after visiting the ill fated ship.
The Show Notes
Matthew Campbell
https://www.matthew-campbell.com/
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Welcome to Grit Nation. I'm Joe Cadwell, the host of the show, snd on today's episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with the co-writer of a newly released book titled Dead in the Water, a true story of hijacking murderer and a global maritime conspiracy. His name is Matthew Campbell, and he's an award winning reporter and editor for Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine. Together he and his co author Kitt Chellel, have put together a page turner of a book and a real triumph of investigative journalism. We'll open our conversation as Matthew gives us an overview of the role international shipping plays in global economics, and how modern day pirates differ from the romantic Jack Sparrow Pirates of the Caribbean archetype. Next we'll uncover the insurance scam surrounding the suppose it pirating and actual scuttling of the ship brilliant virtuoso, an oil laden super tanker with an estimated worth of $170 million off the coast of Yemen, Africa will then introduce a host of characters that add color to the pages of Matthew's book, including pirates, salvors private investigators, and a sports car racing Greek shipping magnate known as supermario. And we'll wrap up our conversation by discussing the life and suspicious death of David Mockett, the Lloyd's of London ship surveyor who died in a car bomb assassination shortly after visiting the ill fated ship. After the episode, be sure to check out the show notes for more information about Matthew Campbell and his book, Dead in the Water. And now on to the show. Matt Campbell, welcome to Grit Nation.
Matthew Campbell:Thanks so much for having me, Joe.
Joe Cadwell:Hey, Matthew, thank you so much for taking your time. I know you're, you're we're zooming in from Singapore right now, nine hours ahead or behind where I'm at in in Portland. But I really appreciate you coming on the show this morning to talk to me about your book dead in the water. A True Story of hijacking murder and the global maritime conspiracy that you co wrote with Kitt Chatel, did I pronounce his last name correctly Matthew?
Matthew Campbell:Kit Chellel.
Joe Cadwell:Great. Well, thank you, again, so much for for being here. I know the book was just a fantastic read for me this year, I really enjoyed it. And for the people who have yet to get their hands on dead of the water, I was hoping you could just give us a brief overview of what the storyline is about Matthew, and then we'll kind of just unfolded as it goes.
Matthew Campbell:So dead in the water actually unfolds from one event, which was a pirate attack, or an apparent pirate attack, which occurred in the Gulf of Aden in 2011. And it turned out this pirate attack was the center of a huge conspiracy. One of the most elaborate scams ever attempted, certainly in the shipping industry, and probably beyond the shipping industry to and what followed was a 10 year legal and law enforcement saga, in which unfortunately, one of the participants was murdered. And his murder has never been solved. And no one has ever been brought to justice for it. So those are the broad strokes of what you know from having read the book is a pretty complex story.
Joe Cadwell:Yeah, for sure. And for the folks who don't know, the Gulf of Aden is between Yemen and I believe Djibouti, which is sort of round the Horn of Africa. And it leads up into the Red Sea Red Sea leads to the Suez Canal. So it's a it's a pretty heavily trafficked did area for global commerce, isn't it?
Matthew Campbell:Exactly. So any vessel going from Europe to Asia, that isn't going to go the long way round, around the Cape and the bottom of Africa has to go through the Gulf of Aden, which, which, as you said is it's kind of rectangular between Yemen and the north, the Horn of Africa and the South Horn of Africa, meaning Djibouti, for sure. And largely Somalia. So at the time when the book begins in 2011, Somali piracy was a huge problem. There were pirate attacks at least being attempted every two or three days and at a good proportion of those who are succeeding and vessels were being hijacked pretty much all the
Joe Cadwell:time, and probably most famously the I believe it was the Maersk Alabama the ship that the movie Captain Phillips with Tom Hanks was based off of and this was one of those Somali pirate attacks they successfully boarded the the Maersk Alabama and they they captured the crew capture Captain Phillips and you know, see the movie if you want to know more about that, but but your book is a little bit different. This isn't a legitimate piracy sort of endeavor. This is more like a scam and insurance scam, isn't it? They were fake pirates.
Matthew Campbell:In a word. Yes. As it became apparent through a great deal of hard work by the investigators involved with this case. these pirates were not what they appeared to be. They were not, you know, Somali bandits to capture ships and get a quick buck they had been hired essentially to stage a pirate attack and to destroy this very large vessel, the brillante virtuoso, which was a 274 metre long oil tanker. So a huge super tanker carrying $100 million of oil. And there was this elaborate conspiracy to destroy it, cover up the circumstances of the destruction, and then go to Lloyd's of London for $100 million in insurance. But through the hard work of a number of investigators and lawyers, and police, in some cases, this was all unraveled over the subsequent seven or eight years.
Joe Cadwell:And Matthew, why is this story different? Why did this one, get a book written about it? Why did it become such a in depth investigation into something that seemed like it was fairly common? Maybe it wasn't necessarily a pirating attempt, it was a scam. I think over the centuries, Lloyd's of London which hopefully will, will understand a little bit more about Lloyds of London, and how they operate is ever used to dealing with these things. To some extent, why did this one take a different path?
Matthew Campbell:fraud in the maritime world is absolutely routine. This is something that happens all the time. Certainly anyone in the maritime industry is aware that there are frauds and scams constantly. There are lots of insurance frauds. This one was different in a few ways. One was the means certainly staging a fake pirate attack, in order to destroy a $100 million oil tanker is not something anyone had tried before. And the other thing that made it exceptional was a murder. The killing of a man named David Marquette, who was a Marine Surveyor working for Lloyds of London on this case, who was killed by a car bomb in Yemen, where he lived on July 20 2011, just as he was really digging into what had happened, and beginning to have doubts about the story as it had been told to him. So he was really on to something and probably, with more time, could have gotten much closer to unraveling it. But he was killed before that can happen. And as you can imagine, the murder of someone involved in the casualty as it's known in the maritime world, put this into a very different category for people in that industry, and also at Lloyds of London
Joe Cadwell:will again hopefully get into more of David markets story. There's a lot of characters as I was reading your book, it was it was reading like a very intriguing mystery novel because there was always the introduction of a new character and and it really kept me spellbound as I as I went through the different chapters. But let's, if we could just step back a little bit, and what can you tell us about the global shipping industry and its effect on world commerce, and how important and how unseen really, global shipping is to the world's economy nowadays,
Matthew Campbell:shipping is kind of the unsung hero of the global economy. If you look around any room, you're in, most of what's there got there on a boat, very little in terms of overall volume is shipped by air, for example. So just about anything manufactured in Asia, which is of course the workshop of the world gets to North America gets to Europe, on container vessels. Obviously, a huge volumes of oil and gas go by sea. So really shipping is the sort of circulatory system of the global economy. Without it, everything would stop all of the products we depend on would be unavailable, or at least very scarce. But what's amazing about it is for most people, it's kind of invisible. You know, time was not all that long ago that New York and London were great maritime hubs, you know, with docks and sailors and sort of burly longshoreman, you know, the west side of Manhattan is all piers right. But there are no no ships at them anymore. Because for a lot of reasons, one of them was the ships got too big and so the ports had to be moved elsewhere. But basically, shipping has kind of receded into the background of modern life. It's kind of like utility wires or sewers. We just sort of take for granted that it's always going to be there. Which is really remarkable when you learn you know, as I did for this book, just how dependent we are on it.
Joe Cadwell:Yeah, and that sort of like the what happened in the Suez Canal back in 2021. With leave the ship's name was the ever given, and it ran aground in the Suez Canal and the the effects on global economics world economics were massive. The ripple effect went on for for weeks and months. and probably still going on today that that one clog in the in the drain.
Matthew Campbell:That was a remarkable incident, the grounding of the ever given in the Suez because it was this brief moment, and it really was about a week. And no longer than that, when everybody cared about shipping all of a sudden, and everybody realized, first of all, how crucial shipping is, and second of all, how, you know, as a physical business, it is dependent on physical realities, one of which is the whip or lack thereof, of key choke points. One of those choke points is about eight blocks from where I'm sitting now, which is the Singapore Strait, which is the only way from the Indian Ocean into the South China Sea without going a long way around Indonesia. But the most important choke point of all is, of course, the Suez Canal, which is very narrow, is over 150 years old, and really dependent on some quite finely tuned mechanics to get these in massive, massive ships, you know, 300 metres long, some of them are in 10, or 12 storeys tall, through this really narrow waterway without crashing into each other or crashing into the bank in all kinds of weather. And that's what happened to the ever given. And it did, indeed, backup global commerce in ways that took months to fully unravel.
Joe Cadwell:So here we have this network going on providing us the goods of day to day living, the ships have gotten bigger the ports have gotten further away from from where they used to be. And I believe there's a lot more automation on the ships now as well. So what used to be very labor intensive, has now been stripped down. And some of these the largest ships can run for lack of a better term with a skeleton crew. So who are these people for the most part that are operating these vessels?
Matthew Campbell:That's a really excellent question. Because most of us don't know any. And that wouldn't have been the case. 75 or 80, or 100 years ago, when, first of all, the shipping industry employed a lot more people, because it was a much more labor intensive business, things have been heavily automated to the point where even a really large container ship, some of the very largest vessels might have only 20 or 30 crew onboard. They are these days, overwhelmingly from a few countries, the Philippines is number one. India and Indonesia are also right at the top. These are men overwhelmingly men paid well, by the standards of the countries where they come from. That's why they do it. But by global standards, they are not paid very well at all.
Joe Cadwell:And for example, what is what is a typical monthly wage for say one of these Filipino seamen,
Matthew Campbell:it's hard to generalize, obviously, you know, based on rank and who they're working for and what kind of work they're doing. But you know, I would guess that a middle ranking Filipino Seaman is making something like 20 to 25,000 US dollars a year
Joe Cadwell:25,000 US dollars a year. And this is fairly arduous see duty, I think for a lot of these people, they're they're gone from home 910 months out of the year or more, perhaps, aren't they?
Matthew Campbell:Exactly. So the way this works is you go on these long contracts, typically for several months, sometimes much longer, you would have one or two home leaves a year. So you get a long break at home of say, four or five weeks. And it's a very unconventional family structure. Although in a country like the Philippines, it's typical. Often your wife would also be working overseas, that's not uncommon in the Philippines. So the kids are being raised by the grandparents. And you all try and get home as much as you can. Inevitably, it's it's a very strange way to live, certainly by the standards of most of us. But people do it because it's good money by the standards of these countries for very hard work. But it is enough to raise the living standards of your family and give your children a better future.
Joe Cadwell:And the particular ship that we're talking about, named the brilliant virtuoso. This was a man primarily by Filipino crewmen, wasn't it?
Matthew Campbell:That's right. This vessel, a large oil tanker called the Berlanti virtuoso, had 26 crew, all of them Filipino, which is a little bit unusual. Often there will be a little bit of a mix. But in this case, it was a fully Filipino crew.
Joe Cadwell:And that's the captain, the chief engineer all the way down the ranks to the lowly, a seaman. They were all Filipino. And they were transiting in 2011 as again, we mentioned through the Gulf of Aden when a pirate attack happened and now again, in this particular period of time, I guess piracy was was pretty prevalent, as you were saying, and so there are measures or means that that a crew on a giant ship like this would take in order to fend off the pirates. And can you talk to us Matthew a little bit about those Some measures
Matthew Campbell:by this point in 2011, the industry did have a pretty good playbook for defending against pirate attacks. Not good in the sense of effective, but good in the sense that it might give ships a chance or might at least slow down, the pirates have long enough for health for help to arrive. So one thing you could do and which the crew of the Atlantic virtuoso did is string barbed wire around the deck to make it harder to board. You could fix your fire hoses to the railings up and down the ship, so that you could blast an intruder off the hall if you had to. One thing, which seems to me a little bit more like superstition than anything else is, you put a dummy on the stern in coveralls to make it look like someone is on watch kind of like a scarecrow. Exactly, yeah, yeah. And so the crew of the brilhante did all these things. They were prepared for piracy as a risk. And yet, they were successfully boarded anyway, in very strange circumstances.
Joe Cadwell:And the circumstances from reading your book they were expecting a security team to to arrive. And this was, again, one of those best practices, I guess, when you got into a hotspot of piracy, that you would then a shipping owner or shipping company would would enlist the service of armed security guards or sometimes even unarmed security guards in order to fend off attacks. And that's how they were successfully boarded. In this case, where isn't it?
Matthew Campbell:That's right, Joe. So in this instance, the pirates, the apparent pirates, posed as the security team that the brilhante was waiting for, and essentially talk their way on board. And once they did get on board, they leveled their Kalashnikov rifles and made clear that, first of all, they weren't the security team. And second of all, that they were in charge, and they were taking over the ship. But that ruse did succeed, apparently. And again, everything about this attack, you do have to put a little asterisk next to because it would turn out that very little of it was what it seemed that ruse did apparently get them on board and get them past all of these defenses that the crew had set up ahead of time.
Joe Cadwell:Yeah, cuz normally, I guess, piracy being what it is the they normally attack during the day. And there there are high speed boats with armed people on them coming alongside throwing grappling hooks onto the ship's deck. And some of the ship's decks are quite a ways up and these fellows have to, to climb up them. And, again, why why aren't the typical ships armed? Would you think why don't why can't the crew defend themselves? Why would they have to rely on professional security teams to come on board? It took a long
Matthew Campbell:time for the shipping industry even to come around to the idea of having armed security on ships. There are legal reasons for that, where you know, you're pulling into ports all over the world, which may have different rules on weaponry, for example, there are liability reasons what happens if there's an accident, what happens if a crew member gets ahold of a gun and goes postal, so to speak. So the industry was really reluctant to either have armed security guards on board or indeed to armed crews, which is something that I think is has never happened to my knowledge, certainly among big commercial shipping lines. But ultimately, it was figured out that this was really the only way to do it. And the reason that piracy in the Gulf of Aden, which was this huge hotspot has largely come under control is the use of armed security guards, who are now much more common on ships. And I believe I'm right in saying that no vessel carrying armed security guard has ever been successfully hijacked by pirates in the Gulf of Aden. So it took a while there was a lot of hesitancy about having guns on ships, there was a lot of reluctance on the grounds of cost because of course, this is expensive. And shipping is a business that runs on pretty tight margins. But ultimately, security guards were the way that the industry went.
Joe Cadwell:And that's the way the layout of the virtuoso, started off. They were going to have a security team on as they pass through the Gulf of Aden. And they were supposed to meet the security team. I think there were three or four fellows that were supposed to show up. And then all of a sudden here in the middle of the night, Pitch Black of vessel approaches. And the call comes down from the captain for one of the seamen to literally let these folks on board and when they did come on board, it became apparent that they were not there as the security force but they were actually the aggressors.
Matthew Campbell:That's right. They rapidly took control of the ship. They herded the crew into the sort of record The rec room, you know, one of the one of the spaces which only had one door, you could keep them all in there. So 24 of the crew get confined to this room. The captain goes with two of the intruders and the chief engineer goes with two other of the intruders. And at some point during the night, there is an explosion. And the ship is on fire and burning quite, quite furiously. And the crew figure out first of all, that there is a fire because they can see and breathe smoke coming into this room where they were confined, and that the ship is in danger. So they eventually come out of this room figure out that the pirates seem to have taken off, but their lives are at risk. The ship may be destroyed by this fire and they abandoned ship. Although before they do that they do succeed in radioing. A US Navy cruiser the Philippine Sea that was in the area. And they are rescued from lifeboats by the US Navy.
Joe Cadwell:And there you go, thanks to the US Navy. I was a I was a sailor for four years in the Navy. And again, going back to the not being armed while at sea just seems so foreign of a concept to me. But so the Navy, the US Navy rolls in and it was one of those I imagine one of those deterrence of the time that that sort of kept some level of piracy at bay. And but they picked up the crew they didn't take the entire crew to though, did they? I think they that the chief engineer was left on board.
Matthew Campbell:So interestingly, when the crew did abandon ship, only 25 of them got off. The chief engineer, a Filipino man named Mr. Tavares was missing. And they couldn't figure out where he was. They weren't looking for him. But as you can imagine, by this point, there were there was smoke everywhere the fire was growing in intensity, the metal of the hole was beginning to buckle. So eventually, eventually, these guys gave up, and they abandoned ship without their colleague. Ultimately, he was spotted by a US Navy helicopter, which was circling this burning vessel and was rescued by some US Navy sailors in in what are called ribs, rigid hull inflatable boats that had been dispatched to look for him and ultimately engage pirates, if any were found. But so by by early morning, the next day, all 26 of the crew were accounted for and onboard this US Navy cruiser.
Joe Cadwell:Now let's, let's just back up just a bit, Matthew pirates, you know, we're talking about this era again, piracy has been along for a long time, the romantic notion of the, the Jack Sparrow the Johnny Depp sort of pirate is, is one interpretation of pirates probably never really based in fact, but piracy has been been going on as long as there's been ships at sea. What is modern piracy like today? It sounds like these fellows came on board. And I guess we'll get into the to the to the term scuttling of a vessel as opposed to actually taking it over. But how does modern day piracy differ from from piracy of of these Voltec.
Matthew Campbell:So the business model of modern day piracy is basically about ransom. That's the idea. So if we look at the the most pervasive example of modern day piracy, which is the Somali kind, Somali pirates operating from what has been for much of the last 30 years, more or less ungoverned, lawless country, Somalia, have gone out in skiffs armed with typically Kalashnikov type assault rifles, taking control of commercial vessels, often way out to sea, which is one of the things that's amazing about this, these guys can get out hundreds and hundreds of nautical miles in these little boats. And once you have taken control of the vessel, which is not easy, it's not easy to get on board, particularly at speed. It's not easy necessarily to take control, because crews are now trained to resist in various ways, although not generally with firearms. Once you do that, the goal is to get the ship back to Somalia. You bring the vessel, its crew and its cargo back to a safe location on the Somali coast. And then you bargain with the vessel and the cargo owners or actually more likely, their insurance companies because that's who's now on the hook for return of this property. And if you do it right, you can get millions of dollars out of this and it's a good business. Obviously, it's very hard. It's dangerous doesn't always work. But it is profitable enough or at least it was profitable enough. that this became a huge industry in Somalia backed by some of the country's wealthiest people believe it or not had investments in piracy operations.
Joe Cadwell:And I've also heard that the the money laundering aspect of of piracy can extend beyond borders and that even in the United States, we're you often used to launder money that has been extorted from the ship owners or from their insurance companies. And it's, again, a whole probably a subject of another book there but so the folks that are left on the hook the ones you were talking about negotiating with the, with the the insurers, everyone thinks of Lloyd's of London, but I get the sense from reading your book that Lloyds has never really been in the insurance business. So what can you tell us about Lloyd's of London and their role in this?
Matthew Campbell:Lloyds is a fascinating institution, and we all kind of know that it has to do with insurance. But I think even a lot of otherwise pretty well informed people would not have a great idea of what it is the Lloyds actually does. So Lloyds does not sell insurance, and in fact, it never has, which is a big misconception. What Lloyds is, is a market. It is a physical location in central London, where certainly until until COVID made them move some things online. Business was done entirely face to face for over 300 years. And what happens at Lloyds is that actual insurers, Chubb, Prudential, AIG all the names we all know, come to divvy up risk. So if you have a really large insurance contract, you need to put out let's say you have an oil rig, you know, it's worth a billion dollars. And if that oil rig is destroyed in a storm, your insurers are on the hook for a billion dollars. Well, no one insurance company wants to bear all of that on its books alone. So what happens at Lloyds is that dozens and dozens of insurance companies can come together to slice up that risk into little pieces. The result is that even if that oil rig does get blown up, no one insurer is facing a devastating loss. And this risk can be passed around and securitized and reinsured and Riri insured. And that's the function of Lloyds, it's a venue where all these very complicated transactions can happen. And where just about anything can get insurance, no matter how large no matter how risky no matter how esoteric,
Joe Cadwell:and that is where we get introduced to some of the other characters in the story that the ship owner had a policy I assume, through somehow through Lloyds of London, the risk absorber group that insured the brilliant day virtuoso, and this fella is excuse me if I pronounced his name right. What perhaps, if you would, Matthew printouts I'll refer to him as Super Mario from here on but well, how do i pronounce his last name? Or how do you pronounce his last name?
Matthew Campbell:Mario's Heliopolis. So Mario's Heliopolis, is a very wealthy Greek shipping tycoon, who turned out to be the owner of the brillante virtuoso, and I say turned out to be because one of the funny things about shipping is that ownership is very often anonymous. Vessels are owned by shell companies. Typically you would incorporate a shell company just to own one ship at a time that shell company will be registered somewhere like the Caymans or Bermuda or the Marshall Islands, secrecy jurisdictions. And finding what they call the UB to the ultimate beneficial owner is not always easy. So one of the first tasks for the Lloyds insurers who were on the hook for the loss of the brillante virtuoso was to figure out who actually owned it, which did take some time. But ultimately, they did trace ownership to Mario's Eliopoulos. This this wealthy ship owner, based in Piraeus, which is a suburb of Athens. That's really the hub of the Greek shipping industry.
Joe Cadwell:And I found I found that particular part of your book extremely interesting how Greece of all countries became sort of this world shipping hub. I think at one point post world war two 70% of the world shipping was was owned by Greek owners remember that accurately?
Matthew Campbell:That sounds a little high. But there is no question that Greece today is the most important ship owning nation in the world. Something like 17 or 18% of global shipping by tonnage is Greek controlled. And that's like absolutely amazing. This is a country with a population of Illinois, whose other main export is olive oil, and yet it has an absolutely dominant position in shipping. You know, there are more Work Rico on ships and there are American or Japanese or British or Chinese own ships. Just incredible. And Greek ship owners are the most powerful people in that country. They actually have an exemption from corporate income tax, which is written into the Greek constitution, believe it or not. And they still have a lot of pole a lot of influence. And Mario Eliopoulos is very much a member of that group.
Joe Cadwell:And Mario is a very, very interesting character. Indeed. The name Super Mario, I guess, comes from his passion for racing cars throughout the countryside and our high end performance cars and the Greek countryside. And he, he sponsors teams and things like that. So Super Mario is the owner of the brilliant a virtuoso, this ship apparently pirated. But we'll begin to find out that that was a ruse a scam to try to get over something on Lloyd's of London. And how did that get discovered? And how did those, all those pieces start to get connected there, Matthew.
Matthew Campbell:The way that this was ultimately put together was through a lot of very difficult investigative work, led by two individuals in particular, who are kind of the protagonists to the book. Their names are Richard veal, and Michael Connor, MC and Dick as they sometimes call themselves, and they're kind of a buddy cop duo. They're actually ex metropolitan police detectives. So the London match is where they where they met, and where they both cut their teeth as investigators. They're both retired from the force now and working as private eyes. And one thing they do as Private Eyes is, is investigate these very complex maritime cases. So they were hired by the brillantes insurers of Lloyds to track down witnesses to go through documents to build a body of evidence of what had occurred, and ultimately to prove that there had been a fraud. And it took them about seven years of consistent work, but eventually they did do it.
Joe Cadwell:And unfortunately, one of the witnesses that would have been key to this investigation was David mock it and David mock it his role as a ship surveyor, if you could explain what a ship surveyor is. And ultimately, what happened to David.
Matthew Campbell:David mock, it was a really unusual, interesting guy with a unconventional life trajectory. He was a Brit from Devon, he'd gone to see as a young man as a as a commercial sailor, and then come ashore, working initially imports in Saudi Arabia, and then moved to Yemen to be a surveyor. And a surveyor is kind of like the the person the insurance company sends if a tree falls on your house, they will send a claims adjuster to check it out, take some pictures, take some measurements, talk to you write up a report, you know, making sure that first of all, the tree did fall on your house. And second of all, that you didn't push the tree over intentionally. And you know, all being well, that report is positive and your money gets paid out. And David did that on massive scale for complex maritime accidents. So in the event of a marine collision, if cargo was destroyed, for some reason, if there was an oil spill or a sinking, he would go to the scene, evaluate what occurred, and essentially be a Lloyds of London's eyes on whatever had happened. So he was hired in the relaunch a case because he lived in Yemen. As I mentioned, he was at this point, one of the very, very few surveyors left in that part of the world because Yemen was an extremely volatile, unstable country. And he was very good. So he was the obvious person to call. But unfortunately, about two weeks after he began looking into this incident, and after he had begun to have significant doubts about the veracity of what he'd been told that occurred, he was killed by a car bomb that had been placed under the seat of his Lexus SUV clearly intended to kill him and only him
Joe Cadwell:so this wasn't an act of terrorism this seems like it was an orchestrated hit on someone that had discovered some some dirt on this potential scuttling of a vessel. So how did the backing it up just a little bit on David, the ship was was ablaze they called out a salvage company. I think, the silliest Margot's is another main character in your story. Hopefully we'll dig into his background a little bit, but they eventually got the blaze under control and it took David a few days just to get out to do his work as a surveyor, didn't it?
Matthew Campbell:That's right. So the vessel had been burned out completely, it was still afloat. But it was in financial terms right off. I mean, it was it was completely destroyed. And floating about 20 miles offshore from Aden, the city in Yemen, where David market lived. It did take him some time to get out there, he ultimately had to hire a fishing trawler to get him out because there was no other way. And this is, you know, it's kind of a, it's kind of a crazy situation, if you think about it, like if you said to me, there's a burned out oil tanker or 20 miles offshore, can you find a way to get out to it as soon as possible, I wouldn't really know where to start. But in David's business, this was just the sort of thing you had to do sometimes. So he did ultimately figure out how to get there, there was some reluctance to let him on board initially, which he did find curious and became rather important later on in the story. But But ultimately, he did get out looked around, did did what's called a survey where he inspected the vessel in great detail, and became suspicious, thought that this story of a pirate attack couldn't possibly have unfolded in the way that the crew claimed.
Joe Cadwell:And again, it didn't follow the norms. You know, there was no ransom being taken care of there was no commandeering of the vessel, they basically came on, they set the thing on fire. And he got to be a little bit suspicious. The fact that the chief engineer was left on board for hours on end, before his eventual rescue by the US Navy, all started painting kind of a shady picture in his mind. And I think ultimately, he was killed because of that, that instinct that he had developed in the course of his career.
Matthew Campbell:That is certainly the strong suspicion of most of the people who've looked into this. Now, you know, I should stress no one's ever been charged. In David markets, murder, much less convicted. It remains unsolved. But But yes, the conclusion of most of the people who I've spoken to who've looked into this case deeply, is that he was killed because he was stumbling into something much bigger than him.
Joe Cadwell:And so you said there was a certain amount of reluctance for him to be invited to do his job out 20 miles offshore, who was who was given the static on that, who was who was putting up roadblocks.
Matthew Campbell:So what happens when a vessel gets into trouble is salvage crews get involved. And salvors are really remarkable people. It's an amazing industry. These are men and they are like sailors are almost always men who raced to the scene of marine accidents, and do whatever needs to be done to save a vessel and save its cargo. And this is incredibly dangerous work solvers are killed all the time. But it's phenomenally lucrative, because if you do save a gigantic oil tanker from sinking, the way the business model works is you are entitled to a percentage of whatever value you protect. Often it's 10, or 20, or even 30%. It's often determined by arbitration in London. And so if you save $100 million oil tanker, you might be in line for 20 or $30 million to be shared out among your crew. So salvors will get to the scene of an accident incredibly quickly. And once a salver has claimed a vessel, he or she is in charge completely. And whether someone like a surveyor can get on is up to the salvor. So in this case, the salvor was a Greek gentleman named facilities Virgos and he didn't seem to want David market to come on board. Certainly not at first. And you know, the reasons for that I think you can you can speculate on but certainly some people involved with this case, I think it's because they were had some things they wanted to clean up before they let it before they let a surveyor working for the other side working for the insurers come on board.
Joe Cadwell:Sure. And then when David eventually did come on board again, during his investigation, he realized that some of the telltale signs were not there. And there was actually some suspicious business going on, which you know, not wanting to give away too much of your book, but it seems like there were some definite coincidences. With this particular vessel, the brilliant virtuoso, it was its owner, had also had another vessel at one point in time, suffer a similar fate. It turns out I believe the captain or was it the chief engineer was was also on that other vessel. And Brasilia Virgos was also the salvor on that that other vessel which did end up being paid off by by Lloyds, didn't it?
Matthew Campbell:That's exactly right. So there had been another accident in the same vicinity off the coast of Yemen, with another oil tanker the LE two years Earlier, and in that case, the same chief engineer a Filipino named Nestor Tavares was on board. And the same salvors led by vassilios Virgos this Greek salvage guy who, who was based in Yemen, came to the scene. And ultimately, the Alley was suffered something this is a fantastic non nautical term, suffered a catastrophic hogging, which is maritime speak for splitting in the middle like a watermelon. It was completely sheared in half, which I've been told by shipping experts is something that's very, very difficult to do, accidentally, the insurers at Lloyds or extremely suspicious that this had been done on purpose that it was an insurance fraud. But as is very common in these cases, they didn't feel they could prove it. And that one was settled out of court. And so there was a payment in the end, probably not for the full value of the policy. We don't know the exact terms. But it was not rejected outright, which is something that I was amazed to learn about Lloyd's that actually suspicious casualties happen at sea all the time. And very often, insurance pays out anyway.
Joe Cadwell:That's incredible. And then two years later, here we are, again, the same cast of characters, a very similar feed happening to another vessel. That was I believe you said $70 million for the vessel $100 million for the for the cargo and death, and ultimately, someone who is not found guilty of any sort of MIS misdeeds at all, being supermario.
Matthew Campbell:That's pretty much the size of it. Yeah. You know, someone said to be ones that I only seem to do stories where, where people get away with it, which is remarkable. In this case, the the people who were found by British court to have carried out a fraudulent act faking this pirate attack for the purposes of a giant insurance fraud. did get away with it, no one has been charged criminally. The authors of this fraud came out of it, by some estimates, 10s of millions of dollars better off. So it is it is a remarkable lesson in just how much it is possible to get done in an industry where law enforcement is very fragmented. And there are a lot of opportunities for mischief.
Joe Cadwell:It's a fascinating story. So how did Matthew How did you and kit get get wind of the story? And how did you conduct your investigation?
Matthew Campbell:So Kitt and I were colleagues at Bloomberg in London, we had worked together on a story previous to this about what happened when Goldman Sachs went into Muammar Qaddafi Libya, and got into some some very controversial dealings with the Libyan Government. And we enjoyed working together and Kitt got wind of this wild story shortly afterward. And he asked if, if I wanted to work on it with him. And the way you've gotten wind of it is a bit funny, he'd actually been at a conference. And someone from one of the British police agencies was giving a presentation that mentioned this case, very offhand. But it was enough to perk perk kid up to get him interested. And he happened to be not long after that at the High Court, London, the central courthouse for most of the commercial litigation in London, and recognize the hearing that was related to this case. So he went. And on that very first day, he saw Mario's Eliopoulos get arrested outside the courtroom and thought, wow, this is this is a remarkable story. So So after that, he and I were off to the races. And gradually, we decided that first of all, this was an incredible tale with fraud, murder hundreds of millions of dollars, at least two special forces rescues which we haven't even talked about these really compelling characters in the form of Richard Beal and Michael Connor and his two investigators who became obsessed with getting the bottom of this case. And about four years ago, four and a half years ago. Now we just thought, this is a book. So we got to work.
Joe Cadwell:And again, I'm so glad you did dead in the water. A True Story of hijacking murder and a global maritime conspiracy was just a page turner. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Where can people go to find out more about dead in the water and your work?
Matthew Campbell:The best way to find out about the book is to go to my website, which is very easy. It's just Matthew dash campbell.com You And there are links to many of my stories there as well as reviews and ways to buy the book. And the book is, of course available through Amazon Barnes and Noble, Waterstones in the UK, any major retailer you can think of.
Joe Cadwell:All right. Well, thank you so much, Matthew, for taking your time to be on the show today. It's been a real pleasure.
Matthew Campbell:Thanks so much, Joe really enjoyed it.
Joe Cadwell:I guess day has been Matthew Campbell, author of Dead in the Water. Find out more about Matthew and his work, be sure to check out the show notes for this episode from the Grit Nation website at gritnationpodcast.com. And finally, if you enjoyed today's episode, please consider sharing with a friend, family member or anyone else you think may get something out of it. As always, I appreciate your continued support. And until next time, this is Joe Cadwell. Thank you for wanting to know more today than we did yesterday. I write How do you feel about that? out how do you
Matthew Campbell:Great. Great, no, fantastic. Thank you.
Joe Cadwell:Oh, good, man. I really enjoyed it. And I didn't know about the Special Forces rescues. Oh, well,
Matthew Campbell:that was Yeah, you remember. Roy faci? Oh, yeah. Hold out of Aden.
Joe Cadwell:Yeah. And then another fella in, in Greece to Greece plug caucus. Yeah, yeah. What would they call him? What was his Spectre x or something? X ray was
Matthew Campbell:the other Greek guy. Plug caucuses. Codename was Zulu, too.
Joe Cadwell:Yeah. Well, I mean, that was interesting stuff. But I think we got some really good things going on. Yeah, I
Matthew Campbell:I think so. I think so.
