December 20, 2022 • 46 mins
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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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Joe Cadwell (00:10):
Welcome to Grit Nation. I'm Joe Cadwell, the
host of the show, snd on today'sepisode, I have the pleasure of
speaking with the co-writer of anewly released book titled Dead
in the Water, a true story ofhijacking murderer and a global
maritime conspiracy. His name isMatthew Campbell, and he's an
award winning reporter andeditor for Bloomberg
BusinessWeek magazine. Togetherhe and his co author Kitt
(00:30):
Chellel, have put together apage turner of a book and a real
triumph of investigativejournalism. We'll open our
conversation as Matthew gives usan overview of the role
international shipping plays inglobal economics, and how modern
day pirates differ from theromantic Jack Sparrow Pirates of
the Caribbean archetype. Nextwe'll uncover the insurance scam
surrounding the suppose itpirating and actual scuttling of
(00:53):
the ship brilliant virtuoso, anoil laden super tanker with an
estimated worth of $170 millionoff the coast of Yemen, Africa
will then introduce a host ofcharacters that add color to the
pages of Matthew's book,including pirates, salvors
private investigators, and asports car racing Greek shipping
magnate known as supermario. Andwe'll wrap up our conversation
(01:14):
by discussing the life andsuspicious death of David
Mockett, the Lloyd's of Londonship surveyor who died in a car
bomb assassination shortly aftervisiting the ill fated ship.
After the episode, be sure tocheck out the show notes for
more information about MatthewCampbell and his book, Dead in
the Water.
(01:35):
And now on to the show. MattCampbell, welcome to Grit
Nation.
Matthew Campbell (01:42):
Thanks so much for having me, Joe.
Joe Cadwell (01:44):
Hey, Matthew, thank you so much for taking your
time. I know you're, you'rewe're zooming in from Singapore
right now, nine hours ahead orbehind where I'm at in in
Portland. But I reallyappreciate you coming on the
show this morning to talk to meabout your book dead in the
water. A True Story of hijackingmurder and the global maritime
conspiracy that you co wrotewith Kitt Chatel, did I
(02:07):
pronounce his last namecorrectly Matthew?
Matthew Campbell (02:09):
Kit Chellel.
Joe Cadwell (02:11):
Great. Well, thank you, again, so much for for
being here. I know the book wasjust a fantastic read for me
this year, I really enjoyed it.
And for the people who have yetto get their hands on dead of
the water, I was hoping youcould just give us a brief
overview of what the storylineis about Matthew, and then we'll
kind of just unfolded as itgoes.
Matthew Campbell (02:28):
So dead in the water actually unfolds from one
event, which was a pirateattack, or an apparent pirate
attack, which occurred in theGulf of Aden in 2011. And it
turned out this pirate attackwas the center of a huge
conspiracy. One of the mostelaborate scams ever attempted,
(02:49):
certainly in the shippingindustry, and probably beyond
the shipping industry to andwhat followed was a 10 year
legal and law enforcement saga,in which unfortunately, one of
the participants was murdered.
And his murder has never beensolved. And no one has ever been
brought to justice for it. Sothose are the broad strokes of
(03:10):
what you know from having readthe book is a pretty complex
story.
Joe Cadwell (03:17):
Yeah, for sure. And for the folks who don't know,
the Gulf of Aden is betweenYemen and I believe Djibouti,
which is sort of round the Hornof Africa. And it leads up into
the Red Sea Red Sea leads to theSuez Canal. So it's a it's a
pretty heavily trafficked didarea for global commerce, isn't
it?
Matthew Campbell (03:36):
Exactly. So any vessel going from Europe to
Asia, that isn't going to go thelong way round, around the Cape
and the bottom of Africa has togo through the Gulf of Aden,
which, which, as you said isit's kind of rectangular between
Yemen and the north, the Horn ofAfrica and the South Horn of
Africa, meaning Djibouti, forsure. And largely Somalia. So at
(04:01):
the time when the book begins in2011, Somali piracy was a huge
problem. There were pirateattacks at least being attempted
every two or three days and at agood proportion of those who are
succeeding and vessels werebeing hijacked pretty much all
the
Joe Cadwell (04:17):
time, and probably most famously the I believe it
was the Maersk Alabama the shipthat the movie Captain Phillips
with Tom Hanks was based off ofand this was one of those Somali
pirate attacks they successfullyboarded the the Maersk Alabama
and they they captured the crewcapture Captain Phillips and you
know, see the movie if you wantto know more about that, but but
(04:39):
your book is a little bitdifferent. This isn't a
legitimate piracy sort ofendeavor. This is more like a
scam and insurance scam, isn'tit? They were fake pirates.
Matthew Campbell (04:50):
In a word.
Yes. As it became apparentthrough a great deal of hard
work by the investigatorsinvolved with this case. these
pirates were not what theyappeared to be. They were not,
you know, Somali bandits tocapture ships and get a quick
buck they had been hiredessentially to stage a pirate
(05:11):
attack and to destroy this verylarge vessel, the brillante
virtuoso, which was a 274 metrelong oil tanker. So a huge super
tanker carrying $100 million ofoil. And there was this
elaborate conspiracy to destroyit, cover up the circumstances
(05:32):
of the destruction, and then goto Lloyd's of London for $100
million in insurance. Butthrough the hard work of a
number of investigators andlawyers, and police, in some
cases, this was all unraveledover the subsequent seven or
eight years.
Joe Cadwell (05:52):
And Matthew, why is this story different? Why did
this one, get a book writtenabout it? Why did it become such
a in depth investigation intosomething that seemed like it
was fairly common? Maybe itwasn't necessarily a pirating
attempt, it was a scam. I thinkover the centuries, Lloyd's of
London which hopefully will,will understand a little bit
more about Lloyds of London, andhow they operate is ever used to
(06:16):
dealing with these things. Tosome extent, why did this one
take a different path?
Matthew Campbell (06:21):
fraud in the maritime world is absolutely
routine. This is something thathappens all the time. Certainly
anyone in the maritime industryis aware that there are frauds
and scams constantly. There arelots of insurance frauds. This
one was different in a few ways.
One was the means certainlystaging a fake pirate attack, in
(06:43):
order to destroy a $100 millionoil tanker is not something
anyone had tried before. And theother thing that made it
exceptional was a murder. Thekilling of a man named David
Marquette, who was a MarineSurveyor working for Lloyds of
London on this case, who waskilled by a car bomb in Yemen,
(07:04):
where he lived on July 20 2011,just as he was really digging
into what had happened, andbeginning to have doubts about
the story as it had been told tohim. So he was really on to
something and probably, withmore time, could have gotten
much closer to unraveling it.
(07:28):
But he was killed before thatcan happen. And as you can
imagine, the murder of someoneinvolved in the casualty as it's
known in the maritime world, putthis into a very different
category for people in thatindustry, and also at Lloyds of
London
Joe Cadwell (07:43):
will again hopefully get into more of David
markets story. There's a lot ofcharacters as I was reading your
book, it was it was reading likea very intriguing mystery novel
because there was always theintroduction of a new character
and and it really kept mespellbound as I as I went
through the different chapters.
But let's, if we could just stepback a little bit, and what can
you tell us about the globalshipping industry and its effect
on world commerce, and howimportant and how unseen really,
(08:06):
global shipping is to theworld's economy nowadays,
Matthew Campbell (08:13):
shipping is kind of the unsung hero of the
global economy. If you lookaround any room, you're in, most
of what's there got there on aboat, very little in terms of
overall volume is shipped byair, for example. So just about
anything manufactured in Asia,which is of course the workshop
(08:33):
of the world gets to NorthAmerica gets to Europe, on
container vessels. Obviously, ahuge volumes of oil and gas go
by sea. So really shipping isthe sort of circulatory system
of the global economy. Withoutit, everything would stop all of
the products we depend on wouldbe unavailable, or at least very
(08:56):
scarce. But what's amazing aboutit is for most people, it's kind
of invisible. You know, time wasnot all that long ago that New
York and London were greatmaritime hubs, you know, with
docks and sailors and sort ofburly longshoreman, you know,
the west side of Manhattan isall piers right. But there are
(09:17):
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 tobe moved elsewhere. But
basically, shipping has kind ofreceded into the background of
modern life. It's kind of likeutility wires or sewers. We just
sort of take for granted thatit's always going to be there.
Which is really remarkable whenyou learn you know, as I did for
(09:37):
this book, just how dependent weare on it.
Joe Cadwell (09:42):
Yeah, and that sort of like the what happened in the
Suez Canal back in 2021. Withleave the ship's name was the
ever given, and it ran agroundin the Suez Canal and the the
effects on global economicsworld economics were massive.
The ripple effect went on forfor weeks and months. and
probably still going on todaythat that one clog in the in the
(10:03):
drain.
Matthew Campbell (10:05):
That was a remarkable incident, the
grounding of the ever given inthe Suez because it was this
brief moment, and it really wasabout a week. And no longer than
that, when everybody cared aboutshipping all of a sudden, and
everybody realized, first ofall, how crucial shipping is,
and second of all, how, youknow, as a physical business, it
(10:26):
is dependent on physicalrealities, one of which is the
whip or lack thereof, of keychoke points. One of those choke
points is about eight blocksfrom where I'm sitting now,
which is the Singapore Strait,which is the only way from the
Indian Ocean into the SouthChina Sea without going a long
way around Indonesia. But themost important choke point of
(10:50):
all is, of course, the SuezCanal, which is very narrow, is
over 150 years old, and reallydependent on some quite finely
tuned mechanics to get these inmassive, massive ships, you
know, 300 metres long, some ofthem are in 10, or 12 storeys
tall, through this really narrowwaterway without crashing into
(11:13):
each other or crashing into thebank in all kinds of weather.
And that's what happened to theever given. And it did, indeed,
backup global commerce in waysthat took months to fully
unravel.
Joe Cadwell (11:25):
So here we have this network going on providing
us the goods of day to dayliving, the ships have gotten
bigger the ports have gottenfurther away from from where
they used to be. And I believethere's a lot more automation on
the ships now as well. So whatused to be very labor intensive,
has now been stripped down. Andsome of these the largest ships
can run for lack of a betterterm with a skeleton crew. So
(11:48):
who are these people for themost part that are operating
these vessels?
Matthew Campbell (11:52):
That's a really excellent question.
Because most of us don't knowany. And that wouldn't have been
the case. 75 or 80, or 100 yearsago, when, first of all, the
shipping industry employed a lotmore people, because it was a
much more labor intensivebusiness, things have been
heavily automated to the pointwhere even a really large
(12:13):
container ship, some of the verylargest vessels might have only
20 or 30 crew onboard. They arethese days, overwhelmingly from
a few countries, the Philippinesis number one. India and
Indonesia are also right at thetop. These are men
overwhelmingly men paid well, bythe standards of the countries
(12:37):
where they come from. That's whythey do it. But by global
standards, they are not paidvery well at all.
Joe Cadwell (12:43):
And for example, what is what is a typical
monthly wage for say one ofthese Filipino seamen,
Matthew Campbell (12:49):
it's hard to generalize, obviously, you know,
based on rank and who they'reworking for and what kind of
work they're doing. But youknow, I would guess that a
middle ranking Filipino Seamanis making something like 20 to
25,000 US dollars a year
Joe Cadwell (13:02):
25,000 US dollars a year. And this is fairly arduous
see duty, I think for a lot ofthese people, they're they're
gone from home 910 months out ofthe year or more, perhaps,
aren't they?
Matthew Campbell (13:13):
Exactly. So the way this works is you go on
these long contracts, typicallyfor several months, sometimes
much longer, you would have oneor two home leaves a year. So
you get a long break at home ofsay, four or five weeks. And
it's a very unconventionalfamily structure. Although in a
country like the Philippines,it's typical. Often your wife
(13:37):
would also be working overseas,that's not uncommon in the
Philippines. So the kids arebeing raised by the
grandparents. And you all tryand get home as much as you can.
Inevitably, it's it's a verystrange way to live, certainly
by the standards of most of us.
But people do it because it'sgood money by the standards of
these countries for very hardwork. But it is enough to raise
(13:58):
the living standards of yourfamily and give your children a
better future.
Joe Cadwell (14:05):
And the particular ship that we're talking about,
named the brilliant virtuoso.
This was a man primarily byFilipino crewmen, wasn't it?
Matthew Campbell (14:14):
That's right.
This vessel, a large oil tankercalled the Berlanti virtuoso,
had 26 crew, all of themFilipino, which is a little bit
unusual. Often there will be alittle bit of a mix. But in this
case, it was a fully Filipinocrew.
Joe Cadwell (14:31):
And that's the captain, the chief engineer all
the way down the ranks to thelowly, a seaman. They were all
Filipino. And they weretransiting in 2011 as again, we
mentioned through the Gulf ofAden when a pirate attack
happened and now again, in thisparticular period of time, I
guess piracy was was prettyprevalent, as you were saying,
and so there are measures ormeans that that a crew on a
(14:53):
giant ship like this would takein order to fend off the
pirates. And can you talk to usMatthew a little bit about those
Some measures
Matthew Campbell (15:01):
by this point in 2011, the industry did have a
pretty good playbook fordefending against pirate
attacks. Not good in the senseof effective, but good in the
sense that it might give ships achance or might at least slow
down, the pirates have longenough for health for help to
(15:21):
arrive. So one thing you coulddo and which the crew of the
Atlantic virtuoso did is stringbarbed wire around the deck to
make it harder to board. Youcould fix your fire hoses to the
railings up and down the ship,so that you could blast an
intruder off the hall if you hadto. One thing, which seems to me
(15:44):
a little bit more likesuperstition than anything else
is, you put a dummy on the sternin coveralls to make it look
like someone is on watch kind oflike a scarecrow. Exactly, yeah,
yeah. And so the crew of thebrilhante did all these things.
They were prepared for piracy asa risk. And yet, they were
(16:05):
successfully boarded anyway, invery strange circumstances.
Joe Cadwell (16:10):
And the circumstances from reading your
book they were expecting asecurity team to to arrive. And
this was, again, one of thosebest practices, I guess, when
you got into a hotspot ofpiracy, that you would then a
shipping owner or shippingcompany would would enlist the
service of armed security guardsor sometimes even unarmed
security guards in order to fendoff attacks. And that's how they
(16:34):
were successfully boarded. Inthis case, where isn't it?
Matthew Campbell (16:37):
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 geton board, they leveled their
Kalashnikov rifles and madeclear that, first of all, they
(16:58):
weren't the security team. Andsecond of all, that they were in
charge, and they were takingover the ship. But that ruse did
succeed, apparently. And again,everything about this attack,
you do have to put a littleasterisk next to because it
would turn out that very littleof it was what it seemed that
ruse did apparently get them onboard and get them past all of
(17:19):
these defenses that the crew hadset up ahead of time.
Joe Cadwell (17:22):
Yeah, cuz normally, I guess, piracy being what it is
the they normally attack duringthe day. And there there are
high speed boats with armedpeople on them coming alongside
throwing grappling hooks ontothe ship's deck. And some of the
ship's decks are quite a ways upand these fellows have to, to
climb up them. And, again, whywhy aren't the typical ships
(17:45):
armed? Would you think why don'twhy can't the crew defend
themselves? Why would they haveto rely on professional security
teams to come on board? It tooka long
Matthew Campbell (17:54):
time for the shipping industry even to come
around to the idea of havingarmed 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, thereare liability reasons what
happens if there's an accident,what happens if a crew member
(18:17):
gets ahold of a gun and goespostal, so to speak. So the
industry was really reluctant toeither have armed security
guards on board or indeed toarmed crews, which is something
that I think is has neverhappened to my knowledge,
certainly among big commercialshipping lines. But ultimately,
it was figured out that this wasreally the only way to do it.
(18:41):
And the reason that piracy inthe Gulf of Aden, which was this
huge hotspot has largely comeunder control is the use of
armed security guards, who arenow much more common on ships.
And I believe I'm right insaying that no vessel carrying
armed security guard has everbeen successfully hijacked by
pirates in the Gulf of Aden. Soit took a while there was a lot
(19:05):
of hesitancy about having gunson ships, there was a lot of
reluctance on the grounds ofcost because of course, this is
expensive. And shipping is abusiness that runs on pretty
tight margins. But ultimately,security guards were the way
that the industry went.
Joe Cadwell (19:20):
And that's the way the layout of the virtuoso,
started off. They were going tohave a security team on as they
pass through the Gulf of Aden.
And they were supposed to meetthe security team. I think there
were three or four fellows thatwere supposed to show up. And
then all of a sudden here in themiddle of the night, Pitch Black
of vessel approaches. And thecall comes down from the captain
for one of the seamen toliterally let these folks on
(19:43):
board and when they did come onboard, it became apparent that
they were not there as thesecurity force but they were
actually the aggressors.
Matthew Campbell (19:52):
That's right.
They rapidly took control of theship. 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 getconfined to this room. The
captain goes with two of theintruders and the chief engineer
(20:13):
goes with two other of theintruders. And at some point
during the night, there is anexplosion. And the ship is on
fire and burning quite, quitefuriously. And the crew figure
out first of all, that there isa fire because they can see and
breathe smoke coming into thisroom where they were confined,
(20:35):
and that the ship is in danger.
So they eventually come out ofthis room figure out that the
pirates seem to have taken off,but their lives are at risk. The
ship may be destroyed by thisfire and they abandoned ship.
Although before they do thatthey do succeed in radioing. A
(20:56):
US Navy cruiser the PhilippineSea that was in the area. And
they are rescued from lifeboatsby the US Navy.
Joe Cadwell (21:04):
And there you go, thanks to the US Navy. I was a I
was a sailor for four years inthe Navy. And again, going back
to the not being armed while atsea 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 ofthose deterrence of the time
that that sort of kept somelevel of piracy at bay. And but
(21:29):
they picked up the crew theydidn't take the entire crew to
though, did they? I think theythat the chief engineer was left
on board.
Matthew Campbell (21:35):
So interestingly, when the crew did
abandon ship, only 25 of themgot off. The chief engineer, a
Filipino man named Mr. Tavareswas missing. And they couldn't
figure out where he was. Theyweren't looking for him. But as
you can imagine, by this point,there were there was smoke
everywhere the fire was growingin intensity, the metal of the
(21:57):
hole was beginning to buckle. Soeventually, eventually, these
guys gave up, and they abandonedship without their colleague.
Ultimately, he was spotted by aUS Navy helicopter, which was
circling this burning vessel andwas rescued by some US Navy
sailors in in what are calledribs, rigid hull inflatable
(22:19):
boats that had been dispatchedto look for him and ultimately
engage pirates, if any werefound. But so by by early
morning, the next day, all 26 ofthe crew were accounted for and
onboard this US Navy cruiser.
Joe Cadwell (22:44):
Now let's, let's just back up just a bit, Matthew
pirates, you know, we're talkingabout this era again, piracy has
been along for a long time, theromantic notion of the, the Jack
Sparrow the Johnny Depp sort ofpirate is, is one interpretation
of pirates probably never reallybased in fact, but piracy has
been been going on as long asthere's been ships at sea. What
(23:04):
is modern piracy like today? Itsounds like these fellows came
on board. And I guess we'll getinto the to the to the term
scuttling of a vessel as opposedto actually taking it over. But
how does modern day piracydiffer from from piracy of of
these Voltec.
Matthew Campbell (23:20):
So the business model of modern day
piracy is basically aboutransom. That's the idea. So if
we look at the the mostpervasive example of modern day
piracy, which is the Somalikind, Somali pirates operating
from what has been for much ofthe last 30 years, more or less
(23:41):
ungoverned, lawless country,Somalia, have gone out in skiffs
armed with typically Kalashnikovtype assault rifles, taking
control of commercial vessels,often way out to sea, which is
one of the things that's amazingabout this, these guys can get
out hundreds and hundreds ofnautical miles in these little
(24:02):
boats. And once you have takencontrol of the vessel, which is
not easy, it's not easy to geton board, particularly at speed.
It's not easy necessarily totake control, because crews are
now trained to resist in variousways, although not generally
with firearms. Once you do that,the goal is to get the ship back
(24:26):
to Somalia. You bring thevessel, its crew and its cargo
back to a safe location on theSomali coast. And then you
bargain with the vessel and thecargo owners or actually more
likely, their insurancecompanies because that's who's
now on the hook for return ofthis property. And if you do it
(24:48):
right, you can get millions ofdollars out of this and it's a
good business. Obviously, it'svery hard. It's dangerous
doesn't always work. But it isprofitable enough or at least it
was profitable enough. that thisbecame a huge industry in
Somalia backed by some of thecountry's wealthiest people
believe it or not hadinvestments in piracy
(25:08):
operations.
Joe Cadwell (25:09):
And I've also heard that the the money laundering
aspect of of piracy can extendbeyond borders and that even in
the United States, we're youoften used to launder money that
has been extorted from the shipowners or from their insurance
companies. And it's, again, awhole probably a subject of
(25:30):
another book there but so thefolks that are left on the hook
the ones you were talking aboutnegotiating with the, with the
the insurers, everyone thinks ofLloyd's of London, but I get the
sense from reading your bookthat Lloyds has never really
been in the insurance business.
So what can you tell us aboutLloyd's of London and their role
in this?
Matthew Campbell (25:50):
Lloyds is a fascinating institution, and we
all kind of know that it has todo with insurance. But I think
even a lot of otherwise prettywell informed people would not
have a great idea of what it isthe Lloyds actually does. So
Lloyds does not sell insurance,and in fact, it never has, which
(26:11):
is a big misconception. WhatLloyds is, is a market. It is a
physical location in centralLondon, where certainly until
until COVID made them move somethings online. Business was done
entirely face to face for over300 years. And what happens at
(26:31):
Lloyds is that actual insurers,Chubb, Prudential, AIG all the
names we all know, come to divvyup risk. So if you have a really
large insurance contract, youneed to put out let's say you
have an oil rig, you know, it'sworth a billion dollars. And if
that oil rig is destroyed in astorm, your insurers are on the
(26:53):
hook for a billion dollars.
Well, no one insurance companywants to bear all of that on its
books alone. So what happens atLloyds is that dozens and dozens
of insurance companies can cometogether to slice up that risk
into little pieces. The resultis that even if that oil rig
does get blown up, no oneinsurer is facing a devastating
loss. And this risk can bepassed around and securitized
(27:17):
and reinsured and Riri insured.
And that's the function ofLloyds, it's a venue where all
these very complicatedtransactions can happen. And
where just about anything canget insurance, no matter how
large no matter how risky nomatter how esoteric,
Joe Cadwell (27:37):
and that is where we get introduced to some of the
other characters in the storythat the ship owner had a policy
I assume, through somehowthrough Lloyds of London, the
risk absorber group that insuredthe brilliant day virtuoso, and
this fella is excuse me if Ipronounced his name right. What
(27:59):
perhaps, if you would, Matthewprintouts I'll refer to him as
Super Mario from here on butwell, how do i pronounce his
last name? Or how do youpronounce his last name?
Matthew Campbell (28:07):
Mario's Heliopolis. So Mario's
Heliopolis, is a very wealthyGreek shipping tycoon, who
turned out to be the owner ofthe brillante virtuoso, and I
say turned out to be because oneof the funny things about
shipping is that ownership isvery often anonymous. Vessels
(28:29):
are owned by shell companies.
Typically you would incorporatea shell company just to own one
ship at a time that shellcompany will be registered
somewhere like the Caymans orBermuda or the Marshall Islands,
secrecy jurisdictions. Andfinding what they call the UB to
the ultimate beneficial owner isnot always easy. So one of the
first tasks for the Lloydsinsurers who were on the hook
(28:51):
for the loss of the brillantevirtuoso was to figure out who
actually owned it, which didtake some time. But ultimately,
they did trace ownership toMario's Eliopoulos. This this
wealthy ship owner, based inPiraeus, which is a suburb of
Athens. That's really the hub ofthe Greek shipping industry.
Joe Cadwell (29:13):
And I found I found that particular part of your
book extremely interesting howGreece of all countries became
sort of this world shipping hub.
I think at one point post worldwar two 70% of the world
shipping was was owned by Greekowners remember that accurately?
Matthew Campbell (29:31):
That sounds a little high. But there is no
question that Greece today isthe most important ship owning
nation in the world. Somethinglike 17 or 18% of global
shipping by tonnage is Greekcontrolled. And that's like
absolutely amazing. This is acountry with a population of
Illinois, whose other mainexport is olive oil, and yet it
(29:55):
has an absolutely dominantposition in shipping. You know,
there are more Work Rico onships and there are American or
Japanese or British or Chineseown ships. Just incredible. And
Greek ship owners are the mostpowerful people in that country.
They actually have an exemptionfrom corporate income tax, which
is written into the Greekconstitution, believe it or not.
(30:18):
And they still have a lot ofpole a lot of influence. And
Mario Eliopoulos is very much amember of that group.
Joe Cadwell (30:26):
And Mario is a very, very interesting
character. Indeed. The nameSuper Mario, I guess, comes from
his passion for racing carsthroughout the countryside and
our high end performance carsand the Greek countryside. And
he, he sponsors teams and thingslike that. So Super Mario is the
owner of the brilliant avirtuoso, this ship apparently
(30:47):
pirated. But we'll begin to findout that that was a ruse a scam
to try to get over something onLloyd's of London. And how did
that get discovered? And how didthose, all those pieces start to
get connected there, Matthew.
Matthew Campbell (31:03):
The way that this was ultimately put together
was through a lot of verydifficult investigative work,
led by two individuals inparticular, who are kind of the
protagonists to the book. Theirnames are Richard veal, and
Michael Connor, MC and Dick asthey sometimes call themselves,
and they're kind of a buddy copduo. They're actually ex
(31:27):
metropolitan police detectives.
So the London match is wherethey where they met, and where
they both cut their teeth asinvestigators. They're both
retired from the force now andworking as private eyes. And one
thing they do as Private Eyesis, is investigate these very
complex maritime cases. So theywere hired by the brillantes
(31:47):
insurers of Lloyds to track downwitnesses to go through
documents to build a body ofevidence of what had occurred,
and ultimately to prove thatthere had been a fraud. And it
took them about seven years ofconsistent work, but eventually
they did do it.
Joe Cadwell (32:06):
And unfortunately, one of the witnesses that would
have been key to thisinvestigation was David mock it
and David mock it his role as aship surveyor, if you could
explain what a ship surveyor is.
And ultimately, what happened toDavid.
Matthew Campbell (32:22):
David mock, it was a really unusual,
interesting guy with aunconventional life trajectory.
He was a Brit from Devon, he'dgone to see as a young man as a
as a commercial sailor, and thencome ashore, working initially
imports in Saudi Arabia, andthen moved to Yemen to be a
(32:45):
surveyor. And a surveyor is kindof like the the person the
insurance company sends if atree falls on your house, they
will send a claims adjuster tocheck it out, take some
pictures, take somemeasurements, talk to you write
up a report, you know, makingsure that first of all, the tree
did fall on your house. Andsecond of all, that you didn't
(33:06):
push the tree overintentionally. And you know, all
being well, that report ispositive and your money gets
paid out. And David did that onmassive scale for complex
maritime accidents. So in theevent of a marine collision, if
cargo was destroyed, for somereason, if there was an oil
(33:26):
spill or a sinking, he would goto the scene, evaluate what
occurred, and essentially be aLloyds of London's eyes on
whatever had happened. So he washired in the relaunch a case
because he lived in Yemen. As Imentioned, he was at this point,
one of the very, very fewsurveyors left in that part of
(33:49):
the world because Yemen was anextremely volatile, unstable
country. And he was very good.
So he was the obvious person tocall. But unfortunately, about
two weeks after he began lookinginto this incident, and after he
had begun to have significantdoubts about the veracity of
what he'd been told thatoccurred, he was killed by a car
bomb that had been placed underthe seat of his Lexus SUV
(34:12):
clearly intended to kill him andonly him
Joe Cadwell (34:24):
so this wasn't an act of terrorism this seems like
it was an orchestrated hit onsomeone that had discovered some
some dirt on this potentialscuttling of a vessel. So how
did the backing it up just alittle bit on David, the ship
was was ablaze they called out asalvage company. I think, the
(34:46):
silliest Margot's is anothermain character in your story.
Hopefully we'll dig into hisbackground a little bit, but
they eventually got the blazeunder control and it took David
a few days just to get out to dohis work as a surveyor, didn't
it?
Matthew Campbell (34:59):
That's right.
So the vessel had been burnedout completely, it was still
afloat. But it was in financialterms right off. I mean, it was
it was completely destroyed. Andfloating about 20 miles offshore
from Aden, the city in Yemen,where David market lived. It did
take him some time to get outthere, he ultimately had to hire
a fishing trawler to get him outbecause there was no other way.
(35:24):
And this is, you know, it's kindof a, it's kind of a crazy
situation, if you think aboutit, like if you said to me,
there's a burned out oil tankeror 20 miles offshore, can you
find a way to get out to it assoon as possible, I wouldn't
really know where to start. Butin David's business, this was
just the sort of thing you hadto do sometimes. So he did
(35:44):
ultimately figure out how to getthere, there was some reluctance
to let him on board initially,which he did find curious and
became rather important later onin the story. But But
ultimately, he did get outlooked around, did did what's
called a survey where heinspected the vessel in great
detail, and became suspicious,thought that this story of a
(36:08):
pirate attack couldn't possiblyhave unfolded in the way that
the crew claimed.
Joe Cadwell (36:15):
And again, it didn't follow the norms. You
know, there was no ransom beingtaken care of there was no
commandeering of the vessel,they basically came on, they set
the thing on fire. And he got tobe a little bit suspicious. The
fact that the chief engineer wasleft on board for hours on end,
before his eventual rescue bythe US Navy, all started
painting kind of a shady picturein his mind. And I think
(36:36):
ultimately, he was killedbecause of that, that instinct
that he had developed in thecourse of his career.
Matthew Campbell (36:42):
That is certainly the strong suspicion
of most of the people who'velooked into this. Now, you know,
I should stress no one's everbeen charged. In David markets,
murder, much less convicted. Itremains unsolved. But But yes,
the conclusion of most of thepeople who I've spoken to who've
(37:02):
looked into this case deeply, isthat he was killed because he
was stumbling into somethingmuch bigger than him.
Joe Cadwell (37:11):
And so you said there was a certain amount of
reluctance for him to be invitedto do his job out 20 miles
offshore, who was who was giventhe static on that, who was who
was putting up roadblocks.
Matthew Campbell (37:23):
So what happens when a vessel gets into
trouble is salvage crews getinvolved. And salvors are really
remarkable people. It's anamazing industry. These are men
and they are like sailors arealmost always men who raced to
the scene of marine accidents,and do whatever needs to be done
(37:46):
to save a vessel and save itscargo. And this is incredibly
dangerous work solvers arekilled all the time. But it's
phenomenally lucrative, becauseif you do save a gigantic oil
tanker from sinking, the way thebusiness model works is you are
entitled to a percentage ofwhatever value you protect.
(38:08):
Often it's 10, or 20, or even30%. It's often determined by
arbitration in London. And so ifyou save $100 million oil
tanker, you might be in line for20 or $30 million to be shared
out among your crew. So salvorswill get to the scene of an
accident incredibly quickly. Andonce a salver has claimed a
(38:31):
vessel, he or she is in chargecompletely. And whether someone
like a surveyor can get on is upto the salvor. So in this case,
the salvor was a Greek gentlemannamed facilities Virgos and he
didn't seem to want David marketto come on board. Certainly not
at first. And you know, thereasons for that I think you can
(38:53):
you can speculate on butcertainly some people involved
with this case, I think it'sbecause they were had some
things they wanted to clean upbefore they let it before they
let a surveyor working for theother side working for the
insurers come on board.
Joe Cadwell (39:07):
Sure. And then when David eventually did come on
board again, during hisinvestigation, he realized that
some of the telltale signs werenot there. And there was
actually some suspiciousbusiness going on, which you
know, not wanting to give awaytoo much of your book, but it
seems like there were somedefinite coincidences. With this
particular vessel, the brilliantvirtuoso, it was its owner, had
(39:32):
also had another vessel at onepoint in time, suffer a similar
fate. It turns out I believe thecaptain or was it the chief
engineer was was also on thatother vessel. And Brasilia
Virgos was also the salvor onthat that other vessel which did
end up being paid off by byLloyds, didn't it?
Matthew Campbell (39:50):
That's exactly right. So there had been another
accident in the same vicinityoff the coast of Yemen, with
another oil tanker the LE twoyears Earlier, and in that case,
the same chief engineer aFilipino named Nestor Tavares
was on board. And the samesalvors led by vassilios Virgos
(40:10):
this Greek salvage guy who, whowas based in Yemen, came to the
scene. And ultimately, the Alleywas suffered something this is a
fantastic non nautical term,suffered a catastrophic hogging,
which is maritime speak forsplitting in the middle like a
(40:31):
watermelon. It was completelysheared in half, which I've been
told by shipping experts issomething that's very, very
difficult to do, accidentally,the insurers at Lloyds or
extremely suspicious that thishad been done on purpose that it
was an insurance fraud. But asis very common in these cases,
(40:52):
they didn't feel they couldprove it. And that one was
settled out of court. And sothere was a payment in the end,
probably not for the full valueof the policy. We don't know the
exact terms. But it was notrejected outright, which is
something that I was amazed tolearn about Lloyd's that
actually suspicious casualtieshappen at sea all the time. And
(41:15):
very often, insurance pays outanyway.
Joe Cadwell (41:18):
That's incredible.
And then two years later, herewe are, again, the same cast of
characters, a very similar feedhappening to another vessel.
That was I believe you said $70million for the vessel $100
million for the for the cargoand death, and ultimately,
someone who is not found guiltyof any sort of MIS misdeeds at
all, being supermario.
Matthew Campbell (41:44):
That's pretty much the size of it. Yeah. You
know, someone said to be onesthat I only seem to do stories
where, where people get awaywith it, which is remarkable. In
this case, the the people whowere found by British court to
have carried out a fraudulentact faking this pirate attack
(42:05):
for the purposes of a giantinsurance fraud. did get away
with it, no one has been chargedcriminally. The authors of this
fraud came out of it, by someestimates, 10s of millions of
dollars better off. So it is itis a remarkable lesson in just
how much it is possible to getdone in an industry where law
(42:30):
enforcement is very fragmented.
And there are a lot ofopportunities for mischief.
Joe Cadwell (42:34):
It's a fascinating story. So how did Matthew How
did you and kit get get wind ofthe story? And how did you
conduct your investigation?
Matthew Campbell (42:41):
So Kitt and I were colleagues at Bloomberg in
London, we had worked togetheron a story previous to this
about what happened when GoldmanSachs went into Muammar Qaddafi
Libya, and got into some somevery controversial dealings with
the Libyan Government. And weenjoyed working together and
(43:05):
Kitt got wind of this wild storyshortly afterward. And he asked
if, if I wanted to work on itwith him. And the way you've
gotten wind of it is a bitfunny, he'd actually been at a
conference. And someone from oneof the British police agencies
was giving a presentation thatmentioned this case, very
offhand. But it was enough toperk perk kid up to get him
(43:30):
interested. And he happened tobe not long after that at the
High Court, London, the centralcourthouse for most of the
commercial litigation in London,and recognize the hearing that
was related to this case. So hewent. And on that very first
(43:51):
day, he saw Mario's Eliopoulosget arrested outside the
courtroom and thought, wow, thisis this is a remarkable story.
So So after that, he and I wereoff to the races. And gradually,
we decided that first of all,this was an incredible tale with
fraud, murder hundreds ofmillions of dollars, at least
(44:12):
two special forces rescues whichwe haven't even talked about
these really compellingcharacters in the form of
Richard Beal and Michael Connorand his two investigators who
became obsessed with getting thebottom of this case. And about
four years ago, four and a halfyears ago. Now we just thought,
this is a book. So we got towork.
Joe Cadwell (44:35):
And again, I'm so glad you did dead in the water.
A True Story of hijacking murderand a global maritime conspiracy
was just a page turner. Ithoroughly enjoyed reading it.
Where can people go to find outmore about dead in the water and
your work?
Matthew Campbell (44:50):
The best way to find out about the book is to
go to my website, which is veryeasy. It's just Matthew dash
campbell.com You And there arelinks to many of my stories
there as well as reviews andways to buy the book. And the
book is, of course availablethrough Amazon Barnes and Noble,
(45:11):
Waterstones in the UK, any majorretailer you can think of.
Joe Cadwell (45:16):
All right. Well, thank you so much, Matthew, for
taking your time to be on theshow today. It's been a real
pleasure.
Matthew Campbell (45:21):
Thanks so much, Joe really enjoyed it.
Joe Cadwell (45:23):
I guess day has been Matthew Campbell, author of
Dead in the Water. Find out moreabout Matthew and his work, be
sure to check out the show notesfor this episode from the Grit
Nation website atgritnationpodcast.com. And
finally, if you enjoyed today'sepisode, please consider sharing
with a friend, family member oranyone else you think may get
(45:44):
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 todaythan we did yesterday. I write
How do you feel about that?
out how do you
Matthew Campbell (45:57):
Great. Great, no, fantastic. Thank you.
Joe Cadwell (45:59):
Oh, good, man. I really enjoyed it. And I didn't
know about the Special Forcesrescues. Oh, well,
Matthew Campbell (46:05):
that was Yeah, you remember. Roy faci? Oh,
yeah. Hold out of Aden.
Joe Cadwell (46:11):
Yeah. And then another fella in, in Greece to
Greece plug caucus. Yeah, yeah.
What would they call him? Whatwas his Spectre x or something?
X ray was
Matthew Campbell (46:20):
the other Greek guy. Plug caucuses.
Codename was Zulu, too.
Joe Cadwell (46:25):
Yeah. Well, I mean, that was interesting stuff. But
I think we got some really goodthings going on. Yeah, I
Matthew Campbell (46:30):
I think so. I think so.
Welcome to Grit Nation. I'm Joe Cadwell, the
host of the show, snd on today'sepisode, I have the pleasure of
speaking with the co-writer of anewly released book titled Dead
in the Water, a true story ofhijacking murderer and a global
maritime conspiracy. His name isMatthew Campbell, and he's an
award winning reporter andeditor for Bloomberg
BusinessWeek magazine. Togetherhe and his co author Kitt
(00:30):
Chellel, have put together apage turner of a book and a real
triumph of investigativejournalism. We'll open our
conversation as Matthew gives usan overview of the role
international shipping plays inglobal economics, and how modern
day pirates differ from theromantic Jack Sparrow Pirates of
the Caribbean archetype. Nextwe'll uncover the insurance scam
surrounding the suppose itpirating and actual scuttling of
(00:53):
the ship brilliant virtuoso, anoil laden super tanker with an
estimated worth of $170 millionoff the coast of Yemen, Africa
will then introduce a host ofcharacters that add color to the
pages of Matthew's book,including pirates, salvors
private investigators, and asports car racing Greek shipping
magnate known as supermario. Andwe'll wrap up our conversation
(01:14):
by discussing the life andsuspicious death of David
Mockett, the Lloyd's of Londonship surveyor who died in a car
bomb assassination shortly aftervisiting the ill fated ship.
After the episode, be sure tocheck out the show notes for
more information about MatthewCampbell and his book, Dead in
the Water.
(01:35):
And now on to the show. MattCampbell, welcome to Grit
Nation.
Matthew Campbell (01:42):
Thanks so much for having me, Joe.
Joe Cadwell (01:44):
Hey, Matthew, thank you so much for taking your
time. I know you're, you'rewe're zooming in from Singapore
right now, nine hours ahead orbehind where I'm at in in
Portland. But I reallyappreciate you coming on the
show this morning to talk to meabout your book dead in the
water. A True Story of hijackingmurder and the global maritime
conspiracy that you co wrotewith Kitt Chatel, did I
(02:07):
pronounce his last namecorrectly Matthew?
Matthew Campbell (02:09):
Kit Chellel.
Joe Cadwell (02:11):
Great. Well, thank you, again, so much for for
being here. I know the book wasjust a fantastic read for me
this year, I really enjoyed it.
And for the people who have yetto get their hands on dead of
the water, I was hoping youcould just give us a brief
overview of what the storylineis about Matthew, and then we'll
kind of just unfolded as itgoes.
Matthew Campbell (02:28):
So dead in the water actually unfolds from one
event, which was a pirateattack, or an apparent pirate
attack, which occurred in theGulf of Aden in 2011. And it
turned out this pirate attackwas the center of a huge
conspiracy. One of the mostelaborate scams ever attempted,
(02:49):
certainly in the shippingindustry, and probably beyond
the shipping industry to andwhat followed was a 10 year
legal and law enforcement saga,in which unfortunately, one of
the participants was murdered.
And his murder has never beensolved. And no one has ever been
brought to justice for it. Sothose are the broad strokes of
(03:10):
what you know from having readthe book is a pretty complex
story.
Joe Cadwell (03:17):
Yeah, for sure. And for the folks who don't know,
the Gulf of Aden is betweenYemen and I believe Djibouti,
which is sort of round the Hornof Africa. And it leads up into
the Red Sea Red Sea leads to theSuez Canal. So it's a it's a
pretty heavily trafficked didarea for global commerce, isn't
it?
Matthew Campbell (03:36):
Exactly. So any vessel going from Europe to
Asia, that isn't going to go thelong way round, around the Cape
and the bottom of Africa has togo through the Gulf of Aden,
which, which, as you said isit's kind of rectangular between
Yemen and the north, the Horn ofAfrica and the South Horn of
Africa, meaning Djibouti, forsure. And largely Somalia. So at
(04:01):
the time when the book begins in2011, Somali piracy was a huge
problem. There were pirateattacks at least being attempted
every two or three days and at agood proportion of those who are
succeeding and vessels werebeing hijacked pretty much all
the
Joe Cadwell (04:17):
time, and probably most famously the I believe it
was the Maersk Alabama the shipthat the movie Captain Phillips
with Tom Hanks was based off ofand this was one of those Somali
pirate attacks they successfullyboarded the the Maersk Alabama
and they they captured the crewcapture Captain Phillips and you
know, see the movie if you wantto know more about that, but but
(04:39):
your book is a little bitdifferent. This isn't a
legitimate piracy sort ofendeavor. This is more like a
scam and insurance scam, isn'tit? They were fake pirates.
Matthew Campbell (04:50):
In a word.
Yes. As it became apparentthrough a great deal of hard
work by the investigatorsinvolved with this case. these
pirates were not what theyappeared to be. They were not,
you know, Somali bandits tocapture ships and get a quick
buck they had been hiredessentially to stage a pirate
(05:11):
attack and to destroy this verylarge vessel, the brillante
virtuoso, which was a 274 metrelong oil tanker. So a huge super
tanker carrying $100 million ofoil. And there was this
elaborate conspiracy to destroyit, cover up the circumstances
(05:32):
of the destruction, and then goto Lloyd's of London for $100
million in insurance. Butthrough the hard work of a
number of investigators andlawyers, and police, in some
cases, this was all unraveledover the subsequent seven or
eight years.
Joe Cadwell (05:52):
And Matthew, why is this story different? Why did
this one, get a book writtenabout it? Why did it become such
a in depth investigation intosomething that seemed like it
was fairly common? Maybe itwasn't necessarily a pirating
attempt, it was a scam. I thinkover the centuries, Lloyd's of
London which hopefully will,will understand a little bit
more about Lloyds of London, andhow they operate is ever used to
(06:16):
dealing with these things. Tosome extent, why did this one
take a different path?
Matthew Campbell (06:21):
fraud in the maritime world is absolutely
routine. This is something thathappens all the time. Certainly
anyone in the maritime industryis aware that there are frauds
and scams constantly. There arelots of insurance frauds. This
one was different in a few ways.
One was the means certainlystaging a fake pirate attack, in
(06:43):
order to destroy a $100 millionoil tanker is not something
anyone had tried before. And theother thing that made it
exceptional was a murder. Thekilling of a man named David
Marquette, who was a MarineSurveyor working for Lloyds of
London on this case, who waskilled by a car bomb in Yemen,
(07:04):
where he lived on July 20 2011,just as he was really digging
into what had happened, andbeginning to have doubts about
the story as it had been told tohim. So he was really on to
something and probably, withmore time, could have gotten
much closer to unraveling it.
(07:28):
But he was killed before thatcan happen. And as you can
imagine, the murder of someoneinvolved in the casualty as it's
known in the maritime world, putthis into a very different
category for people in thatindustry, and also at Lloyds of
London
Joe Cadwell (07:43):
will again hopefully get into more of David
markets story. There's a lot ofcharacters as I was reading your
book, it was it was reading likea very intriguing mystery novel
because there was always theintroduction of a new character
and and it really kept mespellbound as I as I went
through the different chapters.
But let's, if we could just stepback a little bit, and what can
you tell us about the globalshipping industry and its effect
on world commerce, and howimportant and how unseen really,
(08:06):
global shipping is to theworld's economy nowadays,
Matthew Campbell (08:13):
shipping is kind of the unsung hero of the
global economy. If you lookaround any room, you're in, most
of what's there got there on aboat, very little in terms of
overall volume is shipped byair, for example. So just about
anything manufactured in Asia,which is of course the workshop
(08:33):
of the world gets to NorthAmerica gets to Europe, on
container vessels. Obviously, ahuge volumes of oil and gas go
by sea. So really shipping isthe sort of circulatory system
of the global economy. Withoutit, everything would stop all of
the products we depend on wouldbe unavailable, or at least very
(08:56):
scarce. But what's amazing aboutit is for most people, it's kind
of invisible. You know, time wasnot all that long ago that New
York and London were greatmaritime hubs, you know, with
docks and sailors and sort ofburly longshoreman, you know,
the west side of Manhattan isall piers right. But there are
(09:17):
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 tobe moved elsewhere. But
basically, shipping has kind ofreceded into the background of
modern life. It's kind of likeutility wires or sewers. We just
sort of take for granted thatit's always going to be there.
Which is really remarkable whenyou learn you know, as I did for
(09:37):
this book, just how dependent weare on it.
Joe Cadwell (09:42):
Yeah, and that sort of like the what happened in the
Suez Canal back in 2021. Withleave the ship's name was the
ever given, and it ran agroundin the Suez Canal and the the
effects on global economicsworld economics were massive.
The ripple effect went on forfor weeks and months. and
probably still going on todaythat that one clog in the in the
(10:03):
drain.
Matthew Campbell (10:05):
That was a remarkable incident, the
grounding of the ever given inthe Suez because it was this
brief moment, and it really wasabout a week. And no longer than
that, when everybody cared aboutshipping all of a sudden, and
everybody realized, first ofall, how crucial shipping is,
and second of all, how, youknow, as a physical business, it
(10:26):
is dependent on physicalrealities, one of which is the
whip or lack thereof, of keychoke points. One of those choke
points is about eight blocksfrom where I'm sitting now,
which is the Singapore Strait,which is the only way from the
Indian Ocean into the SouthChina Sea without going a long
way around Indonesia. But themost important choke point of
(10:50):
all is, of course, the SuezCanal, which is very narrow, is
over 150 years old, and reallydependent on some quite finely
tuned mechanics to get these inmassive, massive ships, you
know, 300 metres long, some ofthem are in 10, or 12 storeys
tall, through this really narrowwaterway without crashing into
(11:13):
each other or crashing into thebank in all kinds of weather.
And that's what happened to theever given. And it did, indeed,
backup global commerce in waysthat took months to fully
unravel.
Joe Cadwell (11:25):
So here we have this network going on providing
us the goods of day to dayliving, the ships have gotten
bigger the ports have gottenfurther away from from where
they used to be. And I believethere's a lot more automation on
the ships now as well. So whatused to be very labor intensive,
has now been stripped down. Andsome of these the largest ships
can run for lack of a betterterm with a skeleton crew. So
(11:48):
who are these people for themost part that are operating
these vessels?
Matthew Campbell (11:52):
That's a really excellent question.
Because most of us don't knowany. And that wouldn't have been
the case. 75 or 80, or 100 yearsago, when, first of all, the
shipping industry employed a lotmore people, because it was a
much more labor intensivebusiness, things have been
heavily automated to the pointwhere even a really large
(12:13):
container ship, some of the verylargest vessels might have only
20 or 30 crew onboard. They arethese days, overwhelmingly from
a few countries, the Philippinesis number one. India and
Indonesia are also right at thetop. These are men
overwhelmingly men paid well, bythe standards of the countries
(12:37):
where they come from. That's whythey do it. But by global
standards, they are not paidvery well at all.
Joe Cadwell (12:43):
And for example, what is what is a typical
monthly wage for say one ofthese Filipino seamen,
Matthew Campbell (12:49):
it's hard to generalize, obviously, you know,
based on rank and who they'reworking for and what kind of
work they're doing. But youknow, I would guess that a
middle ranking Filipino Seamanis making something like 20 to
25,000 US dollars a year
Joe Cadwell (13:02):
25,000 US dollars a year. And this is fairly arduous
see duty, I think for a lot ofthese people, they're they're
gone from home 910 months out ofthe year or more, perhaps,
aren't they?
Matthew Campbell (13:13):
Exactly. So the way this works is you go on
these long contracts, typicallyfor several months, sometimes
much longer, you would have oneor two home leaves a year. So
you get a long break at home ofsay, four or five weeks. And
it's a very unconventionalfamily structure. Although in a
country like the Philippines,it's typical. Often your wife
(13:37):
would also be working overseas,that's not uncommon in the
Philippines. So the kids arebeing raised by the
grandparents. And you all tryand get home as much as you can.
Inevitably, it's it's a verystrange way to live, certainly
by the standards of most of us.
But people do it because it'sgood money by the standards of
these countries for very hardwork. But it is enough to raise
(13:58):
the living standards of yourfamily and give your children a
better future.
Joe Cadwell (14:05):
And the particular ship that we're talking about,
named the brilliant virtuoso.
This was a man primarily byFilipino crewmen, wasn't it?
Matthew Campbell (14:14):
That's right.
This vessel, a large oil tankercalled the Berlanti virtuoso,
had 26 crew, all of themFilipino, which is a little bit
unusual. Often there will be alittle bit of a mix. But in this
case, it was a fully Filipinocrew.
Joe Cadwell (14:31):
And that's the captain, the chief engineer all
the way down the ranks to thelowly, a seaman. They were all
Filipino. And they weretransiting in 2011 as again, we
mentioned through the Gulf ofAden when a pirate attack
happened and now again, in thisparticular period of time, I
guess piracy was was prettyprevalent, as you were saying,
and so there are measures ormeans that that a crew on a
(14:53):
giant ship like this would takein order to fend off the
pirates. And can you talk to usMatthew a little bit about those
Some measures
Matthew Campbell (15:01):
by this point in 2011, the industry did have a
pretty good playbook fordefending against pirate
attacks. Not good in the senseof effective, but good in the
sense that it might give ships achance or might at least slow
down, the pirates have longenough for health for help to
(15:21):
arrive. So one thing you coulddo and which the crew of the
Atlantic virtuoso did is stringbarbed wire around the deck to
make it harder to board. Youcould fix your fire hoses to the
railings up and down the ship,so that you could blast an
intruder off the hall if you hadto. One thing, which seems to me
(15:44):
a little bit more likesuperstition than anything else
is, you put a dummy on the sternin coveralls to make it look
like someone is on watch kind oflike a scarecrow. Exactly, yeah,
yeah. And so the crew of thebrilhante did all these things.
They were prepared for piracy asa risk. And yet, they were
(16:05):
successfully boarded anyway, invery strange circumstances.
Joe Cadwell (16:10):
And the circumstances from reading your
book they were expecting asecurity team to to arrive. And
this was, again, one of thosebest practices, I guess, when
you got into a hotspot ofpiracy, that you would then a
shipping owner or shippingcompany would would enlist the
service of armed security guardsor sometimes even unarmed
security guards in order to fendoff attacks. And that's how they
(16:34):
were successfully boarded. Inthis case, where isn't it?
Matthew Campbell (16:37):
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 geton board, they leveled their
Kalashnikov rifles and madeclear that, first of all, they
(16:58):
weren't the security team. Andsecond of all, that they were in
charge, and they were takingover the ship. But that ruse did
succeed, apparently. And again,everything about this attack,
you do have to put a littleasterisk next to because it
would turn out that very littleof it was what it seemed that
ruse did apparently get them onboard and get them past all of
(17:19):
these defenses that the crew hadset up ahead of time.
Joe Cadwell (17:22):
Yeah, cuz normally, I guess, piracy being what it is
the they normally attack duringthe day. And there there are
high speed boats with armedpeople on them coming alongside
throwing grappling hooks ontothe ship's deck. And some of the
ship's decks are quite a ways upand these fellows have to, to
climb up them. And, again, whywhy aren't the typical ships
(17:45):
armed? Would you think why don'twhy can't the crew defend
themselves? Why would they haveto rely on professional security
teams to come on board? It tooka long
Matthew Campbell (17:54):
time for the shipping industry even to come
around to the idea of havingarmed 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, thereare liability reasons what
happens if there's an accident,what happens if a crew member
(18:17):
gets ahold of a gun and goespostal, so to speak. So the
industry was really reluctant toeither have armed security
guards on board or indeed toarmed crews, which is something
that I think is has neverhappened to my knowledge,
certainly among big commercialshipping lines. But ultimately,
it was figured out that this wasreally the only way to do it.
(18:41):
And the reason that piracy inthe Gulf of Aden, which was this
huge hotspot has largely comeunder control is the use of
armed security guards, who arenow much more common on ships.
And I believe I'm right insaying that no vessel carrying
armed security guard has everbeen successfully hijacked by
pirates in the Gulf of Aden. Soit took a while there was a lot
(19:05):
of hesitancy about having gunson ships, there was a lot of
reluctance on the grounds ofcost because of course, this is
expensive. And shipping is abusiness that runs on pretty
tight margins. But ultimately,security guards were the way
that the industry went.
Joe Cadwell (19:20):
And that's the way the layout of the virtuoso,
started off. They were going tohave a security team on as they
pass through the Gulf of Aden.
And they were supposed to meetthe security team. I think there
were three or four fellows thatwere supposed to show up. And
then all of a sudden here in themiddle of the night, Pitch Black
of vessel approaches. And thecall comes down from the captain
for one of the seamen toliterally let these folks on
(19:43):
board and when they did come onboard, it became apparent that
they were not there as thesecurity force but they were
actually the aggressors.
Matthew Campbell (19:52):
That's right.
They rapidly took control of theship. 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 getconfined to this room. The
captain goes with two of theintruders and the chief engineer
(20:13):
goes with two other of theintruders. And at some point
during the night, there is anexplosion. And the ship is on
fire and burning quite, quitefuriously. And the crew figure
out first of all, that there isa fire because they can see and
breathe smoke coming into thisroom where they were confined,
(20:35):
and that the ship is in danger.
So they eventually come out ofthis room figure out that the
pirates seem to have taken off,but their lives are at risk. The
ship may be destroyed by thisfire and they abandoned ship.
Although before they do thatthey do succeed in radioing. A
(20:56):
US Navy cruiser the PhilippineSea that was in the area. And
they are rescued from lifeboatsby the US Navy.
Joe Cadwell (21:04):
And there you go, thanks to the US Navy. I was a I
was a sailor for four years inthe Navy. And again, going back
to the not being armed while atsea 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 ofthose deterrence of the time
that that sort of kept somelevel of piracy at bay. And but
(21:29):
they picked up the crew theydidn't take the entire crew to
though, did they? I think theythat the chief engineer was left
on board.
Matthew Campbell (21:35):
So interestingly, when the crew did
abandon ship, only 25 of themgot off. The chief engineer, a
Filipino man named Mr. Tavareswas missing. And they couldn't
figure out where he was. Theyweren't looking for him. But as
you can imagine, by this point,there were there was smoke
everywhere the fire was growingin intensity, the metal of the
(21:57):
hole was beginning to buckle. Soeventually, eventually, these
guys gave up, and they abandonedship without their colleague.
Ultimately, he was spotted by aUS Navy helicopter, which was
circling this burning vessel andwas rescued by some US Navy
sailors in in what are calledribs, rigid hull inflatable
(22:19):
boats that had been dispatchedto look for him and ultimately
engage pirates, if any werefound. But so by by early
morning, the next day, all 26 ofthe crew were accounted for and
onboard this US Navy cruiser.
Joe Cadwell (22:44):
Now let's, let's just back up just a bit, Matthew
pirates, you know, we're talkingabout this era again, piracy has
been along for a long time, theromantic notion of the, the Jack
Sparrow the Johnny Depp sort ofpirate is, is one interpretation
of pirates probably never reallybased in fact, but piracy has
been been going on as long asthere's been ships at sea. What
(23:04):
is modern piracy like today? Itsounds like these fellows came
on board. And I guess we'll getinto the to the to the term
scuttling of a vessel as opposedto actually taking it over. But
how does modern day piracydiffer from from piracy of of
these Voltec.
Matthew Campbell (23:20):
So the business model of modern day
piracy is basically aboutransom. That's the idea. So if
we look at the the mostpervasive example of modern day
piracy, which is the Somalikind, Somali pirates operating
from what has been for much ofthe last 30 years, more or less
(23:41):
ungoverned, lawless country,Somalia, have gone out in skiffs
armed with typically Kalashnikovtype assault rifles, taking
control of commercial vessels,often way out to sea, which is
one of the things that's amazingabout this, these guys can get
out hundreds and hundreds ofnautical miles in these little
(24:02):
boats. And once you have takencontrol of the vessel, which is
not easy, it's not easy to geton board, particularly at speed.
It's not easy necessarily totake control, because crews are
now trained to resist in variousways, although not generally
with firearms. Once you do that,the goal is to get the ship back
(24:26):
to Somalia. You bring thevessel, its crew and its cargo
back to a safe location on theSomali coast. And then you
bargain with the vessel and thecargo owners or actually more
likely, their insurancecompanies because that's who's
now on the hook for return ofthis property. And if you do it
(24:48):
right, you can get millions ofdollars out of this and it's a
good business. Obviously, it'svery hard. It's dangerous
doesn't always work. But it isprofitable enough or at least it
was profitable enough. that thisbecame a huge industry in
Somalia backed by some of thecountry's wealthiest people
believe it or not hadinvestments in piracy
(25:08):
operations.
Joe Cadwell (25:09):
And I've also heard that the the money laundering
aspect of of piracy can extendbeyond borders and that even in
the United States, we're youoften used to launder money that
has been extorted from the shipowners or from their insurance
companies. And it's, again, awhole probably a subject of
(25:30):
another book there but so thefolks that are left on the hook
the ones you were talking aboutnegotiating with the, with the
the insurers, everyone thinks ofLloyd's of London, but I get the
sense from reading your bookthat Lloyds has never really
been in the insurance business.
So what can you tell us aboutLloyd's of London and their role
in this?
Matthew Campbell (25:50):
Lloyds is a fascinating institution, and we
all kind of know that it has todo with insurance. But I think
even a lot of otherwise prettywell informed people would not
have a great idea of what it isthe Lloyds actually does. So
Lloyds does not sell insurance,and in fact, it never has, which
(26:11):
is a big misconception. WhatLloyds is, is a market. It is a
physical location in centralLondon, where certainly until
until COVID made them move somethings online. Business was done
entirely face to face for over300 years. And what happens at
(26:31):
Lloyds is that actual insurers,Chubb, Prudential, AIG all the
names we all know, come to divvyup risk. So if you have a really
large insurance contract, youneed to put out let's say you
have an oil rig, you know, it'sworth a billion dollars. And if
that oil rig is destroyed in astorm, your insurers are on the
(26:53):
hook for a billion dollars.
Well, no one insurance companywants to bear all of that on its
books alone. So what happens atLloyds is that dozens and dozens
of insurance companies can cometogether to slice up that risk
into little pieces. The resultis that even if that oil rig
does get blown up, no oneinsurer is facing a devastating
loss. And this risk can bepassed around and securitized
(27:17):
and reinsured and Riri insured.
And that's the function ofLloyds, it's a venue where all
these very complicatedtransactions can happen. And
where just about anything canget insurance, no matter how
large no matter how risky nomatter how esoteric,
Joe Cadwell (27:37):
and that is where we get introduced to some of the
other characters in the storythat the ship owner had a policy
I assume, through somehowthrough Lloyds of London, the
risk absorber group that insuredthe brilliant day virtuoso, and
this fella is excuse me if Ipronounced his name right. What
(27:59):
perhaps, if you would, Matthewprintouts I'll refer to him as
Super Mario from here on butwell, how do i pronounce his
last name? Or how do youpronounce his last name?
Matthew Campbell (28:07):
Mario's Heliopolis. So Mario's
Heliopolis, is a very wealthyGreek shipping tycoon, who
turned out to be the owner ofthe brillante virtuoso, and I
say turned out to be because oneof the funny things about
shipping is that ownership isvery often anonymous. Vessels
(28:29):
are owned by shell companies.
Typically you would incorporatea shell company just to own one
ship at a time that shellcompany will be registered
somewhere like the Caymans orBermuda or the Marshall Islands,
secrecy jurisdictions. Andfinding what they call the UB to
the ultimate beneficial owner isnot always easy. So one of the
first tasks for the Lloydsinsurers who were on the hook
(28:51):
for the loss of the brillantevirtuoso was to figure out who
actually owned it, which didtake some time. But ultimately,
they did trace ownership toMario's Eliopoulos. This this
wealthy ship owner, based inPiraeus, which is a suburb of
Athens. That's really the hub ofthe Greek shipping industry.
Joe Cadwell (29:13):
And I found I found that particular part of your
book extremely interesting howGreece of all countries became
sort of this world shipping hub.
I think at one point post worldwar two 70% of the world
shipping was was owned by Greekowners remember that accurately?
Matthew Campbell (29:31):
That sounds a little high. But there is no
question that Greece today isthe most important ship owning
nation in the world. Somethinglike 17 or 18% of global
shipping by tonnage is Greekcontrolled. And that's like
absolutely amazing. This is acountry with a population of
Illinois, whose other mainexport is olive oil, and yet it
(29:55):
has an absolutely dominantposition in shipping. You know,
there are more Work Rico onships and there are American or
Japanese or British or Chineseown ships. Just incredible. And
Greek ship owners are the mostpowerful people in that country.
They actually have an exemptionfrom corporate income tax, which
is written into the Greekconstitution, believe it or not.
(30:18):
And they still have a lot ofpole a lot of influence. And
Mario Eliopoulos is very much amember of that group.
Joe Cadwell (30:26):
And Mario is a very, very interesting
character. Indeed. The nameSuper Mario, I guess, comes from
his passion for racing carsthroughout the countryside and
our high end performance carsand the Greek countryside. And
he, he sponsors teams and thingslike that. So Super Mario is the
owner of the brilliant avirtuoso, this ship apparently
(30:47):
pirated. But we'll begin to findout that that was a ruse a scam
to try to get over something onLloyd's of London. And how did
that get discovered? And how didthose, all those pieces start to
get connected there, Matthew.
Matthew Campbell (31:03):
The way that this was ultimately put together
was through a lot of verydifficult investigative work,
led by two individuals inparticular, who are kind of the
protagonists to the book. Theirnames are Richard veal, and
Michael Connor, MC and Dick asthey sometimes call themselves,
and they're kind of a buddy copduo. They're actually ex
(31:27):
metropolitan police detectives.
So the London match is wherethey where they met, and where
they both cut their teeth asinvestigators. They're both
retired from the force now andworking as private eyes. And one
thing they do as Private Eyesis, is investigate these very
complex maritime cases. So theywere hired by the brillantes
(31:47):
insurers of Lloyds to track downwitnesses to go through
documents to build a body ofevidence of what had occurred,
and ultimately to prove thatthere had been a fraud. And it
took them about seven years ofconsistent work, but eventually
they did do it.
Joe Cadwell (32:06):
And unfortunately, one of the witnesses that would
have been key to thisinvestigation was David mock it
and David mock it his role as aship surveyor, if you could
explain what a ship surveyor is.
And ultimately, what happened toDavid.
Matthew Campbell (32:22):
David mock, it was a really unusual,
interesting guy with aunconventional life trajectory.
He was a Brit from Devon, he'dgone to see as a young man as a
as a commercial sailor, and thencome ashore, working initially
imports in Saudi Arabia, andthen moved to Yemen to be a
(32:45):
surveyor. And a surveyor is kindof like the the person the
insurance company sends if atree falls on your house, they
will send a claims adjuster tocheck it out, take some
pictures, take somemeasurements, talk to you write
up a report, you know, makingsure that first of all, the tree
did fall on your house. Andsecond of all, that you didn't
(33:06):
push the tree overintentionally. And you know, all
being well, that report ispositive and your money gets
paid out. And David did that onmassive scale for complex
maritime accidents. So in theevent of a marine collision, if
cargo was destroyed, for somereason, if there was an oil
(33:26):
spill or a sinking, he would goto the scene, evaluate what
occurred, and essentially be aLloyds of London's eyes on
whatever had happened. So he washired in the relaunch a case
because he lived in Yemen. As Imentioned, he was at this point,
one of the very, very fewsurveyors left in that part of
(33:49):
the world because Yemen was anextremely volatile, unstable
country. And he was very good.
So he was the obvious person tocall. But unfortunately, about
two weeks after he began lookinginto this incident, and after he
had begun to have significantdoubts about the veracity of
what he'd been told thatoccurred, he was killed by a car
bomb that had been placed underthe seat of his Lexus SUV
(34:12):
clearly intended to kill him andonly him
Joe Cadwell (34:24):
so this wasn't an act of terrorism this seems like
it was an orchestrated hit onsomeone that had discovered some
some dirt on this potentialscuttling of a vessel. So how
did the backing it up just alittle bit on David, the ship
was was ablaze they called out asalvage company. I think, the
(34:46):
silliest Margot's is anothermain character in your story.
Hopefully we'll dig into hisbackground a little bit, but
they eventually got the blazeunder control and it took David
a few days just to get out to dohis work as a surveyor, didn't
it?
Matthew Campbell (34:59):
That's right.
So the vessel had been burnedout completely, it was still
afloat. But it was in financialterms right off. I mean, it was
it was completely destroyed. Andfloating about 20 miles offshore
from Aden, the city in Yemen,where David market lived. It did
take him some time to get outthere, he ultimately had to hire
a fishing trawler to get him outbecause there was no other way.
(35:24):
And this is, you know, it's kindof a, it's kind of a crazy
situation, if you think aboutit, like if you said to me,
there's a burned out oil tankeror 20 miles offshore, can you
find a way to get out to it assoon as possible, I wouldn't
really know where to start. Butin David's business, this was
just the sort of thing you hadto do sometimes. So he did
(35:44):
ultimately figure out how to getthere, there was some reluctance
to let him on board initially,which he did find curious and
became rather important later onin the story. But But
ultimately, he did get outlooked around, did did what's
called a survey where heinspected the vessel in great
detail, and became suspicious,thought that this story of a
(36:08):
pirate attack couldn't possiblyhave unfolded in the way that
the crew claimed.
Joe Cadwell (36:15):
And again, it didn't follow the norms. You
know, there was no ransom beingtaken care of there was no
commandeering of the vessel,they basically came on, they set
the thing on fire. And he got tobe a little bit suspicious. The
fact that the chief engineer wasleft on board for hours on end,
before his eventual rescue bythe US Navy, all started
painting kind of a shady picturein his mind. And I think
(36:36):
ultimately, he was killedbecause of that, that instinct
that he had developed in thecourse of his career.
Matthew Campbell (36:42):
That is certainly the strong suspicion
of most of the people who'velooked into this. Now, you know,
I should stress no one's everbeen charged. In David markets,
murder, much less convicted. Itremains unsolved. But But yes,
the conclusion of most of thepeople who I've spoken to who've
(37:02):
looked into this case deeply, isthat he was killed because he
was stumbling into somethingmuch bigger than him.
Joe Cadwell (37:11):
And so you said there was a certain amount of
reluctance for him to be invitedto do his job out 20 miles
offshore, who was who was giventhe static on that, who was who
was putting up roadblocks.
Matthew Campbell (37:23):
So what happens when a vessel gets into
trouble is salvage crews getinvolved. And salvors are really
remarkable people. It's anamazing industry. These are men
and they are like sailors arealmost always men who raced to
the scene of marine accidents,and do whatever needs to be done
(37:46):
to save a vessel and save itscargo. And this is incredibly
dangerous work solvers arekilled all the time. But it's
phenomenally lucrative, becauseif you do save a gigantic oil
tanker from sinking, the way thebusiness model works is you are
entitled to a percentage ofwhatever value you protect.
(38:08):
Often it's 10, or 20, or even30%. It's often determined by
arbitration in London. And so ifyou save $100 million oil
tanker, you might be in line for20 or $30 million to be shared
out among your crew. So salvorswill get to the scene of an
accident incredibly quickly. Andonce a salver has claimed a
(38:31):
vessel, he or she is in chargecompletely. And whether someone
like a surveyor can get on is upto the salvor. So in this case,
the salvor was a Greek gentlemannamed facilities Virgos and he
didn't seem to want David marketto come on board. Certainly not
at first. And you know, thereasons for that I think you can
(38:53):
you can speculate on butcertainly some people involved
with this case, I think it'sbecause they were had some
things they wanted to clean upbefore they let it before they
let a surveyor working for theother side working for the
insurers come on board.
Joe Cadwell (39:07):
Sure. And then when David eventually did come on
board again, during hisinvestigation, he realized that
some of the telltale signs werenot there. And there was
actually some suspiciousbusiness going on, which you
know, not wanting to give awaytoo much of your book, but it
seems like there were somedefinite coincidences. With this
particular vessel, the brilliantvirtuoso, it was its owner, had
(39:32):
also had another vessel at onepoint in time, suffer a similar
fate. It turns out I believe thecaptain or was it the chief
engineer was was also on thatother vessel. And Brasilia
Virgos was also the salvor onthat that other vessel which did
end up being paid off by byLloyds, didn't it?
Matthew Campbell (39:50):
That's exactly right. So there had been another
accident in the same vicinityoff the coast of Yemen, with
another oil tanker the LE twoyears Earlier, and in that case,
the same chief engineer aFilipino named Nestor Tavares
was on board. And the samesalvors led by vassilios Virgos
(40:10):
this Greek salvage guy who, whowas based in Yemen, came to the
scene. And ultimately, the Alleywas suffered something this is a
fantastic non nautical term,suffered a catastrophic hogging,
which is maritime speak forsplitting in the middle like a
(40:31):
watermelon. It was completelysheared in half, which I've been
told by shipping experts issomething that's very, very
difficult to do, accidentally,the insurers at Lloyds or
extremely suspicious that thishad been done on purpose that it
was an insurance fraud. But asis very common in these cases,
(40:52):
they didn't feel they couldprove it. And that one was
settled out of court. And sothere was a payment in the end,
probably not for the full valueof the policy. We don't know the
exact terms. But it was notrejected outright, which is
something that I was amazed tolearn about Lloyd's that
actually suspicious casualtieshappen at sea all the time. And
(41:15):
very often, insurance pays outanyway.
Joe Cadwell (41:18):
That's incredible.
And then two years later, herewe are, again, the same cast of
characters, a very similar feedhappening to another vessel.
That was I believe you said $70million for the vessel $100
million for the for the cargoand death, and ultimately,
someone who is not found guiltyof any sort of MIS misdeeds at
all, being supermario.
Matthew Campbell (41:44):
That's pretty much the size of it. Yeah. You
know, someone said to be onesthat I only seem to do stories
where, where people get awaywith it, which is remarkable. In
this case, the the people whowere found by British court to
have carried out a fraudulentact faking this pirate attack
(42:05):
for the purposes of a giantinsurance fraud. did get away
with it, no one has been chargedcriminally. The authors of this
fraud came out of it, by someestimates, 10s of millions of
dollars better off. So it is itis a remarkable lesson in just
how much it is possible to getdone in an industry where law
(42:30):
enforcement is very fragmented.
And there are a lot ofopportunities for mischief.
Joe Cadwell (42:34):
It's a fascinating story. So how did Matthew How
did you and kit get get wind ofthe story? And how did you
conduct your investigation?
Matthew Campbell (42:41):
So Kitt and I were colleagues at Bloomberg in
London, we had worked togetheron a story previous to this
about what happened when GoldmanSachs went into Muammar Qaddafi
Libya, and got into some somevery controversial dealings with
the Libyan Government. And weenjoyed working together and
(43:05):
Kitt got wind of this wild storyshortly afterward. And he asked
if, if I wanted to work on itwith him. And the way you've
gotten wind of it is a bitfunny, he'd actually been at a
conference. And someone from oneof the British police agencies
was giving a presentation thatmentioned this case, very
offhand. But it was enough toperk perk kid up to get him
(43:30):
interested. And he happened tobe not long after that at the
High Court, London, the centralcourthouse for most of the
commercial litigation in London,and recognize the hearing that
was related to this case. So hewent. And on that very first
(43:51):
day, he saw Mario's Eliopoulosget arrested outside the
courtroom and thought, wow, thisis this is a remarkable story.
So So after that, he and I wereoff to the races. And gradually,
we decided that first of all,this was an incredible tale with
fraud, murder hundreds ofmillions of dollars, at least
(44:12):
two special forces rescues whichwe haven't even talked about
these really compellingcharacters in the form of
Richard Beal and Michael Connorand his two investigators who
became obsessed with getting thebottom of this case. And about
four years ago, four and a halfyears ago. Now we just thought,
this is a book. So we got towork.
Joe Cadwell (44:35):
And again, I'm so glad you did dead in the water.
A True Story of hijacking murderand a global maritime conspiracy
was just a page turner. Ithoroughly enjoyed reading it.
Where can people go to find outmore about dead in the water and
your work?
Matthew Campbell (44:50):
The best way to find out about the book is to
go to my website, which is veryeasy. It's just Matthew dash
campbell.com You And there arelinks to many of my stories
there as well as reviews andways to buy the book. And the
book is, of course availablethrough Amazon Barnes and Noble,
(45:11):
Waterstones in the UK, any majorretailer you can think of.
Joe Cadwell (45:16):
All right. Well, thank you so much, Matthew, for
taking your time to be on theshow today. It's been a real
pleasure.
Matthew Campbell (45:21):
Thanks so much, Joe really enjoyed it.
Joe Cadwell (45:23):
I guess day has been Matthew Campbell, author of
Dead in the Water. Find out moreabout Matthew and his work, be
sure to check out the show notesfor this episode from the Grit
Nation website atgritnationpodcast.com. And
finally, if you enjoyed today'sepisode, please consider sharing
with a friend, family member oranyone else you think may get
(45:44):
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 todaythan we did yesterday. I write
How do you feel about that?
out how do you
Matthew Campbell (45:57):
Great. Great, no, fantastic. Thank you.
Joe Cadwell (45:59):
Oh, good, man. I really enjoyed it. And I didn't
know about the Special Forcesrescues. Oh, well,
Matthew Campbell (46:05):
that was Yeah, you remember. Roy faci? Oh,
yeah. Hold out of Aden.
Joe Cadwell (46:11):
Yeah. And then another fella in, in Greece to
Greece plug caucus. Yeah, yeah.
What would they call him? Whatwas his Spectre x or something?
X ray was
Matthew Campbell (46:20):
the other Greek guy. Plug caucuses.
Codename was Zulu, too.
Joe Cadwell (46:25):
Yeah. Well, I mean, that was interesting stuff. But
I think we got some really goodthings going on. Yeah, I
Matthew Campbell (46:30):
I think so. I think so.
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