Dead in the Water: Murder and Fraud in the World's Most Secretive Industry

by Matthew Campbell

In the spring of that year, the insurers filed new documents at London’s High Court, revealing a dramatic change in strategy. To Veale and Conner’s delight, the members of the Brillante syndicate had agreed to accuse Iliopoulos of fraud, and sought permission to make that argument at the second trial—the one that would determine if they had to pay up. “There was no attack by Somali pirates,” they said in their new pleadings. In fact, they went on, “Any such attack on the vessel was staged with the involvement and connivance of the owner,” and members of the crew: Captain Gonzaga, who’d ordered the ship to drift and given permission for the supposed pirates to come aboard, and Chief Engineer Tabares, who’d been alone with the intruders in the engine room. Drawing on the reports they commissioned from explosives experts, the underwriters claimed the fire that gutted the Brillante “was initiated by an explosive incendiary device,” planted by people “acting on the instructions of the owner.” Iliopoulos had been deeply in debt, they argued, giving him a strong incentive to destroy a vessel that carried insurance far in excess of its economic value.