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

by Matthew Campbell

In the first months of 2012, there was every chance the hull insurers would ignore the warning signs and pay the Brillante claim, just as the Lloyd’s market had done with countless other suspicious casualties over the years. In that scenario, Iliopoulos would have taken the money, satisfied his creditors, and carried on squeezing profit out of his aging fleet. Veale would have gone back to tracing pirates’ bank accounts, or whatever else came across his desk at EBIS. Talbot would have split the cost with the other nine insurers named on the war risks policy and barely noticed the loss. The real story of what happened to the Brillante Virtuoso might never have emerged. But the hull syndicate, led by Talbot, decided not to pay, at least not yet. Veale wasn’t part of the discussion and couldn’t be sure of exactly what swayed their deliberations. Perhaps it was the sheer size of the potential loss: more than $70 million, and set to grow larger with additional costs and lost income. Perhaps it was the existence of the Elli dispute, which was still being litigated and might yield proof that a fraud had been committed. Or perhaps, as Veale later came to believe, David Mockett’s death had shocked the Lloyd’s market into a rare moment of conscience.