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

by Matthew Campbell

Shipowners and a fleet of enablers, most of them in London, had spent half a century making their world harder to understand, hiding maritime tycoons’ true identities—and their tax and regulatory obligations—within nesting dolls of shell companies. Compared with other sectors, it was remarkably accommodating to such obfuscations. A bank that wanted to finance the construction of an office tower, for example, would do extensive due diligence on the borrower, compiling detailed “know your customer” documentation to comply with mandates from financial regulators. But the insurers who covered ships and voyages at Lloyd’s might have little idea who was ultimately behind the corporate entities they protected. The result was that when something went wrong—a major collision, for example, or a suspected fraud—they were often operating in the dark.