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

by Matthew Campbell

In August 1994 the Iron Antonis, an aging freighter owned by the family (and bearing the name of Iliopoulos’s eldest brother), departed the port of Tubarão, Brazil, with a load of iron ore. To operate commercially, merchant vessels require certificates from “classification societies,” private companies that inspect a ship’s condition and verify that its hull and machinery are in working order. The Iron Antonis’s certification, issued by the French provider Bureau Veritas, had been withdrawn earlier in the year. A Greek classification society, the Hellenic Register of Shipping, had stepped in to provide clearance, allowing it to sail from Brazil to Shekou, in southern China. Not long after it left Tubarão, the Iron Antonis encountered ferocious seas in the South Atlantic. The crew would have followed their training, sealing hatches and tying down gear, while their captain did all he could to keep the bow pointed into the waves—the best way to prevent them from capsizing the vessel. But the heavy seas kept coming, slamming with terrifying force onto the Iron Antonis’s deck. On September 3, the captain reported that its hull had cracked amid the swells. The vessel was listing badly, he said, and the twenty-four men on board might need to abandon ship. Later that day, the Iron Antonis stopped responding to hails. It sank in some of the loneliest waters on earth, about 1,700 nautical miles west of Cape Town. A small, empty lifeboat was all rescuers were able to find.