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

by Matthew Campbell

In the City of London, the insurance market was also absorbing the news of Mockett’s death. While there was no direct evidence that the crime was connected to the Brillante, the murder of a key participant in the claims process added to a sense that it might not be an ordinary piracy case. Greater than usual scrutiny seemed to be justified. To better understand the incident, a law firm working for the insurers that covered the Brillante’s hull commissioned a report from a piracy expert, a former soldier who’d helped negotiate ransoms for kidnapped sailors. The expert concluded, based on the limited information available, that it was unlikely to have been Somali pirates who boarded the tanker. Like Bob Boosey, the Royal Navy officer who was roused from his Dubai bedroom on the night of the attack, he pointed out that Somali gangs didn’t generally strike after dark, and that they usually attempted to ransom crews. Why walk away from a multimillion-dollar bounty without taking a single hostage? There were other baffling inconsistencies. According to the crew’s statements, the pirates seemed to be wearing uniforms, and their rifles were clean. Somali teams, by contrast, tended to appear in ragged clothes and carry poorly maintained AK-47s.