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

by Matthew Campbell

Flaux’s decision to throw out Iliopoulos’s claim against his insurers left them in an odd position: having to prove fraud against someone who was no longer involved in the litigation. Technically, it was now a dispute between the Talbot syndicate and Piraeus Bank, which had loaned Iliopoulos the money to buy the Brillante, and claimed the Lloyd’s insurers were responsible for covering what it lost with the vessel’s destruction. Iliopoulos no longer had any obligation to answer questions or share evidence, nor provide explanations that could be picked apart in court. And the bank could justifiably claim to have no direct knowledge of what happened on board. Proving that an owner destroyed his own ship was hard enough; Zavos and his colleagues could count on one hand the number of times anyone had recently managed that in a London courtroom. Now they needed to do it against an opponent who didn’t even have to play the game.