“TO ALL: BRILLIANTE VIRTUOSO, flag Liberian, owner Marshall Islands, crew 26 all Filipino,” he wrote in a Mercury message at 3:55 a.m. That one transmission encapsulated a set of challenges typical of the fragmented nature of modern shipping. The tanker was owned by a corporate entity in a Pacific tax haven—the Marshall Islands—which was in turn owned by a Greek family based in Piraeus, just outside Athens. It sailed under the flag of tiny Liberia, which augments its finances by selling cheap, hassle-free registrations to about one in ten of the world’s commercial vessels. Not that its
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