At any given time, thousands of ships ply the world’s seas, crammed with the soon-to-be detritus of our lives : pot scrubbers, yoga mats, cars, oil. It’s no exaggeration to say that the development of the supertanker and adoption of modular shipping containers, in the 1950s and 60s, respectively, enabled the globalized modern economy. Today, 80 per cent of the worldwide trade in physical goods is done by sea.
It’s a jaw-dropping story that weaves its way, drone-like, through a dizzying variety of locales, from the deck of Brillante itself to the interior of a rusted Yemeni salvage tug to Lloyd’s of London’s 14-storey glass and mahogany atrium to the backstreets of Piraeus, Greece’s shipping capital, and points in between. When an author can keep you eagerly turning the pages in an underwriters’ room, you know you’re in good hands.
Enter Richard Veale, an East London private investigator with expertise in maritime financial fraud. The Brillante’s insurer wanted him to look at some of the anomalies Mockett had flagged before they paid out. Veale’s first order of business was to determine who owned the Brillante, no easy task given that the entire system of ship ownership is designed around obfuscation in order to facilitate tax avoidance and profit protection. In this, the Brillante proved typical.