by Eskil Engdal
He tries to track down the two consultants who procured the ship’s registration in Nigeria. He has names and photographs, but the bankrupt amusement park which they gave as their address was recently raided by the police and environmental protection authorities armed with guns and bulldozers. The once so popular amusement park was inhabited by petty criminals and vagrants and in one corner somebody had established a makeshift cemetery.
It’s as if the Thunder’s consultants in Lagos have vanished off the face of the earth.6
Enisuoh encourages the Nigerian federal police and the national Interpol office in the capital Abuja to react. Nigeria perhaps doesn’t have good fishery laws that give the country the possibility to punish pirate fishermen, but document forgery is definitely a criminal offence. Enisuoh asks the Nigerian Interpol director to alert all nations in the region that Nigeria would like assistance in arresting the Thunder. He also requests that a Nigerian team be put together that can go along and board the Thunder.
Enisuoh has done what he can. The decision must be made at the office of the cabinet minister in Abuja.
At sea, nobody knows about the plans being made on land. While the authorities of six nations are trying to build an alliance to stop the chase, a new ship search is underway near the ice edge in Antarctica.
20
A BLOODY NIGHTMARE
THE STOREGG BANK, FEBRUARY 2015
596 metres. 445 metres. 262 metres. On the echo sounder, the Sea Shepherd Captain Sid Chakravarty can see the Storegg Bank rising up steeply beneath him. The Sam Simon is located less than 50 nautical miles from the mainland of Antarctica, the cloud cover is light and the visibility unusually clear. The remote Storegg Bank is the ideal location for fishing vessels seeking to avoid detection, Chakravarty thinks.
The stinking evidence from the Thunder lies on deck. Six weeks earlier, the Sam Simon came sailing into the Banzare Bank to haul up the gillnets from which the Thunder had fled. After the first 30 consecutive hours of work on rough seas and amidst dense snowfall, Chakravarty had to divide the bone-tired crew up into four-hour shifts to ensure that nobody collapsed. It was a bloody nightmare. There was no end to the nets. After three weeks of toil, more than 70 kilometres of nets lay in huge coils on the deck of the Sam Simon. Along with skates, jellyfish and crabs, they pulled out 1,400 toothfish in different stages of decomposition. It was a catch that would have brought in millions of dollars in profits for the Thunder’s owner. Operation Spillway wanted the nets as evidence against officers and ship owners.1 After all the hard work, the Sam Simon continued west in search of the five members of “The Bandit 6” who were still on the run.
Now Chakravarty is hoping to search the Storegg Bank before the wind shifts to the north bringing with it new snow squalls and fog.2 The sunrise is glimmering an almost gaudy bright red.3 Chakravarty is standing with his cup of morning coffee in his hand and his eyes on the radar when he sees what he is looking for: A signal that can be two unknown ships.
Then he grabs the telephone, calls Peter Hammarstedt and tells him that he will reach the targets in the course of 15 minutes. He then gives the order that all the portholes are to be sealed in case of a collision. Slowly it comes into view, the rusty bow that had once been white. It is the Yongding.
“Ask everybody to stand by if these guys don’t move. We’re not going to be scared by these guys for sure,” Chakravarty orders, before calling up the Yongding and asking the ship to leave the area.
The pirate vessel does not respond, but suddenly veers, pointing its bow straight at the Sam Simon. It looks as if it is going to attack. If the Yongding wants to put the Sam Simon out of commission, the mate will have to ram it amidships – by the engine room.
But the Yongding speeds past the Sam Simon on its port side, clearing it by a scant 10 metres.
“He steered away, that fucking chicken,” Sid Chakravarty bursts out, before he sees the Yongding disappear to the east and out of the Storegg Bank. Instead of starting a chase he decides to find and confront the Kunlun, which is also located in the area.
When Shipmaster Alberto Zavaleta Salas catches sight of the pirate flag on the bow of the Sam Simon and hears the call on the radio, he does not respond. In the past few days, the Kunlun has only put out short chains of nets in case they have to flee the area. Now they draw the curtains in the wheelhouse shut to prevent being photographed and sail straight into the pack ice.
After having been chased for six days, the Kunlun changes its course for the northwest. For the Sam Simon, the change in course is the worst imaginable. It brings her away from land in a situation in which the ship already has too little fuel. After consulting with the crew, Captain Chakravarty decides to terminate the pursuit of the Kunlun. He sets their new course for a point located 750 nautical miles southeast of South Africa.
There the Thunder and the Bob Barker are adrift on the whims of the wind and the weather.
Every day at noon, Chief Engineer Ervin Vermeulen comes up onto the bridge of the Bob Barker with an overview of how much fuel is left in the tanks. On some days, Peter Hammarstedt does a detailed calculation to determine for how long they can continue the chase. The answer depends upon their speed, the weather and the wind. But as long as the two ships are operating without using the engines, it is only the generators that are consuming fuel. If it continues like this, they can be at sea for two years, is what he figures out.
The result of the calculation causes Hammarstedt to leave the bridge; he clambers through the galley and into the dry storage room, where the buckets of rice and beans are stacked up against the bulkheads.
“Do we have enough food to last for two years?” he asks.
“We have enough rice and beans to survive for two years,” the Chief Cook Priya Cooper replies.
The answer is clear enough. He leaves the galley, continues through the narrow, oblong messroom and into the lounge. There he gathers the crew for a meeting. The proposition he now wants to make can have consequences he would prefer to avoid.
“Worst case scenario we will be at sea for two years. The food is going to decline and we really don’t know how this is going to end,” he says.
Then he gives the crew a choice. They can stay on, continuing the chase and be stuck at sea for several months, in the worst case, for years.
“The Sam Simon will be here in two weeks. Those who want, can sail with her to Mauritius and travel home from there,” he says.
When he leaves the lounge, Hammarstedt prays a silent prayer that the chief engineer will not abandon the ship. Erwin Vermeulen is his most trusted man and probably the only ship’s engineer in the world who is a vegan. He is also a dedicated and loyal activist who spent 64 days in custody in a Japanese remand prison for an altercation with a dolphin trainer.
Peter Hammarstedt gives the crew 24 hours to decide whether they want to continue on the chase or leave the Bob Barker.
21
LA MAFIA GALLEGA
BARCELONA AND RIBEIRA, FEBRUARY 2015
He is quiet-mannered in a way that awakens suspicions of his knowing far more than he is willing to tell.
It is early in the morning. We meet him at a nondescript office in an office complex on the outskirts of Barcelona. The private eye of some 50 years does not want to be identified by name. We can call him Luis. All his activities involve his being anonymous and faceless, and that is how he wants it to stay. He hangs up his brown leather jacket; it is shapeless and worn. Then he gets some coffee from the coffee machine, the only fixture in the otherwise empty office premises, with the exception of the photocopier, which appears extravagant.
Out at sea, infinitely far from the enterprising Barcelona morning, the chase is in its second month. The Thunder and the Bob Barker have switched off the engines and are circling one another in a calm dance.
“The owners of all the pirate vessels are Spanish. And they are from
Galicia. But it is almost impossible to get to the bottom of the ownership structure,” Luis says.1
For many years he has been investigating narcotics smugglers and pirate ship owners in the Spanish province.
“Everyone in Galicia knows what is going on in Ribeira, but nobody says anything. It is like the omertà code of honour in Italy,” he says.
“A Corleone near the ocean?”
“The Corleone gang are like young children compared to the people in Galicia. Galicia is a region run by criminals. Before they lived off fishing. Now it’s narcotics and tobacco,” Luis the Catalonian says.
“Is there anyone who can talk?”
“Travelling to Ribeira and asking about pirate fishermen is like going to Naples and asking who stole a lorry. Everyone knows, but nobody says anything. Even for our local contacts it is almost impossible to acquire information. We have tried, but those who talk risk ending up in serious trouble.”
“How dangerous are they?”
For a moment he doesn’t speak, and then places the palms of his hands on the table.
“Some of the pirate fishermen use the same channels as the narcotics smugglers. They can be extremely dangerous. But if you go to a tapas bar in Ribeira, stand beers and a dinner with prostitutes, it could be that you will learn who is in business or not,” Luis says.
“I don’t know much about the Thunder. But I have heard that the ship is owned from Galicia,” he continues.
In the course of the chase, a number of the well-known pirate ship owners in Galicia have been designated as the owner of the Thunder. Vidal Armadores in Ribeira is a candidate. The Panama-registered company Trancoeiro Fishing is as well. According to the company documents from Panama, Trancoeiro Fishing is run by the Spanish citizens Manuel Martínez Martínez and the brothers Juan Antonio and José Manuel Argibay Pérez, all of whom are from Galicia. And each of them has a criminal record from the poaching of toothfish.
When we call Martínez, we receive the following answer:
“The Thunder? Then you must go to Ribeira to speak with Vidal Armadores.”
Another Panama company – Estelares – could also be the owner of the wanted ship. Estelares appeared for the first time in the Thunder saga when the ship was registered in Togo in 2006. Estelares was also registered as owner of the ship on an insurance policy and when the vessel changed flags in 2010. On paper, the company’s management consists of two lawyers in Panama, but they deny having anything to do with the operations of Estelares.2
“The real owner of Estelares is Florindo González from Galicia,” the private eye Luis says as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“I don’t have any documents that prove it, but I am 100 per cent sure that he owns Estelares. He is a powerful figure in Galicia,” he adds, before planting the palms of his hands on the table as if to signal that the conversation is over.
“There’s one more problem,” Luis says before we go our separate ways.
“And that is?”
“In Galicia it is difficult to get people to talk but finding them is worse. The addresses are a nightmare. Like this one: ‘The square up in the mountains, right before you reach the ocean, house number 3.’”
You have arrived when the dust from the dry, red soil of Castilla y León lies behind you and you can smell the scent of the ocean, wet moss and eucalyptus. Galicia is perhaps the least described and most slandered of Spain’s provinces, an illegitimate child one does not want on display. A number of Spain’s powerful noble families come from here. They received their titles as a reward for their battles against the Moors, but then they disappeared from the province and into oblivion. Only the fishermen and the farmers remained.
Much like Andalusia, the region is accused of being a wilful laggard, but without the mitigating climate of the south. Galicia is damp, green and hilly, a Spanish Scotland with a rugged and isolated rocky coastline – a landscape that is especially attractive if you are a cocaine smuggler.
A significant portion of the cocaine that comes to Europe is brought to land by boats along the coast of Galicia. But although the cocaine gangs in Galicia are notorious for their efficiency and brutality, the term mafia gallega is reserved for the fishermen.
And if there is a godfather to be found among the “mafia fishermen”, it is “Tucho” – Antonio Vidal Suárez, head of the family and majority shareholder of both the shipping company Vidal Armadores and a conglomerate of companies. In Ribeira he is a legend. The only thing he has ever said to the press is: “Go to hell.”
Ribeira is located on the western side of the Barbanza peninsula, below a heather-covered hill and facing the Atlantic Ocean. The city lacks the charm of a Spanish small town, and the hotels are few and inhospitable. But there is plenty of available parking.
“Fuck.”
That is all that is written on the facade of the dive closest to the harbour. Inside, beneath the faded pin-up photographs, the fishermen, the buyers and the pensioners gather to hear the news about the fishing.
“We always get the blame. The entire world points their finger at us. We are proper seamen and run an organized and legal fishing enterprise. Look at those bloody Chinese. Nobody cares about the unpainted hulks they poach from,” says one of the fish merchants in the bar without a name.
A middle aged man, he says he is a retired pizza baker, asks us to go outside the bar with him to talk.
“The network of ship owners is so strong and tight-knit that nobody dares tell the truth. Whoever gabs about pirate fishing will be unemployed forever. Or beaten up,” he explains.
He lights a cigarette and pulls us even further away from the entrance to be sure that nobody can hear him.
“There are also those who dislike that the pirate ship owners have given Ribeira a bad reputation, but for many people they are role models. They are admired for being brave, wealthy, not paying taxes and always getting away,” he continues.
Then the silence of the evening in Ribeira is broken by a high-pitched alarm. As it blasts through the moisture-corroded walls of the stone buildings, the men abandon their half-empty glasses, rush out of the dives around the harbour into the darkness and down to the fish market. It is the signal that a ship has arrived at the quay and the catch will be auctioned off.
Three different ship owners are identified as possible owners of the Thunder. Many point the finger at the notorious pirate shipping company Vidal Armadores. At the company’s main office in Ribeira, an unassuming concrete building a few streets up from the harbour, the receptionist denies knowing anything at all about the company. Or the management.
More than 20 years have passed since the Vidal family first heard the rumours of the fortune hidden in the depths off the coast of Antarctica. Since then the family’s ships have been fined, seized and chased without this bringing their appetite for toothfish to an end.
When the American authorities issued a wanted notice through Interpol for the family’s oldest son and sharpest business mind, Manuel Antonio Vidal Pego, for the import of 26 tons of poached toothfish, he appeared in a court in Miami and accepted a fine of USD 400,000 to avoid imprisonment. He also made a solemn vow to stay away from illegal fishing in the future. It was a promise he would never keep. Instead he moved the pirate fleet to countries like Equatorial Guinea, North Korea and Sierra Leone – states that have not adopted the international conventions regulating fishing in the oceans of the world. The ships were owned by companies in tax havens such as Panama, while the profits were funnelled back to Galicia, where the family invested in a fish oil factory, real estate and windmills. From Brussels, Madrid and the provincial government of Santiago de Compostela, the family received EUR 10 million in subsidies – to the accompaniment of loud complaints from the green movement.3
The family itself holds a low profile. In 2011, Manuel Antonio Vidal Pego gave his first interview and started by po
inting out that he had neither a wooden leg nor a parrot on his shoulder, and that he was out of the toothfish business.4 At that time the family business had already been linked to 40 cases of illegal fishing.
At the Vidal family’s luxury villa, which is situated on a well-groomed and securely fenced-in property on a hill overlooking Ribeira, neither is there anyone who opens the door.
We return to the harbour. It is midday and there is little activity. An Indonesian crew is playing football at the far end of one of the jetties. The only sign of Vidal in the harbour is a small fish-landing facility and a trawler bearing the logo of the company Hijos de Vidal Bandín, which in 2012 was sentenced to pay a fine of GBP 1.6 million due to overfishing that a British judge referred to as “systematic”, “repeated” and “cynical”.5
A middle-aged man is carrying crates of fish from the vessel. It is José Vidal Suárez, brother of the powerful “Tucho”.
“I’m not going to say anything I shouldn’t say. Everyone has problems and each of us must sweep before our own door. I don’t meddle in other people’s lives,” he says curtly.
“Where can I find your brother?”
“I don’t know anything,” he answers and disappears inside the fish market.
The bar Doble SS situated by the harbour is full of hollering, cheering and, here and there, despairing men. On the flat screen television just below the ceiling in the tiny bar, the football teams Real Madrid and Sevilla are battling it out. As we take our places at the bar and order a beer, the room falls silent.
It’s as if all the sounds in the premises cease; there are no hospitable gestures offering a vacant seat in the almost full bar, only uninterested gazes, some scrutinizing and others hostile. We empty our glasses and leave. The rumours about how two periodistas were in town asking questions had stolen the march on us. The story about what happens immediately afterwards reaches us later.