Catching Thunder

by Eskil Engdal

  The Guardia Civil also makes another interesting find – a dozen passports belonging to little brother Angel “Naño” Vidal Pego. The passports are filled with stamps from Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam. It would seem that “Naño” has been responsible for the shipping company’s operations in Asia.4

  After they have ransacked the offices in Ribeira, A Coruña and the fish oil factory in Boiro, the investigators travel to the homes of the two most important individuals in the shipping company – the father “Tucho” and the eldest son, “Toño”.

  When they ransack the father’s villa in Ribeira, they let the dogs loose. In the large cellar facility under the villa they sniff at “Tucho’s” Bentley, the grey Land Rover he uses on a daily basis and his wife’s Mini Cooper, but they find nothing of significance.

  After the action against the Vidal family the Guardia Civil procures another search warrant. And this time Miguel knows they will find concrete evidence.

  When the Kunlun, Yongding and Songhua were on a mission in the Southern Ocean, every week they sent detailed reports to Vidal’s insurance broker in Vigo, the company ARTAI Corredores de Seguros. The reports confiscated by the Guardia Civil state how many kilos of toothfish the ships had fished in the course of seven days and how much the fish was worth. Every week the value of the cargo the rusty wrecks had in their cold storage rooms increased. It did not take long before the catch – the white gold – was worth far more than the ships. And these were valuable commodities the Vidal family wanted to insure.

  They had flagged the ships in rogue states and hidden the holding companies in tax havens but the detailed insurance reports documenting the illegal fishing were sent to an office in Galicia.

  Greed was the shipping company’s Achilles’ heel.

  When Miguel adds up the totals from the many reports, he figures out that the Kunlun, Yongding and Songhua in the years from 2010 to 2015 have fished 5,800 tons of toothfish, for a documented value of EUR 81 million. Based on information from the Guardia Civil’s informants, it cost the shipping company around EUR 2 million a year to send the three ships to the Antarctic. The shipping company also had costs for port calls, warehousing and transport of the fish in Asia, but the profits were nonetheless astronomical.

  Miguel cannot help thinking of everyone who has contributed to keeping the enterprise going for so long. Flag states, ship agents, port authorities, banks and insurance companies. Everyone must have known what they were taking part in, he thinks. The Kunlun, Yongding and Songhua had been blacklisted for years, but nonetheless, large European companies such as British Marine and German Allianz had sold insurance to Vidal’s pirate fleet.5 When the Guardia Civil turned up at the office of the insurance broker in Vigo, it was hardly necessary to mention the possibility of accomplice liability. ARTAI immediately cooperated with the police.6

  Miguel is very satisfied with the evidence the Guardia Civil can present to the special national court of justice in Madrid. They have the insurance reports showing the amount of fish, the documents the Spanish fisheries authorities confiscated the previous year, an enormous amount of materials confiscated by the Australian authorities when they boarded the Kunlun and videos from New Zealand showing the Kunlun fishing in international waters. They know that the ship’s documents the captains have presented to the authorities in several countries are forgeries and they have crew lists with the names of Spanish citizens who have been on board the ships. After they received access to bank accounts in Spain, they also learned a lot about the Vidal family’s business model, not to mention, what has happened to all the money.

  The shipping company has used the following method to launder the money back into Spain. When the fish was removed from the ocean, it was owned by the same company that owned the ship – companies registered in the tax havens of Panama and Belize. Then Vidal sold the fish to a company they personally controlled in Switzerland. The Swiss company then resold the fish to the buyers. Based on the confiscated materials, the Guardia Civil has identified ten companies in Hong Kong and Taiwan that bought toothfish from the Vidal family’s Swiss company. After the settlement was deposited into an account in Hong Kong, the money was forwarded to the Vidal family’s Spanish companies. There millions have been spent on financing investments in real estate, renewable energy and the fish oil factory in Boiro – the same factory with a large sign on the entrance gate proclaiming that the EU and the Spanish authorities have contributed EUR 6.6 million in subsidies. The white gold was used to build a business empire for the future.

  By studying bank accounts and private consumption, the Guardia Civil investigators discover that large sums have also gone to the financing of private luxuries − big houses, expensive flats and extravagant cars. The rental of “Naño’s” Porsche 911 alone costs EUR 5,000 a month – far more than the salary of an experienced investigator for the Guardia Civil.

  On the afternoon of 7 March, the neighbours in Ribeira watch in shock as members of the powerful Vidal clan are arrested and shipped off to remand prison in the capital of the province A Coruña and in Madrid. The patriarch “Tucho”, his two sons, daughter, son-in-law and the shipping company’s financial director are charged with environmental crime, money laundering, document forgery and being part of a crime syndicate. A few days later the six of them are released after having paid bail amounting to a total of EUR 600,000.

  “Tucho” returns to the card table at his favourite bar the Doble SS.

  49

  THE TIANTAI MYSTERY

  THE SOUTHERN OCEAN/MALAYSIA/SPAIN, 2012–2016

  For Peter Hammarstedt the Tiantai was the symbol of the brutality of the pirate ship owners who were looting the Antarctic. A floating coffin at the bottom of the world with a hull ill-equipped to withstand the powerful forces of the Southern Ocean. When he was travelling around fundraising for the search for “The Bandit 6”, he always concluded with the story of the refrigerated cargo ship that disappeared and presumably took the entire crew with it down into the depths.1

  Later both the police and insurance investigators have tried to solve the mystery of the Tiantai. They still don’t have all the answers, but there is one thing they know for sure: the distress alert that was triggered in the Southern Ocean when the ship disappeared was a hoax.2

  The strange story of the Tiantai’s short life as a pirate vessel starts on a tempestuous day in January, north of the Shackleton ice shelf in the Antarctic in 2012. The ship that a fisheries officer from Australia spots through the rain and the wind has three large cranes on deck and a high wheelhouse astern. It resembles neither the pirate trawlers nor the large research vessels they now and then encounter down by the ice edge in “the Screaming Sixties”. The ship has no business being here, thinks the experienced inspector who calls up the unidentified ship.

  The man who introduces himself as the captain explains that he is from Thailand and that there is a crew of 20 on board, including two Spaniards. They sailed from Singapore a week ago and the next stop is Zanzibar, he explains in broken English.

  That’s an odd story, the fisheries officers think. It makes no sense to sail down to the Antarctic when you are travelling from Singapore to Zanzibar.

  “What do you have as cargo?” the officer asks.

  “No cargo on board now.”

  “If you have left Singapore and are going to Zanzibar, why have you come down this far South, Sir?”

  “Ahh, please repeat again. Over,” the captain replies.

  “If you left Singapore one week ago and now in 45 days you will be in Zanzibar, what do you expect to pick up as cargo, Sir?”

  “Yes. Correct!” the Thai captain exclaims.

  “What will be your main form of cargo when you transship in Zanzibar?”

  “I don’t know.”

  When the officer asks for the contact information of the company that allegedly owns the ship in Tanzania,
there is silence on the radio.

  The experienced Australian fisheries officer has had enough of the charade.

  “Sir, I believe that you are transshipping or are attempting to transship fish caught illegally within the CCAMLR zone. What you have said to me and what we have seen will be recorded and given to the Tanzanian Government and other CCAMLR members. Do you wish to make any further comment?” the officer asks.

  He receives no answer.

  Two months later, a surveillance plane sees the Tiantai being towed past the Australian Christmas Island by an old acquaintance, the Kunlun. They are headed for Indonesia, not for Zanzibar, as the captain had claimed.

  The sight of the Tiantai and the Kunlun together confirms the suspicion. The Tiantai is a newcomer in the pirate fleet in the Southern Ocean. It is probably the mother ship of a fleet of fishing vessels that have been observed in the vicinity of one another for many years – the Kunlun, Yongding and Songhua.

  The Tiantai is blacklisted.

  There are two different versions of the story of the Tiantai’s final voyage in March 2014. One version – the maritime declaration – was submitted to authorities and insurance companies, while the other was written down by hand on small pieces of paper by a man who witnessed the shipwreck.

  The maritime declaration, which is officially written by the Indonesian captain of the Tiantai, starts like this: “16 March. The voyage south was without incident. It should be noted that we observed a few isolated icebergs.”

  Three days later they are close to the ice edge northwest of the Australian research station Casey. There the Tiantai meets its sister vessels the Kunlun, Yongding and Songhua. In the course of a few days, 589 tons of frozen fish are offloaded onto the Tiantai. In the middle of the night the crew hears something bang against the hull on the port side. They see that a half-submerged ice floe, about 90 metres long and 40 metres wide, has hit the side of the ship. The crew checks the hull thoroughly but can find no damage.

  When they start navigating closer to the Kunlun in the early morning hours to receive the last of the fish, the Tiantai starts behaving strangely. There is something wrong with the balance of the ship, and they discover water in one of the cargo holds.

  They discontinue the transshipment and ask for help with draining the ship. Then the captain sets his course northwest to find a place with calmer weather conditions where they can attempt to save the vessel. In the course of the next day, the amount of water in the cargo hold increases. They try to find the leak, but it is impossible. The cargo hold is now full of ice cold water and heavy bags of frozen fish are floating around chaotically. The captain asks his colleague on the Kunlun if he can borrow an extra bilge pump.

  On 26 March, the weather grows worse. The ship is unstable and difficult to manoeuvre, and the crew starts to get nervous. The captain decides to evacuate the majority over to the Kunlun. Those who remain, the captain, ship mates and engineers see that now water is also pouring into the engine room. They also find water in the second of the ship’s three cargo holds. Then the ship starts listing dramatically, several times they lose the power and on 29 March they give up. The engine room will soon be completely under water and the weather conditions are bad. The rest of the crew is evacuated over to the Kunlun.

  The first story of the final days of the Tiantai ends here.

  What happens next is undisputed.

  First, the Tiantai keels over, then the stern is pulled under and takes the rest of the ship with it. The bow is the last thing the crew sees before the ship disappears into the ocean depths.

  On board an emergency beacon is activated and the signal is picked up by the Australian chief rescue operations centre, which is responsible for rescue actions in this area. Further north, in the Indian Ocean, a large-scale search operation is simultaneously underway for a plane from Malaysia Airlines which disappeared without a trace with 239 people on board a few weeks earlier. One of the Australian planes taking part in the search is redirected to the Southern Ocean, where the emergency beacon continues to transmit the position.

  When the plane arrives, all the pilot sees are some scattered remnants of wreckage in the turbulent waters. In Australia the conclusion of the medical experts is disheartening: Nobody could have survived for more than a few minutes in the freezing cold water. And it is impossible to make contact with the ship owners.

  Another plane is sent to the region, which is located more than 3,000 kilometres from the Australian mainland. A substantial distance north of the shipwreck site, the pilots spot a fishing vessel. It is the Kunlun. Nobody responds to the pilots’ call, but the sight of a pirate ship they know is collaborating with the Tiantai gives them hope that the crew on the wreck were saved.

  When the Kunlun reaches Malaysia a mere month later, the ship is welcomed by the local authorities, representatives for the insurance company and an inspector from Australia. When the inspector sees the crew list that the captain of the Kunlun hands over, he recognizes several names he knows were crew on the Tiantai when the ship was inspected the year before. It would seem that the crew was rescued.

  But what has actually happened?

  The investigators hired by the Tiantai’s insurance company, the German Allianz, are from Spain. They have previously investigated the wrecks of Spanish-owned pirate vessels. There have been a suspiciously large number of such shipwrecks, but as long as none of the ships’ officers make any admissions, it is very difficult to confirm suspicions of insurance fraud. There is no evidence. The scene of the incident is gone.

  The officers they are interviewing now work for the disreputable Galician mafia. The investigators know that these are tough men who are paid to lie to port authorities and customs officials, men who live and work side by side in a floating community at the bottom of the world. Four ships and 100 men, all part of an industrial crime operation, month after month, year after year.

  There are no deviations between the accounts of any of the officers on the Tiantai and the Kunlun that are recorded in the maritime declaration, which soberly concludes that the wreck was the result of a force majeure – an extraordinary event for which neither the captain nor the crew could be blamed.

  Had the captain of the Kunlun, the Peruvian Alberto Zavaleta Salas, told the story he has written down in tiny handwriting on several scraps of paper, it’s possible that the Vidal family in Ribeira would not have received a payment of EUR 5.5 million – 1.6 million for the ship and 3.9 million for the fish – in compensation after the wreck of the Tiantai.

  Two years will pass before Zavaleta Salas discloses his version of what happened when the Tiantai sank. He will then be broke and unemployed, living in his home city of Chimbote in Peru. Every time he Googles his name, he is reminded that the Vidal family made him the scapegoat on the Kunlun.

  “They have taken advantage of me, tricked me and hurt me,” the Peruvian now says about his former employer.

  He sends a written testimony to the authors of this book and to the Spanish Guardia Civil.

  This is Alberto Zavaleta Salas’ story of the wreck of the Tiantai in the Antarctic.

  The Tiantai is an unending engine breakdown, a bad purchase and it is impossible to sell the ship, one of the ship owners’ trusted men from Ribeira explains to Zavaleta Salas as the Kunlun sails towards the Southern Ocean.

  On the first day they load 20 tons of fish onto the Tiantai and receive fuel in return. For the next few days they fish as usual. No fish is ever transshipped from the Songhua and the Yongding to the Tiantai, as stated in the maritime declaration, but on 22 March, around 50 tons of fish are hoisted from the Kunlun onto the refrigerated cargo ship.

  Again there are problems with the engine of the Tiantai, and for several days the Kunlun tows the larger refrigerated cargo ship slowly north while the officers monitor their progress on the sonar. Two experienced engineers from Spain are now down in the engine room o
f the Tiantai. On 27 March, at 6:44 PM, in a location where the ocean is so deep that the sonar doesn’t reach the bottom, the chain is cut. The two Spanish engineers are picked up by a dinghy.

  Then the waiting begins.

  Zavaleta Salas, who throughout the entire episode is on the Kunlun, understands what is going to happen.

  They are going to get rid of the ship.

  He has a strong suspicion of what has been going on down in the engine room of the Tiantai during the past few days. There are huge pipes running through the room that bring in seawater to cool off the engine, pipes with valves that can be opened so that water flows into the ship in a controlled manner.

  The weather has been good, but now the wind is starting to pick up. The Spanish officers are standing along the railing, and taking pictures every time a wave hits the refrigerated cargo ship, pictures that will be given to the insurance company to convince them that the conditions were rough. At the same time they make bets about how long it will take for the Tiantai to disappear.

  They remain in the area until the ship is gone. When it disappears, Zavaleta Salas estimates that there are 70–80 tons of fish on board, not 589 tons, as was reported to the insurance company, fish for which EUR 3.9 million is paid.

  When he asks one of the Spaniards why they wanted the fish in the cargo hold when the ship sank, the answer he receives is that they are worried that the insurance company will try to send somebody down to the wreck with a midget submarine. If they do so, it is important that they see fish on the ship.

  Zavaleta Salas finds this to be a demented claim. The Tiantai is now lying at a depth of 5,000–6,000 metres, and in another position from the one they will report to the insurance company. Nobody will ever find the ship.

  Two days later they throw the emergency beacon overboard and then set their course for Malaysia. When they approach land barely a month later, Alberto Zavaleta Salas has the chance to see the maritime declaration for the first time. He knows very well what happened, but he and the officers are ordered to learn the story that is written down there by heart. Everyone has to tell the same story, the Spaniard whom the ship owner sent to lead the operation repeats.