Four months have passed since the officers of the Thunder were sentenced for having operated with forged documents, sinking the ship and contaminating the waters of São Tomé. Captain Cataldo and his men have not paid the fine of EUR 15 million, and neither are they to be found in the country’s single prison, a facility described as being “tough but not life endangering”. And it seems as if nobody knows with any certainty where the prisoners have gone.
Public prosecutor Kelve Nobre de Carvalho explains that Cataldo and his men have lodged an appeal and are living in a house “somewhere or other” in the city. In a corner of the office some of the evidence from the Thunder case lies tossed into a heap.
“One day something strange happened. I was sitting at the café by the esplanade reading a book. Without my knowledge, the three from the Thunder had picked up my tab. The next time I ran into them, I told them that that was attempted bribery and that I would send them straight to prison if it happened again. It is really not usual for a defendant to pay the restaurant bill of a public prosecutor,” he says.
“Is it possible they have escaped?”
“This island is a prison. Nobody gets out of here. Sometimes I see them, at a café or outside the bank,” Nobre de Carvalho says.
From the perspective of an ordinary visitor there is not much to do in the capital city of São Tomé. By the old fort on the coast there are enormous granite statues of the Portuguese explorers João de Santarém and Pêro Escobar, who went ashore on the island in 1470 and found it uninhabited. The explorers maintained that the island was a suitable place from which to trade with continental Africa, but the first colonists perished from malaria and tropical diseases. The next wave of Europeans who went ashore were deported criminals, prostitutes and 2,000 Jewish children who were taken from their parents in Lisbon and forced to convert to Catholicism. The fortune hunters also came, those who were seeking to profit from trading in slaves and spices. On the island they discovered fertile volcanic soil, ideal for cultivating cocoa. In the early 1900s, São Tomé was the world’s largest manufacturer of cocoa and was called “the chocolate islands”. The cocoa plantations, of which there were more than 800 on the islands, were owned by the feudal lords from Portugal. The workers were brought from Angola and Cape Verde and worked under contracts stipulating conditions that amounted to slave labour. After the liberation from Portugal in 1975, the Portuguese plantation owners fled, taking with them their knowledge of operations, and soon the nationalized plantations were invaded by the jungle and relentless deterioration. Now 90 per cent of São Tomé and Príncipe’s revenues come from developmental aid, the largest amount in the world per capita, and the national budget is at the level of the annual results of Snapchat. With EUR 15 million in debt to the state, Captain Cataldo and his men have to be some of the most valuable assets found on the island.
In the hours preceding the wreck of the Thunder, a large sum of money was transferred from a bank in Singapore to the local bank in São Tomé. The money was intended to cover hotel costs, food and airline tickets for the crew and officers. The local ships register had also received a request to have the Thunder flagged in São Tomé. The enclosed documents were forgeries. The man who handled the money and paperwork was the Thunder’s local ship agent, Wilson Morais. The family’s agency is the oldest and most respected on the island, but the young Morais’ reputation was dubious. He is now the Thunder owner’s most trusted man.
We meet him on a corner by the marketplace. He tells us that he has to continue down to the harbour.
A ship has come in that needs supplies.
“I like shipping. It’s exciting, you know,” he says, pressing down on the accelerator of the battered Japanese pickup. A walkie-talkie dangles from the mirror, and under the driver’s seat he has a black plastic bag full of cash.
“I have to pay with cash for just about everything on this island,” he says, reaching his hand down into the bag beneath the seat and passing a wad of bills to one of his assistants, who is waiting outside the car.
“I can’t give my people a break. Most of them are lazy, so I have to supervise them. I’m telling you. There’s no time for this shit, man. They don’t want to work hard. Sometimes I talk to them in a very tough way,” he says.
“The owner of the Thunder isn’t stupid, you know. They looked for a port with a low profile. The plan was for the ship to remain here for three or four months of repairs, then they would find a local crew to start a new season,” Morais says.
“I work directly with the owner. The owner sends money to the families every month and he pays for all the officers here in São Tomé,” he explains.
“The money sometimes comes from a bank in Singapore, but we deal with José Manuel Salgueiro. He is the one giving the orders. Everything goes through him,” he says.
José Manuel Salgueiro’s name and telephone number were found on the bridge of the Thunder just before the ship sank. The Spaniard has been an operator for a number of ships that were fishing illegally in the Southern Ocean and has a close affiliation with the Galician ship owner Florindo González and la mafia gallega.
“I can’t go into any more detail. The owner is the owner,” Morais says.
Wilson Morais explains that he still sends his invoices to Royal Marine & Spares, the company in Nigeria which one year before was denounced as a fraud by the authorities in the country.
“I just do my job. Let’s finish up with this and have a
