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 of 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
