Estelares appears for the first time in the Thunder saga when the ship was registered in the small African nation of Togo in 2006 and as owner when the vessel was registered in Mongolia in November 2010. But who is behind Estelares? In the company documents from Panama three people were listed as chairman of the board, board member and secretary, respectively, in the company. Two of them work for a law firm in Panama.
“Although we help out establishing companies in Panama, we are in no way involved in operations or the business management of these companies. We are just involved in the registration and the companies’ compliance with the laws regulating company registration in Panama,” the company’s board member, the lawyer Iria Barrancos Domingo says, who is also the president of Panama’s maritime bar association.
She refuses to answer questions about who owns Estelares. The Thunder’s journey into the abyss was protected by a bulwark of lawyers, brokers and institutions that chose to close their eyes to the fact that they earned money on the looting of the Antarctic.
A few blocks from Plaça Catalunya in the city centre of Barcelona, Vicente Burgal operates the detective agency Global Risk Overseas. In addition to having solid expertise in the disclosure of both unfaithful servants and unfaithful husbands, the company has also investigated several suspicious shipwrecks in the Southern Ocean. Before the insurance company pays out millions to the secret owners of the Thunder, they want to try to get to the bottom of what actually happened to the ship. The job is assigned to Vicente Burgal.
The man who shows up at the meetings with the private detective and the insurance company’s agent is Florindo González Corral. There he calls himself a representative for the owner of the Thunder.
In an email the Spanish private detective asks us to keep a low profile in relation to Florindo González. “What you call ‘bad guys’ are individuals who are widely recognized and considered important in Galicia. You must keep in mind that everyone who lives there has a family member who is involved in smuggling. Fishing without a permit is a part of their DNA and something everyone accepts. Just like bullfighting. These people receive money from the local authorities and the EU. Maybe it sounds strange, but that’s how it is,” the private investigator writes.
“Every country has its own customs and codes that must be respected. If not, we won’t get the results we want. Five minutes after you called Florindo, he contacted us and asked if we were the ones who had given you his phone number. He wasn’t nervous, he was just irritated. Because he wants to stay clear of the sinking incident and illegal fishing. For the time being we have no documents that can prove that Florindo has financial interests in the Thunder or Estelares. But we know that he is the one who controls the company,” the private detective continues.
A few months after the wreck, Interpol receives a letter which also identifies Florindo González Corral as the owner of the Thunder. They know the sender, but the source of the information is not revealed out of fear of reprisals. The letter specifies that the informant is somebody who is close to Florindo Gonzalez Corral.
“When we showed the source a photo of González Corral, he identified him as the owner of the Thunder. He was also the owner of the Odin/Comet, which sank off the coast of Mauritius in 2009. González Corral was present on several occasions when the Thunder put in to port in Southeast Asia, he arrived together with ‘Suso’ and José Manuel Salgueiro,” the letter states.
The glass door to the old office building in Vigo’s harbour has been smashed. The office on the first floor looks like a relic from another time; behind the curtains in the semi-dark premises are only half-empty filing cabinets and an old typewriter. These are the offices of Florindo González and his company Bacamar. In June the Spanish fisheries authorities made their move on this address. Everything was in place for Operation Sparrow 2 and this time it was the owners of the Thunder, Perlon and Viking who were the target of the operation. Florindo González was politely aloof during the raid. It seemed as if he had been waiting for the moment and had been advised by his lawyers to say as little as possible. The confiscated materials convinced the Spanish fisheries authorities that Florindo González was the man who controlled the Thunder’s expeditions.
“We know that he often travels to Malaysia to organize the logistics and to negotiate prices,” says Assistant Managing Director Héctor Villa González of the inspection department of the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and the Environment. “We found documents that connected him to the ship. There is no doubt that it was Florindo González Corral who owned the Thunder.”
52
THE MADONNA AND THE OCTOPUS
O CARBALLIÑO, OCTOBER 2016
The stone church Santa María de Arcos is located on the outskirts of the town of O Carballiño in the southwest corner of Galicia. Along with a few Renaissance paintings and a simple altarpiece, the church houses the statue of the Madonna of Arcos.
Every year on 15 August the Madonna is carried out of the church, placed on a beautifully decorated float and transported through the town in a ceremonious procession. The procession is led by the respected businessman and family patriarch Florindo González Otero. Behind him follows his eldest son, Florindo
