2 The US Department of Justice initiated a civil case against Teodor Obiang Nguema at the US District Court in the Central District of California 24 October 2011. The US authorities want to collect more than USD 70 million from Obiang. The case from which the quote is taken is available here: www.opensocietyfoundations.org/sites/default/files/obiang-doj-doc1-20111026_0.pdf (accessed 28.09.2016).
3 The story of the fate of the Fantome is to a large extent taken from the book The Ship and the Storm: Hurricane Mitch and the Loss of the Fantome, written by Jim Carrier and published by International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press in 2000.
36 A WEIRD DREAM
1 Simon Ager, interviewed by the authors in Bremen, 28 April 2015, and on Skype, 14 January 2016.
2 Adam Meyerson, interviewed by the authors in Bremen, 28 April 2015.
38 THE ISLAND OF RUMOURS
1 Wilson Morais, interviewed by the authors in São Tomé and Príncipe, 3 and 4 February 2016.
41 THE LUCK OF THE DRAW
1 The story of the Perlon’s final expedition in the Southern Ocean is based on interviews with Glen Salmon of the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) and Naval Captain Khairul Nizam Misran at the Maritime Crime Investigation Department of Malaysia.
42 THE ESCAPE
1 www.seashepherd.org/news-and-media/2015/09/09/interpol-wanted-poaching-vessel-kunlun-and-its-illegal-catch-escape-from-thailand-1744 (accessed 04.11.2016).
46 THE MAN FROM MONGOLIA
1 Peter Pham, “Ship of fools”, The Washington Times, 7 May 2008. www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/may/7/ships-of-fools/.
47 THE LAST VIKING
1 Rear Admiral Achmad Taufiqoerrachman, interviewed by the authors in Jakarta, 3 March 2016.
48 OPERATION YUYUS
1 The Guardia Civil was founded as a national police force in 1844, has 80,000 employees and is Spain’s oldest and largest police force. The organization performs both military and civil tasks. Investigator Miguel works at the Guardia Civil’s Servicio de Protección de la Naturaleza (SEPRONA), the division that combats environmental crime. Due to the fact that his job includes undercover police work, Miguel does not want his surname made public. The authors interviewed him in Madrid, 7 June 2016.
2 The name of the operation, “Yuyus”, was investigator Miguel’s idea. The first assignment he received when he assumed his post in the Guardia Civil’s environmental crime division in 1998 was to investigate a man who was smuggling Senegal parrots, which are also called the “yuyu” in Spanish. Phonetically Miguel thought the pronunciation sounded like IUU – Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated fishing.
3 The instant messaging service Telegram was developed and financed by the brothers Nikolaj and Pavel Durov, who made a fortune on the Russian social network VK – known as the Russian version of Facebook. In conjunction with the conflict in Ukraine and the protest movement Euromaidan, the Durov brothers had a falling out with the Russian authorities, according to Pavel Durov because VK had refused to provide Russian intelligence with personal information about the social network’s users. The Durov brothers went into self-imposed exile and started Telegram. “The No. 1 reason for me to support and help launch Telegram was to build a means of communication that can’t be accessed by the Russian security agencies,” Pavel Durov said to the website TechCrunch in February 2014. techcrunch.com/2014/02/24/telegram-saw-8m-downloads-after-whatsapp-got-acquired/ (accessed 22.10.2016).
4 Angel Vidal Pego was observed in Phuket by a criminal investigator from New Zealand who was there to help the Thai authorities investigate computers and other digital equipment on board the Kunlun. The information has been confirmed by Gary Orr of the Ministry for Primary Industries in New Zealand. Orr, who was New Zealand’s man in Operation Spillway, was interviewed by the authors over the phone on 22 September 2016.
5 ARTAI Corredores de Seguros was the insurance broker for at least four of “The Bandit 6” – the Kunlun, Songhua, Yongding and Thunder. ARTAI had contact with the ship owners and did the rounds with the insurance companies to procure the best offers. It was usual for one insurance company to underwrite the ship, while another underwrote the cargo – the toothfish. At least three large European insurance companies have sold insurance to “The Bandit 6” ships after they were black-listed for illegal fishing activity and at least two companies continued to sell insurance while the ships were wanted by Interpol. British Marine has insured all six of the pirate vessels, but cancelled the insurance when they were confronted, by the authors among others, early in 2015. The Spanish company Murimar Seguros was the insurance company for the Thunder when the ship was sunk. The world’s largest insurance company, the German Allianz, underwrote the Vidal ship the Tiantai. There has been an extreme amount of secrecy around the insurance policies of the pirate ships. Since March 2015 and up to November 2016 the authors have on repeated occasions tried to schedule interviews and asked for comments, but none of the insurance companies have communicated anything more than “no comment”. When the authors visited the busy office of the insurance agency ARTAI Corredores de Seguros in Vigo on 10 October 2016, there was nobody there who was willing to talk.
6 In the EU body of laws prohibiting illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU fishing), which went into force on 1 January 2010, accomplice liability is loosely defined in article 39. The first paragraph reads as follows: “Nationals subject to the jurisdiction of Member States (nationals) shall neither support nor engage in IUU fishing, including by engagement on board or as operators or beneficial owners of fishing vessels included in the Community IUU vessel list.” It is the word “support” which is relevant to the companies that sold insurance to “The Bandit 6” ships. All the vessels were on the EU’s blacklist.
49 THE TIANTAI MYSTERY
1 From the time the refrigerated cargo ship was bought by the Vidal family through a company in Panama in 2011 and up until the shipwreck in 2014, the vessel operated under at least four different names: the Baiyangdian, Keshan, Luoyang and Tiantai. The Baiyangdian was flagged in Tanzania, while the Keshan was flagged in Mongolia. It is unclear whether the identities Luoyang and Tiantai were authentic or
