The 'fairytale' hijacking of the Brillante Virtuoso

Utterly absorbing long read from Bloomberg on the hijacking of an oil tanker that turned out to be a massive fraud, and at times reads more like a film treatment than a shipping article. All the characters are present: Somali pirates, Yemeni rebels, a mysterious Greek shipowner with Mafia connections and an unflappable British ship surveyor; as are the settings: the tense waters off Yemen, the war-ravaged port of Aden and, natch, the Admiralty High Court in London. “Something seemed off. This was too many men, at the wrong time, and one wasn’t even wearing shoes. Letting armed strangers onto the ship went against every antipiracy protocol. Marquez radioed up for instructions. After a few minutes an order came back: Lower a ladder.”