At the beginning of July the management of Portugal's Viana do Castelo Shipyard thought it had secured a €13 million winning bid for the 'Atlântida’ from the Greek company ‘Thesarco Shipping.’
The shipyard administration had launched an international public tender in March 2013 for the sale of the ship which had been commissioned and subsequently rejected by the regional government of the Açores claiming that the ship was 1 knot slower than the specification.
The Greek bid was suspiciously high, €5 million more than the second bidder Mystic Cruises, part of the Douro Azul group which bid €8 million.
Nobody had heard of Thesarco Shipping which was listed on various obscure websites as a shipping company whose main activity was listed as shipping wheat from Russia and Ukraine, bulk salt from Egypt as well as coal and coke from the Ukraine and Russia.
Only now that the Greek bid has fallen through has any research been published on this the Greek company and its owner, a convict who has on occasion has been accused of slavery.
According to research published today by Negocios, it turns out that Thesarco Shipping has an unenviable reputation of not paying its crews, not supplying them with food, water or fuel, and abandoning and sinking ships to claim on insurance.
The owner, one Captain Evangelos Saravanos, is the chap who has failed to stump up the money for the Atlântida. He is better known for breaches of various laws covering labour, environment, safety and maintenance of ships and their crews.
Captain Saravanos was involved between 2006 and 2010 in several cases of abandoning crew and of the deliberate sinking of ships all over the world in waters off Russia, Sri Lanka, Algeria and Greece.
One of Saravanos’ cases involved the Aeta Sierra moored in Piraeus in August 2009, having been seized in Algeria as part of a legal dispute.
In Piraeus the crew of the Aetea Sierra endured eight months on board without wages. The workers accused Captain Saravanos of leaving them without food and drinking water, condemning them "to live in subhuman conditions in a floating prison."
A Greek court ordered Saravanos pay €400,000 in back wages to his crew, but the ship owner managed to avoid paying in full. It later was discovered that he has served 38 months in prison for putting the lives of a crew at risk by leaving a ship without fuel.
Then there was the case of the Thermopylae Sierra which eventually sank off the coast of Sri Lanka. A court condemned the Greek ship-owner to pay compensation for damages of €1.6 million.
Having had no contact from the good Captain, in a letter to the Greek company the management of the Viana do Castelo Shipyard gave Thesarco until Wednesday to pay up.
Portugal's Ministry of Defence, overseeing the shipyard which launched the tender for the sale of Atlântida, claimed that it had played no part in the contest, whose sole criterion was the highest price and whose board was chaired by a member of the General Inspectorate of Finance.
The deadline came and went so the ship will now go to the second bidder for €8.75 million. The owner of Duoro Azul, Mário Ferreira, said he will convert the ferry into a luxury liner.
It is likely that Ferreira has never been charged with fraud, enslaving crews and the abandonment and sinking of ships and that he can access the necessary money.
Ferreira has a bargain. The ship had a contracted price of €50 million and the shipyard is paying back installments on the €40 million already advanced by the regional government of the Açores.
Had Captain Saravanos come up with the money, the future of the brand new Atlântida may have been a colourful one.
Perhaps in the future the screening process for potential bidders for state assets might be asked if they have any criminal convictions for fraud or slavery. This would save embarrassing situations such as the one surrounding the Atlântida.
SEe also; http://www.algarvedailynews.com/news/2785-greeks-grab-a-portuguese-bargain-for-13-million
