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$BLIS News: Treasure & Shipwreck Recovery (OTCPK: BLIS) announces Definitive Agreement for Merger and Acquisition with Defense and Construction Contracting Firm Native American Pride Constructors, LLC. (NAPC)
NAPC’s Corner Shot USA receives signed and stamped LOI for initial 37,000-unit order, equivalent to $370 million in revenue, from a leading Saudi Arabian supply chain and manufacturing provider
FT. PIERCE, Fla., March 27, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Board of Directors at Treasure & Shipwreck Recovery, Inc. ("TSR", formerly “Beliss Corp” "BLIS"), trading as (OTCPK: BLIS), are pleased to announce it successfully concluded its due diligence and has now signed a Definitive Agreement for merger and acquisition with Native American Pride Constructors, LLC (“NAPC”) of Largo, FL.
NAPC, established in 2015, is a stable, profitable entity focused primarily in government contracts with existing licenses that allow it to bid and win contracts in the Defense, Munitions, and Construction industry. Currently, NAPC is projected to deliver over $5,000,000 in back log revenue for calendar year 2024, which does not include sales of Corner Shot USA weapon systems or brokering of munitions and defense items for use by Allied and NATO forces in the Ukraine and the Middle East.
In order to best position NAPC for future success, it was critical that note and preferred holders in BLIS, totaling about $575,000, agree to convert the face value of existing notes at a significant premium to the recent trading price in BLIS. The conversion price was agreed at $0.03 per share pre-reverse split and adjusted for reverse division to $0.18 per share. Another merger requirement was that NAPC would accept little or no debt from BLIS. It is expected that asset sales from BLIS will be enough to pay merger and accounting costs. In return, NAPC has agreed to favorable terms with BLIS shareholders providing about a third of the company stays with current BLIS shareholders. (See “Additional Merger Terms” below).
Note holders were particularly encouraged by the potential of NAPC’s new product, the Corner Shot USA System, which enables military, law enforcement, and security operators to effectively observe and accurately engage targets from around the corner or behind cover without exposing part of the operator’s body. NAPC has the exclusive license to produce and sell the Corner Shot USA System and will build the product at a facility near its corporate offices in Pinellas County, Florida. The Licensing Agreement allows NAPC to build and sell Corner Shot exclusively in the USA and Saudi Arabia.
The projections for Corner Shot USA are impressive strong interest from domestic agencies generated from its presence at the 2024 Shot Shell Show, held this past January in Las Vegas. NAPC plans to have space at four more shows in 2024 primarily focused on domestic police department and SWAT teams.
Additionally, NAPC also received a signed and stamped LOI from a leading Saudi Arabian provider of supply and manufacturing to the Ministry of Defense (MOD) as well as the procurement division GAMI (General Authority Military Industries – Government Entity).
The LOI discusses the initial intent to purchase 37,000 units; a 4,000-unit tranche followed by subsequent deliveries of 3,000 units per month until that quantity is fulfilled. The cost of this order would produce $370,000,000 in sales with a net profit margin of at least 20% to NAPC. The LOI provides intent to purchase an additional 63,000 units after delivery of the first 37,000 units, over a period of the next ten years. Representatives from Saudi Arabia have spent time at NAPC headquarters and production facilities over the last two months. Senior Management from NAPC is scheduled to visit various defense agencies in Saudi Arabia in May to provide demonstrations of its Corner Shot USA weapon systems.
NAPC believes it will finalize firm purchase orders and collect a 50% deposit on the first order by the end of June and go into production in July of 2024. In addition, NAPC management is in discussion with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to provide additional services such as Military, Fuzing, and Artillery systems in country, pending expected U.S. State Department approval.
Another NAPC area of expertise is brokering of munitions and military hardware already produced and in inventory at various locations worldwide, NAPC is brokering more than eleven (11) different munitions and military hardware items that are of interest to Allied and NATO forces in the Ukraine and the Middle East, which also require U.S. State Department approval. Any successful transaction would add significantly to NAPC revenues and profits. The inventory of these items, if sold at currently offered fair value, totals over (U.S.) $1.7 billion.
Additional Merger Terms
BLIS will file for a name change, symbol change and request to conduct a reverse split at a rate of 1 new share for every 6 shares held in BLIS (1 for 6). It is estimated that BLIS shareholders will hold 15 million shares post-split and NAPC officers and directors will be issued about 35 million shares. Following the split, NAPC will have about 50 million common shares issued and outstanding, little to no debt, some above market warrants, and a preferred voting share issuance that is non-convertible.
The face value of all BLIS debt will be converted at a common share price pre-split price of $0.03 per share (post-split price of $0.18 per share). Noteholders will be provided a warrant to purchase additional shares at pre-split price of $0.04 per share (post-split price of $0.24 per share) in lieu of interest payments.
Assets sales from BLIS will be used to pay any merger, accounting, or additional costs to complete the merger in an effort to keep NAPC debt free.
BLIS /TSR has officially turned over control of the entity to NAPC, and existing officers and directors at BLIS /TSR have resigned.
The senior management team at NAPC is represented as follows:
Kenny West, CEO – kwest@napconstructors.com
Stephen Gurba, President – slg@napconstructors.com
John Spence, CFO – john.s@napconstructors.com
NAPC CEO, Kenny West stated, “We have come to fair and equitable terms to merge with BLIS. Due to the support we have received from BLIS debt holders and several of its common stockholders, we agreed to terms that should be viewed as very favorable to current investors in TSR, while positioning NAPC for the future.”
West further stated, “It is our goal to achieve revenue and earnings over the coming years that will qualify us to trade on the NASDAQ. With Corner Shot USA and the brokering business along with our current construction business, we have a company that makes good sense for investors. Our goal is to be one of the strongest growth companies in the U.S. for years to come.”
Outgoing CEO and founder of TSR, Craig Huffman, stated, “The opportunities that NAPC brings to TSR shareholders are deep. Leaving the treasure business for this opportunity, knowing the players in depth for two decades, is simply the best situation that could be realized.” Huffman will remain available for legal services for the Company.
About Native American Pride Contractors, LLC
Native American Pride Constructors, LLC (https://www.napconstructorsgov.com/) is a total solutions contractor licensed, certified and experienced in many aspects of construction services. NAPC benefits from the ability to bid and win contracts that are set aside in the Defense industry and the Department of Veterans Affairs for Certified Service Disable Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB). NAPC will also produce and sell Corner Shot USA weapons systems through an exclusive licensing agreement as well as many munitions brokered throughout the world all with US State Department approval.
About Treasure & Shipwreck Recovery
Treasure & Shipwreck Recovery, Inc. (“TSR”) (Currently trading as BLIS) conducts shipwreck and treasure recovery from shallow shipwreck finds in the Caribbean and North America. It is expected that all assets will be sold and operations focused on shipwreck recoveries will cease.
FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS:
This press release and the statements of representatives of TSR. (the "Company") related thereto contain, or may contain, among other things, "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements, other than statements of historical fact included herein are "forward-looking statements," including any other statements of non-historical information. These forward-looking statements are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties and are often identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "guidance," "projects," "may," "could," "would," "should," "believes," "expects," "anticipates," "estimates," "intends," "plans," "ultimately" or similar expressions. All forward-looking statements involve material assumptions, risks and uncertainties, and the expectations contained in such statements may prove to be incorrect. Investors should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. The Company's actual results (including, without limitation, TSR's ability to advance its business, generate revenue and profit and operate as a public company) could differ materially from those stated or anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of a variety of factors, including factors and risks discussed in the periodic reports that the Company files with OTC Markets (Pink Sheets). All forward-looking statements attributable to the Company or persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by these factors. The Company undertakes no duty to update these forward-looking statements except as required by law.
COMPANY CONTACT:
Kenny West, CEO
kwest@napconstructors.com
754-242-6272
https://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/ti?nf=OTA3OTg4NiM2MTc0MTY3IzIyNjE1MDY=
https://ml.globenewswire.com/media/MWIwZTNlNTgtYzY5OS00OTU0LTkyYjEtYmU2MWM0ZTNjZDA0LTEyNzMwNTY=/tiny/Treasure-Shipwreck-Recovery-In.png Source: Treasure & Shipwreck Recovery, Inc.
LORD OF THE DEEP
For years a shipwreck hunter has battled governments and rivals over the ocean floor’s riches. He’s kept his identity a secret, until now.
By Kit Chellel, Olivia Solon and Jonathan Browning
Illustration by Ricardo Rey
November 16, 2023
Officers from the Icelandic coast guard watched the ship on the control room monitors—a solitary dot on the blue expanse of the nautical map. The dot had been circling 120 miles offshore for several days in April 2017, in weather no sane sailor would loiter in. Near-gale-force winds howled across mountainous seas; rain mixed with sleet.
By the look of the ship, it wasn’t there to catch fish. Taking on supplies in Reykjavik a few days earlier, the Seabed Constructor’s unusual appearance had attracted local news crews and a visit from a coast guard commodore. Its sleek orange hull supported a space-age communications array and a helipad. A gigantic crane shaped like a scorpion’s tail arched from its stern. Now, as the Constructor bobbed in the storm, the coast guard radioed the vessel’s bridge to ask its business. The response—“research”—was so infuriatingly vague that officers dispatched a helicopter to investigate. The pilot buzzed overhead and reported seeing equipment being winched in and out of the waves.
The Constructor was outside Iceland’s territorial waters but inside its zone of economic influence, just a few miles from an undersea internet cable. Senior coast guard personnel debated what to do, then sent an armed patrol boat to escort the Constructor to port.
The Seabed Constructor, viewed from an Icelandic coast guard vessel.
When the ship got back to Reykjavik, the captain and two operations managers were taken to a police station to be interviewed by Icelandic detectives. All three were cooperative but cagey. They were contractors working for a London client whom they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, identify. They said they’d been hired to search for valuables on the SS Minden, a German cargo ship sunk during World War II that lay broken some 2,240 meters (7,350 feet) below the surface.
The Minden was in Brazil when war broke out in 1939. Historical records don’t show what the vessel was carrying back to Nazi Germany, but they indicate that a handful of German businessmen were on board, including two bankers. Whatever the cargo, it was valuable enough that, when the Minden was spotted by the British navy, the captain scuttled the ship rather than let it fall into enemy hands.
SS Minden (1939)
At first the Icelandic coast guard was reluctant to allow the operation to continue, but it relented a couple of weeks on after receiving a letter from the Constructor’s lawyers threatening to sue. To recover whatever the Minden contained, all the salvors needed to do was return with an environmental permit. The application set out a plan to use battery-powered, remotely operated subs to cut open the hull, bend back a sheet of metal and retrieve a wooden box from the mailroom. “Our client expects that the operation will take approximately 24 to 48 hours if weather conditions are favourable,” the document said.
At no point did the Icelandic authorities learn the identity of this mysterious client, the backer of the Minden expedition. They couldn’t have known that the German ship was one of dozens he’s pursued over the years. Media reports about wrecks this man has found or recovered have described him variously as an anonymous London financier, “the unknown salvor” and “the Originator.” He’s marshaled a high-tech operation to recover the lost treasures of history, spanning centuries and entire civilizations and covering most of the blue portion of the planet. And he’s managed to keep this remarkable enterprise secret—until now.
To piece it all together, Bloomberg Businessweek investigated the financier’s operations across 11 months, interviewing more than 40 current and former employees of his companies, as well as contractors, archaeologists, government officials, law enforcement officers and attorneys. Many of them requested anonymity, concerned about possible legal consequences from discussing what the financier considers his private business. The research also drew on corporate and legal filings, government records and satellite ship location data to confirm previously unreported expeditions.
The glitter of deep-sea treasure has lured adventurers since time immemorial, and most have ended up poorer instead of richer. There are about 3 million wrecks in the ocean, an unharvested bounty worth untold billions of dollars, but getting to them can be dangerous, difficult and ruinously expensive. Recently, though, advances in underwater technology have opened up swaths of the ocean floor to exploration. Beyond gems and cultural treasures are rare minerals, oil, gas, battery metals and creatures unknown to science—all outside the reach of any state regulator that might constrain an eager entrepreneur. In the deep-sea gold rush that’s resulted, what matters most is getting there first.
Right now, the only ones with the resources to join in are corporate interests and wealthy individuals whose goals may or may not be aligned with the rest of humanity. The Originator is the most prolific of them all—the most successful shipwreck hunter in modern times, perhaps in all of history. His name is Anthony Clake, and he’s a 43-year-old hedge fund executive who rarely leaves dry land.
Clake’s pursuit can be traced back to another quest popular with the super rich: the hunt for lower taxes. At the turn of the century, enterprising accountants and bankers in the City of London were creating ever more ingenious shelters for their clients’ money—investing in Harry Potter film distribution, say, or arranging for bonuses to be paid in fine wine.
The contribution London investment firm Robert Fraser Asset Management made to the genre was tax-efficient shipwreck hunting. The idea was to mitigate the high risk of losing millions of dollars on a fruitless search by claiming a juicy tax break in the event of failure. To do this, Robert Fraser created companies tailored to individual wreck operations, then used leverage and other accounting tricks to supercharge investors’ tax relief.
A Robert Fraser brochure touting its approach hails a new era of wreck recovery, aided by million-dollar marine robots and side-scan sonar that creates accurate 3D seafloor maps. Among the firm’s first investors were celebrities and tech entrepreneurs, as well as executives at the London hedge fund Marshall Wace. Founded in 1997 by Paul Marshall and Ian Wace, it grew to become one of the top hedge funds in London, then the planet. Today it has $62 billion under management and a reputation for making money in good times and in bad. Both of the founders put money into Robert Fraser’s marine ventures, and so did Clake, a talented young Marshall Wace executive.
The Financial Times reported in a story about the hedge fund that, in 2002, fresh from his studies at the University of Oxford, Clake developed a successful portfolio system that reviewed stock recommendations from 1,000 or so analysts to generate trading ideas. Those who’ve worked with him say his passion lay there—with technology and data. But he took a particular interest in shipwrecks, according to several people interviewed for this article who asked not to be identified, citing nondisclosure agreements. (A Marshall Wace spokesman says the investments were made in a personal capacity, unconnected to the hedge fund’s business.)
By 2015, Robert Fraser had formed a partnership with a leading deep-sea recovery company, Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. The financial firm’s marine unit had attracted about 100 individual investors, sponsoring expeditions around the world, each with its own code name and off-the-shelf company. One of the most ambitious, the “Enigma” project, sought an historic wreck called the Napried, known to be stuffed with priceless relics when it sank somewhere off the coast of Lebanon in 1872.
There were three key questions about any given shipwreck: Can you find it? Can you fund it? Can you keep it?
The vessel was carrying cargo for Luigi Palma di Cesnola, an American consul in Cyprus who had a taste for Mediterranean antiquities. Back then he was considered a collector, though today what he did would likely make him a plunderer. Cesnola shipped some 30,000 pieces of sculpture, weaponry and pre-Biblical kitchenware to the US, where they can still be seen in a New York Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition bearing his name. He lost about 5,000 more pieces on the Napried.
Marshall, Wace and Clake all invested in the Enigma project, and Clake was enthusiastically involved in details such as the potential location of the wreck, says Colin Emson, Robert Fraser’s executive chairman at the time. The expedition didn’t find the Napried, but it did stumble across several trading ships dating to the last days of the Ottoman Empire, one so large that archaeologists christened it “the Colossus.” Inside were turquoise-glazed jars full of peppercorns, Ming dynasty Chinese pottery and Turkish tobacco pipes.
The Enigma team sent a tethered remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) to reach the Colossus. Using suction cups mounted on robotic arms, the ROV painstakingly removed several hundred items. The whole operation cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, at a minimum. Although the value of the cargo was mainly historical, the intention, for Robert Fraser and its clients at least, was always to sell some of it to private collectors and make a profit. “You don’t need too many Ming vases to make that worthwhile,” Emson says.
They never got the chance, because when the expedition ship went to Cyprus to refuel in December 2015, the authorities detained it and seized all the Colossus relics. The Cypriot government is sensitive about cultural heritage, a legacy of Cesnola’s activities. The authorities released the ship but kept the cargo on the island, where it’s remained under lock and key ever since.
At Robert Fraser, Emson liked to say there were three key questions about any given shipwreck: Can you find it? Can you fund it? Can you keep it? The last of those often poses the biggest challenge. It’s not just Cypriot officials who are hostile to treasure hunters. Seventy-three countries have ratified the United Nations’ 2001 Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, which states that signatories will take “all appropriate measures” to prevent the commercial exploitation of shipwrecks. And academics feel so strongly about the sanctity of sunken ships that they argue divers and their machines shouldn’t even touch a wreck site. “You don’t go to the Louvre and stick your finger on the Mona Lisa,” Robert Ballard, the marine geologist who discovered the Titanic, said after trophy hunters ransacked the world’s most famous ship.
On the other side are pro-salvage archaeologists who argue that historical material left in the deep is of no use to anyone. Better to haul it up and put at least a portion on display. One member of this faction, who asked not to be named discussing sensitive matters, says those in the “don’t touch” school are akin to religious fanatics, calling them “the Archaeo-Taliban.”
Technically there’s nothing to stop salvage crews from recovering anything they want from the seafloor. But even sunken treasure once belonged to someone, and salvors are effectively obligated to at least try to find the legal owners. That can lead to competing claims and years of litigation. The Colossus was carrying vases made in China 500 years ago, which had been acquired by Turkish traders for the palace of a long-dead sultan somewhere in the Ottoman Empire. Who might own that cargo today? Enigma tried hiring lawyers in Cyprus, who argued that the ship had been found in international waters, where the country had no jurisdiction, but the effort got jammed up in the island’s judicial bureaucracy. (A spokesman for Enigma says that the Colossus excavation was a “purely scientific venture” with new funders and that Clake is no longer involved. Clake’s spokesman says his stake by the latter stages of the project was less than 5%.)
Before the matter could be resolved, the Robert Fraser era of wreck exploration ended. British tax inspectors cracking down on aggressive tax-avoidance schemes began reviewing and rejecting the deductions claimed by the firm’s investors. Without the tax breaks, treasure hunting lost a key part of its appeal. Emson says the deals were “totally lawful, totally legal and commercial”; the British tax agency declined to comment.
By that point the Marshall Wace executives, and Clake in particular, were already frustrated with Robert Fraser, according to several people familiar with the situation. In meetings, Clake sometimes gave the impression he thought he could get better results without them. Behind the scenes, he was already trying.
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About a decade ago, several companies with vaguely nautical names were registered in the UK. Their ownership wasn’t always evident. Advanced Marine Services Ltd. listed its main shareholder as an Isle of Man trust. Other entities recorded Clake or Marshall as investors, or they employed directors with close business ties to Marshall Wace. The companies were created specifically to recover and sell valuable cargo from shipwrecks. Clake was the driving force behind them, according to numerous sources interviewed by Businessweek.
In 2015-16 he ordered a half-dozen autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) from a Norwegian manufacturer. These free-swimming robots resemble bright orange torpedoes and can descend as far as 6,000 meters, without the risk of a disaster like the one that befell the Titan submersible, which imploded while diving to view the Titanic, killing all five passengers. Each would normally cost several million dollars, but Clake got a bargain because the offshore energy industry was in a slump and wasn’t buying as many as usual, according to two people familiar with the deals.
Clake’s innovation was to put all the AUVs on one ship and deploy them in formation like a bomber squadron, carpeting vast areas of seabed with sonar. Multiple AUVs could search more ground and get better-quality scans while reducing time spent at sea and the costs of fuel and labor. Clake and the other investors in his companies also acquired businesses in Louisiana and Texas whose employees had experience operating the robots for the oil and gas industry.
His employees and contractors describe him as a demanding boss who seemed to have access to almost unlimited funds. Marshall Wace had in 2015 sold a 25% stake in the business to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., the Wall Street private equity titan, for about $150 million in shares and an undisclosed amount of cash. (Clake netted under $50 million.) Clake’s earnings aren’t disclosed publicly, but Bloomberg News reported in 2018 that he’d been Marshall Wace’s top earner in the year through that February, receiving compensation of about £61 million ($75 million). Given that Clake and his partners clearly didn’t need the extra income from treasure hunting, they seemed to be in it primarily for the challenge. He never showed an interest in going to sea.
In deciding where to start searching, Clake drew in part on records from Lloyd’s of London, the shipping world’s economic engine since the 18th century. His researchers discovered the insurance market was digitizing its records, including manifests, ship designs, letters and safety certificates—a compelling dataset, from a hedge fund analyst’s perspective.
It wasn’t long before his AUV squadron started finding targets, or “hard returns” in radar operator’s jargon. In 2016 they dove to the site of the SS Coloradan, an American steamer that was sunk by a German U-boat 250 miles off Cape Town during World War II, killing six crewmen. The wreck contained drums of gold precipitate that a Clake expedition later recovered. (His spokesman says Clake wasn’t a shareholder in the company that claimed the gold cargo. His boss Paul Marshall was, however, along with another Marshall Wace executive and several of Clake’s regular collaborators, company records show.)
That same year, off the coast of West Africa, according to two sources familiar with the operation, Clake found the SS Benmohr, a Scottish-owned cargo ship that held 50 tons of silver coins from the Bombay Mint. It took 12 hours to lower containers 4,500 meters, have robots load them with silver and winch them back up. The coins were later melted down and sold. Neither discovery was made public, and everyone involved had to sign an NDA pledging secrecy. (Clake’s spokesman says he had a 25% stake in the proceeds from the Benmohr salvage.)
Turning treasure into money—the “can you keep it?” part of Emson’s equation—remained a challenge. But Clake and his partners found a way to streamline that process, too. Anything they found was reported to the UK Receiver of Wreck, an obscure British government post created to find the true owners of lost cargo from around the world and ensure salvors were rewarded fairly. If the owners emerged, Clake-affiliated companies could claim compensation of as much as 80% of the cargo’s value. If no one came forward after a year, they could legally keep anything found outside British territory.
To make matters more confusing for anyone trying to keep track, Clake’s crews sometimes moved material from a wreck to another location on the seafloor for later collection, a practice called “wet storage.” Such methods helped Clake keep his prospecting private from governments that might’ve seized the treasure, and from rivals who might’ve been tracking his ships via satellite. But the tactics weren’t without risk. On one occasion a salvage expert who felt he’d been unfairly treated returned to a wet storage site without Clake’s knowledge and helped himself to several tons of silver coins, according to several sources with firsthand knowledge of the incident. Clake’s team was told the salvor had taken them to South Africa and smelted them into cups to disguise their origin.
Clake himself wasn’t above some sleight of hand in pursuit of shiny objects. In 2017, after negotiating a salvage contract with the UK, his former partners at Odyssey Marine Exploration sent subs 2,500 meters into the North Atlantic darkness to recover 526 bars of silver from the SS Mantola, a World War I cargo carrier it had discovered previously. The subs reached the wreck to find the silver?…?gone. In between discovery and recovery, someone else had gotten there, and Odyssey’s lawyers thought they knew who. They filed a lawsuit in New York claiming possession of the wreck and asked the judge to order a deposition from the person they held responsible: “Odyssey has credible information that Mr. Clake was the individual who directed the removal of the silver bars from the Mantola.” The lawsuit didn’t go anywhere, in part because the Receiver of Wreck refused to release information to Odyssey’s lawyers.
Documents obtained by Businessweek through a freedom of information request show Odyssey’s suspicions were right, though. Clake’s contractors had taken the silver and claimed an award through the Receiver of Wreck: all perfectly legal and handled without publicity.
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No find of Clake’s brought more potential for riches—and more complications—than one of his first: a Spanish galleon discovered off the Colombian coast in 2015. The San José, sunk by British warships three centuries ago, has been the fever dream of treasure hunters ever since. It was known to contain gold, silver, pearls and jewels plundered from the New World, valued at anywhere from $1 billion to $17 billion.
In December 2015, then-Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos announced that the San José had finally been located by the Colombian navy with help from “international experts.” He didn’t identify them, though he did say they’d used an undersea robot. The ship, Santos said, would be salvaged for a “great museum” that the country would build. Even as more details emerged about the search, the identity of the individual who’d financed and planned it remained unknown, with Clake referred to in Colombia only as the Originator.
The Colombian government had awarded the contract for the search to Maritime Archaeology Consultants Switzerland AG, or MAC, a Clake-linked, Swiss-registered company that had received funds from a charitable trust in the Netherlands previously used by Clake. Under a recently amended Colombian law, MAC might be entitled to as much as half the proceeds from any recovery.
But profiting from wreck hunting is never so simple. Almost immediately after the San José’s discovery was announced, the Spanish government claimed the ship for Spain. A rival US treasure-hunting company also emerged to claim that MAC had stolen its coordinates. And the Indigenous Qhara Qhara people of Bolivia, whose ancestors had mined the precious metals on board, publicly declared their interest.
The presence of London-based millionaires in a dispute about colonial pillage was awkward, to say the least. In 2018 the Joint Nautical Archaeology Policy Committee, a UK nonprofit dedicated to protecting marine heritage, held a private meeting for members to voice concerns about the plans to recover the San José. There, a representative from a Clake-linked company told members the excavation and museum could be partly funded by selling a limited number of artifacts, according to minutes seen by Businessweek. When someone argued that this risked breaching international treaties opposing the commercial exploitation of historic wrecks, Ian Panter, an archaeologist working with Clake, replied that not all the items on board were culturally significant enough to put on display. “What do you want to do with a million coins?” he asked.
Not long after, with disputes proliferating and the press clamoring for transparency, the Colombian government announced that it was suspending its plans to salvage the San José and build a museum. The treasure remains unrecovered, its location a state secret.
During those years, Clake was behind another controversial project—one that, because the wreck was more recent, stirred up some strong emotions. In 2017 he’d sent a salvage operation to recover precious metal from the SS Tilawa, a passenger steamer destroyed by Japanese torpedoes in 1942. Some 281 of the more than 900 people on board had died, most of them Indian—an event that’s been called India’s Titanic.
The Tilawa had been found off the Seychelles a few years earlier, in an expedition backed primarily by Paul Marshall, Clake’s boss at Marshall Wace. It had been carrying 2,364 bars of silver worth roughly $40 million. Clake’s contractors recovered the metal and set sail for Europe, taking the precaution, before stopping in Oman to change crew, of leaving the bars on the seafloor, in wet storage. No need to risk another mishap like the one involving the Colossus in Cyprus.
SS Tilawa (1942)
After Clake’s company reported the silver to the UK Receiver of Wreck, the Receiver’s team determined that the legal owner of the cargo was the Republic of South Africa. The South African government, furious that it hadn’t been consulted beforehand, refused to pay a salvage award, leading Clake’s company to sue. The lawsuit is still working its way through the legal system, with a hearing scheduled at Britain’s Supreme Court for the end of November. Until the case is resolved, the silver is locked in a secure warehouse in the UK.
No one has previously connected the lawsuit to one of London’s most successful hedge funds, and the families of the Tilawa victims didn’t know about the recovery of the ship until it made the news. They’re in contact with representatives of Clake’s company but still don’t know what its operation found, having been refused access to photos or videos of what’s essentially a mass grave. (Clake’s spokesman declined to comment on the Tilawa, citing ongoing legal proceedings.)
“Hundreds of families around the world are anxious to see what is left of Tilawa and learn more of the incident,” says Emile Solanki, whose great-grandfather was lost in the attack. One person familiar with the matter told Businessweek that Clake’s subs recorded footage showing lifeboats still attached to the Tilawa, indicating that some passengers never had a chance to escape. Knowing that such evidence exists is deeply painful, Solanki says. “I yearn for the time when more will be shared.”
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Clake’s various attempts to tap into the deep’s resources have in recent years converged on a single company called Ocean Infinity Group Ltd. It was registered in 2017 in the Cayman Islands, which in addition to having no corporate taxes doesn’t require owners to publicly disclose their identities. But filings from a UK affiliate reveal that Clake has at least a 25% stake. Ocean Infinity’s first chief executive officer, Oliver Plunkett, seemed light on maritime experience, having spent the previous two years working as a hedge fund tax specialist.
Ocean Infinity was public-facing, showcasing the technological innovations Clake had pioneered as well as renting out gear and finding wrecks for clients. The government of Argentina was an early one, paying $7.5 million for finding a lost submarine. The company also continued hunting treasure for its creator, as furtively as ever. Crews would find out where in the world they were being deployed only the day before leaving and had to sign NDAs, several contractors say. Even their families weren’t supposed to be aware of their final destination. (Ocean Infinity said in a statement that it takes its contractual duties of confidentiality to clients “very seriously.”)
One of Ocean Infinity’s first big jobs was returning to the site of the SS Minden, this time with the environmental permit from Icelandic authorities. In November 2017 a vessel contracted to the company sailed into the North Atlantic and launched a remotely operated sub under cover of darkness. By then journalists had worked out that anonymous treasure hunters from London were trying to salvage what the Daily Mail called “a Nazi gold ship,” though an Icelandic historian, Illugi Jokulsson, told a local newspaper there was no evidence the Minden was carrying anything particularly valuable. “Either the British company has found some new information which has eluded everyone for the past 80 years, or they are using the Minden as cover for something else,” he said.
“I don’t do it for a living,” Clake says. “I find it interesting to use technology to solve problems under the sea.”
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Posts (Total)
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2680
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Created
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05/28/19
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Type
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Free
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