Shaken Up

How to lose an oil tanker

It took three years, but the South African public finally learned in some detail last week how its government lost $30.5 million in what has been called the biggest maritime fraud in history. The disclosures were made during a three-hour parliamentary debate in Cape Town, after which the government of Prime Minister P.W. Botha tried to prevent both its critics and the press from discussing the matter any further. Its grounds: all information concerning South African purchases of oil, which are in contravention of a world embargo designed to block such sales, is a state secret.

The case involved the supertanker Salem, registered in Liberia, which offloaded 180,000 metric tons of Kuwaiti oil at the South African port of Durban in late December 1979. In Parliament last week, the South African government acknowledged that it had paid $45 million for the oil. The ship then sailed for Europe but sank mysteriously in the Atlantic off the coast of Senegal on Jan. 17,1980. The trouble was that the cargo it had left in Durban had actually been owned all along by the Shell International trading company, and the Salem was supposed to have been carrying it to the Italian port of Genoa. As soon as it became known that the Salem's cargo had in effect been sold twice, there were allegations that the tanker had been scuttled to hide that fact. The South African government revealed to Parliament last week that it had subsequently paid an additional $30.5 million to Shell in partial compensation for the loss.

Nobody involved in the case has yet been convicted of any crime, although arrest warrants were issued in 1980 in Britain for four men, including the Lebanese American owner and the Greek skipper of the Salem. The South African government has no intention of pressing the matter. After all, explains Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs P.T.C. Du Plessis, South Africa operates in the world petroleum market under "extremely unfavorable conditions." And besides, he contends, the buying of crude oil, even under ordinary circumstances, is "always risky." - This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.