Chapter 5

The Mysterious Mr Yarisal

As Denis Dewez returned to Brussels to process Asmara’s order, and SAICA dutifully liberalized its constitution in Milan, another act in the carefully orchestrated drama was taking place 190 miles away in Zurich, the financial capital of Switzerland. On 19 August 1968, a Swiss lawyer named Gerd Lanz was hired to set up a shipping corporation to be based in the tiny West African state of Liberia.

Lanz is a German-speaking Swiss, elegant in dress and manner. He shares his modern offices in a busy and prosperous Zurich shopping street with his son, who takes on most of the day-to-day running of the practice. Lanz has achieved this comfortable and satisfying position by hard work and application, and is not about to jeopardize it by any random violation of the ethics and traditions of his profession. Foremost of those – it is also a custom of other branches of Swiss business life, above all, banking – is secrecy. He says that he sees no reason to reveal who he was acting for when he set up the Liberian shipping corporation that features in the Plumbat story. Indeed, he goes further: for him to do so would be to break the law, which in Switzerland is most strict on this point. Lanz is a courteous man, he is also firm.

Whoever hired Lanz presumably took great comfort in the Swiss code of secrecy. There was another reason why Lanz was well-placed for the job: strange though it seems, Zurich is a centre for the business of forming Liberian corporations. Literally anyone can set up a Liberian company but Liberia insists on just one small formality. The request must be made through a lawyer – any lawyer, anywhere, so long as his or her name appears in a legal directory. Lanz clearly fulfilled that requirement. And being in Zurich, he was ideally placed to make a speedy and direct approach to the European headquarters, on Zurich’s Pelikanstrasse, of Liberian Corporation Services, Inc, which exists to assist those wishing to take advantage of the country’s business facilities. (It has an American office, too, on Park Avenue, New York.)

The task entrusted to Lanz was very simple to perform because Liberia’s attitude to business is, to put it mildly, liberal. She is, for example, the most prolific distributor of ‘flags of convenience’ under which ships can be operated with the absolute minimum of interference.*

*The credit for Liberia’s prominence in this field belongs in large measure to the Greek shipping tycoon, the late Aristotle Onassis. In 1947 he was approached by Edward Stettinius, a former US secretary of state, who had set up the Liberian Trust Company to encourage US investment in what had originally been a colony for freed American slaves. Onassis proposed that Liberia should issue flags of convenience. When the idea was taken up Onassis took full advantage by placing a good proportion of his fleet of oil tankers under the Liberian flag.

In 1968 the process of placing a ship on the Liberian register was absurdly easy. All that was required was forty-eight hours notice and payment of a fifty pence fee for each ton the ship in question weighed. The ship could then hoist Liberia’s red, white and blue ensign, with a single star, and sail the world in happy contravention of the mass of regulations which most other nations impose. Registering a Liberian shipping corporation was even easier. The process took just twenty-four hours and cost about £250. It was not even necessary for the shipping corporation to own a ship. Under Liberian law it could do anything from investing in real estate to exploiting inventions – a benevolent attitude towards commerce which brought Liberia a brink trade in instant companies.

Thus when Lanz presented his credentials to the Pelikanstrasse office, no questions were necessary about the identity or background of his clients. Communications with Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, have naturally been made as smooth and as fast as possible, and in only twenty-four hours a new corporation was established. Its name was the Biscayne Traders Shipping Corporation.

For the first twenty-four hours of its existence, Byscaine Traders had three directors. Their names were P. Satia, E. K. Nugha and J.D. Boyd, and the corporation’s address was listed as 80 Broad Street, Monrovia. That address also happens to be the head office of the Liberian Trust Company, which represent most Liberian corporations. Messrs Satia, Nugba and Boyd were three of the Trust Company’s employees who made their living by acting as founding directors. Twenty-four hours later, as was their custom, they resigned from Byscaine Traders en masse.

That same day, 21 August 1968, an affidavit was sworn before the notary public of Montserrado County, Liberia, testifying that the president of Byscaine Traders and the man now empowered to act on behalf of the corporation in all matters was Burham M. Yarisal.

Of all the characters caught up in Operation Plumbat none is more elusive, more inscrutable, than Burham Yarisal. To begin with, Yarisal lives on the move: when we set out to find him, we were told that he might be in Switzerland, or Italy, or Turkey, or the Far East, or Asia, or perhaps the United States. Even people who have done business with Yarisal for a long time do not know how to contact him directly. They have telephone numbers for him in Geneva and Genoa but when they call he is always, it seems, away. They can leave a message for Yarisal but there is never any guarantee that he will call back.

The public record offers just one personal fact about Yarisal: taken from court archives in Milan, where he set up one of his companies, it reveals that he was born on 28 August 1919, in Tekirdag, a Turkish port about fifty miles west of Istanbul. For the rest it is necessary to compose a picture from the jigsaw fragments Yarisal has occasionally left behind, and put that with impressions gleaned from the few people who are willing to talk about him.

Yarisal is described by a seaman, who once met him on the dockside of the French port of Rouen, as an impressive man: short, heavyset, black hair turning grey; well dressed, a non-smoker and non-drinker. He also won respect for not indulging in the common habit most shipowners have of telling dirty stories. Another man, a shipbroker, speaks of Yarisal’s fondness for animals, and his acts of personal kindness toward his business acquaintances. He is said to speak a number of languages well, including English, French, Italian and – naturally – Turkish. He has been married, but lives apart from his wife, who stays in a Geneva apartment, together with one of two daughters, who was once seriously hurt in a road accident.

In contrast there are other characteristics which have apparently made Yarisal a difficult person to get to know. He may show his acquaintances courtesy and respect, but he also has a habit of disappearing, and surfacing again only when he requires something from them. He is also given to hiring crews and laying them off a very short notice – a practice disconcerting for most professional seamen who, despite their reputation, prefer a degree of security.

This picture of a man anxious not to stay in the same place too long, determined also to leave as few clear traces as possible, is confirmed by a further search of business and legal records.

For example, the court archive of Milan – those that reveal his date and place of birth – also show that on 24 February 1970, Burham Yarisal, ‘a ship-owner’, formed the Falken Shipping Corporation in Genoa. According to these records, Yarisal did not actually reside in Genoa or Italy at that time, but in Geneva, Switzerland – to be precise, at 10, Avenue des Amazones. On the other hand, the Genoa telephone book for 1970 lists a Burham Yarisal living at 10, Avenue des Amazones. On the other hand, the Genoa telephone book for 1970 lists a Burham Yarisal living at 10, Viale Pio VII – which is interesting, for the records in Milan show that to be the address of one of Falken’s shareholders, a woman named Giuseppina Milena Guerra whose maiden name was Crocco. There is no trace of Giuseppina Guerra in Genoa today, but there is a Giuseppina Crocco. Alas, che says she has never heard of the Falken Shipping Corporation or Burham Yarisal.

Across the Swiss border in Geneva, there is also no trace of Yarisal at 10, Avenue des Amazones, a modern apartment building. But just around the corner in this chic residential suburb of Geneva, Yarisal’s wife Rinka, and one of their daughters are to be found. Mrs Yarisal says that the comfortable apartment is her home; her husband does not live there. She says that he telephones her from time to time, and she offers to pass on a message. But then Yarisal does not return calls – at least not those from journalists.

Back in Genoa, the Falken Shipping Corporation does exist. It occupies a tiny office on the eight floor of 10, Via dei Archi: the office contains a desk, a telephone, a cupboard, a telex machine, and a map of the world. It is managed by Yarisal’s eldest daughter, who is married to an Italian, and refuses to discuss her father’s affairs. Sometimes. However, there is an occasional helper in the office, who is willing to say that Falken Shipping owns one vessel, a cargo ship, called the Flower Bay. Well, not quite.

Lloyd’s Register of Shipping shows that the Flower Bay is actually owned by the Doriman Shipping Corporation of Liberia. Who owns Doriman is not a matter of public record, but his address is ‘care of’ the Falken Shipping Corporation, 10 Via dei Archi, Genoa. Whether or not Yarisal owns Doriman, he is certainly president of another Liberian company, the Luby Shipping and Trading Corporation. It now appears to be dormant, but in the 1960’s Luby Shipping owned at least two ships, the Linora and the Almaflora. The Luby Corporation was established on 19 June 1958. It was founded with three directors provided by the Liberian Trust Company in Monrovia, who resigned en masse the next day in favour of Burham Yarisal. It was the same method used to found Biscayne Traders ten years later.

Any attempt to piece together a coherent picture of Yarisal’s activities from public records founders on these contradictions; whether or not they have been created deliberately is hard to decide. There is, however, one group of people who are not surprised by such contradictions, and, what is more, claim to be knowledgeable about Yarisal. They are the shipping broker of Genoa.

Genoa is Italy’s largest, and oldest, port. Its streets are narrow and crammed with high, ancient buildings with echoing hallways and creaking elevators. Here in jammed profusion are the officers of stevedore companies, freight handlers, ship-owners, ship agents, insurers, importers, exporters, and – most of all – brokers. Brokers live by finding cargoes for ships and ships for cargoes. The essence of their game is speed and they do almost all their business by telephone. (It is not unusual for a broker to run up telephone charges of seven or eight hundred dollars a day.) Most of their deals are done by word of mouth; the ships would have sailed and the cargoes rotted long before a written contract came through. Trust is obviously vital in the brokers’ trade, and by the same token so is gossip. It would be foolishness to trust someone without knowing anything about him.

Such gossip is known as ‘broker talk.’ Brokers claim that ninety per cent of it is accurate. ‘It has to be,’ said one, ‘otherwise we’d all be out of business.’

This is what ‘broker talk’ has to say about Burham Yarisal. He got his start in business after World War II in Ethiopia, then in a state of considerable disarray. (In that respect it closely resembled its neighbour Eritrea, where – by another nice coincidence – Herbert Scharf of Asmara went to pick up the pieces of his life.) It had also become a dumping ground for the debris of war: mountains of weapons and ammunition which the Allies no longer required and the defeated armies of the Axis were not allowed to keep. There were fabulous deals to be made in war supplies and an army of scavengers invaded Ethiopia. Among them, it is said, was Yarisal.

According to ‘broker talk’ Yarisal based himself in the Ethiopian city of Diredawa. There he went into partnership with a fellow Turk, buying surplus equipment and selling it to the needy. That category included the Jewish settlers in Palestine, preparing, despite the British blockade, for the full-scale war with the Arabs which they knew lay ahead. Yarisal’s partner died; Yarisal inherited his share of the business, which by then was substantial, and moved to Cairo. Egypt under King Farouk welcomed men like Yarisal: aged about 30, he had acquired enough capital to set himself up as an international entrepreneur, trading on opportunity. In the next three decades he was prepared to deal in almost any commodity. He won a reputation for being willing to take risks, such as trading in Vietnam and in Lebanon at the height of their respective wars, when the dangers were high, but so were the profits, especially in oil and arms. ‘Broker talk’ is tinged with admiration for Yarisal: ‘A man like that has to keep awake twenty-four hours a day, has to stay one move ahead all the time.’

We tried very hard to check these and other stories with Yarisal. We spoke to him once by telephone, when he was in Geneva in August 1977. He told us that his background was none of our business. He said that he had never had any connection with the Biscayne Traders Shipping Corporation, or with a small cargo ship bought in September 1968 in that company’s name.

The public records, and those acquaintances of Yarisal who had parts in the Plumbat affair, tell a very different story.

Burham Yarisal’s first concern as president of Biscayne Traders Shipping Corporation was to find a ship. Uwe Moeller was a shipbroker in Hamburg whose firm first did business with Yarisal in the late 1950’s. Moeller had bought and sold several ships on Yarisal’s behalf, and also helped him make a few acquisitions of a more personal nature, such as a used car – a Mercedes 200 – and a puppy which in time became a successful show dog. Moeller is among those who found Yarisal a considerable man, given to occasional acts of kindness. Yarisal bought presents for Moeller’s wife, who suffered from multiple sclerosis, and a first birthday cake for Moeller’s son. Yarisal’s way of life, his habit of suddenly appearing when he wanted something, then disappearing until the next time, had prevented any real friendship from developing between them. But on a business levele Yarisal was a totally satisfactory client who always paid on time and without quibble.

In late August Yarisal telephoned Moeller and said that he was in the market for a cargo vessel. He was looking for a small one, of around 2,500 tons, and he was willing to pay up to £175,000.

Moeller set about the task of finding a ship for Yarisal’s corporation with energy. Even so, it was three weeks before he found a candidate that fitted the specifications. Built in Rendsburg, West Germany, in 1955, she was a 258-foot cargo boat that weighed 2,620 metric tons and had a 1,650 horsepower diesel engine capable of propelling her through the water at a respectable 12½ knots. Her name was the Scheersberg.

As luck would have it, the owners of the Scheersberg were on Moeller’s doorstep in Hamburg. They were August Bolten, a sizeable West German shipping company; Moeller, with Yarisal’s approval, began negotiations immediately. Bolten had been trying to get rid of the ship for some time, Yarisal was eager to buy her, and the two parties had little difficulty in agreeing on a price – one and a half million Deutsche marks, or just under £160,000. All that remained was to take the customary precaution of ensuring that the Scheersberg was sound. As she was in Rotterdam she was put into dry dock there for a survey that proved to be satisfactory. On 27 September, on Yarisal’s instructions, a Hamburg bank handed over the purchase price to Bolten. A little more than five weeks after its incorporation, Biscayne Traders had a ship.

Quick decisions and speedy deals are an integral part of the shipping business. Even so Bolten was impressed at just how smooth the sale of the Scheersberg had been; Yarisal must be a good man to work with. Juergen-Adolf Binder, one of Bolten’s junior partners, decided that his firm should try to develop its relationship with this new client, and so he offered to find cargoes for the Scheersberg, in return for the usual commission. The answer he got was very surprising: a categoric ‘no.’ Yarisal said he had no need of cargoes.

In light of this, Binder looked back on the sale of the Scheersberg with vague uneasiness: It really had taken place a little too quickly, and Bolten still knew nothing whatsoever about Yarisal or his background. It crossed his mind that the ship was perhaps going to be used for gun-running, ‘or some other shady business.’

Chapter 6

It’s Okay By Euratom