The Windward started her life as a fishing trawler in 1974 in the Dutch port city of Zaandam, providing a means for her crew to earn an honest day’s wage. Three name changes, two paint jobs, and 47 years later she and her Bulgarian and Myanmarese operators stand accused of smuggling nearly a ton of cocaine into SA.
Much like human cocaine mules hired by a Bulgarian syndicate to traffic drugs through Europe, she was used for similar means. SA police found 973 1kg blocks of cocaine tucked away in three compartments in her bowels when they pounced on her in Saldanha Bay harbour in the Western Cape, in a late night raid last Monday.
She looked the part of a cocaine smuggling ship when Sunday Times Daily visited her a few days later. A lone officer with a lunch box on the passenger seat of his police bakkie stood guard at end of the pier, where she was moored when special forces members stormed her, seizing the consignment worth R583m.
Police forensics tape criss-crossed her deck. Her red, green, and white colour scheme, perhaps not coincidentally, resembling the colour scheme of the Bulgarian flag.
On Thursday last week, in the nearby town of Vredenburg, her Myanmarese crew and Bulgarian nationals, believed to be her owners, appeared in court on drug charges. The accused allegedly form part of a highly organised transnational Bulgarian crime syndicate with a strong foothold in SA. They are due back in court on Friday.
Bulgarians Mario Vasev, 47, Asen Georgiev Ivanov, 51, Borislav Stoyanov Atanasov, 45, and Atanas Mikaylov Bikov, 53, may also be charged with money laundering.
It is believed that Ivanov may be the Windward’s owner, but for a man prone to taking on pseudonyms or making others sign for his business interests, it may prove difficult for the authorities to link any of his identities to the ship.
In court last week, he played the part of Bulgarian Asen Georgiev Ivanov, a man with scant understanding of English, certainly not enough, said his legal counsel (who asked not to be named citing safety concerns), to follow proceedings in the Vredenburg Magistrate’s Court.
The court was postponed upon the defence counsel’s insistence that Burmese and Bulgarian translators be brought in for their clients, claiming none of them could understand English well enough for them to follow court proceedings.
But Ivanov appeared to have no trouble understanding Western Cape High Court proceedings when he fought the National Prosecuting Authority’s asset forfeiture unit to prevent R2.6m in various currencies being confiscated. This was after the Hawks discovered bags full of cash during a 2014 raid at a luxury Durbanville house in the Heerenzicht security estate belonging to Slovakian national Jana Cipkalova.
His lawyer in that case, Charl Boshoff told Sunday Times Daily that he made no request for a translator and managed to follow the proceedings without a hitch when he appeared before judge Judith Cloete in 2017.
Cloete said that on the balance of probabilities Ivanov made the money illegally, after he failed to explain how he had so much cash in his possession.
The tip-off from a reliable informant which led the Hawks to the house in 2014, suggested that foreign nationals were setting up a drug lab to manufacture mandrax (methaqualone) in the house.
When Hawks warrant officer Johann Combrinck surveyed the house, he saw men working in and around a garage in white hazmat suits and safety masks, similar to those he and his colleagues used to protect themselves from harmful materials when they destroyed clandestine drug labs.
In his statement to the court, he said that when they raided the house the next day on a search and seizure order, they discovered Ivanov and two Bulgarian associates Kiril Kirilov and Asen Checharov (he was also arrested in Peru in 2018 on drug charges - and his passport spells his surname Chehlarov) constructing a two-metre-deep secret “channel” in the floor of the garage. The windows to the garage were covered in white plastic and panels were being installed inside the channel.
Ivanov told Combrinck and his team they were installing a jacuzzi. In court it emerged that he told Cipkalova, the house’s owner, that he was constructing a wine cellar.
Cipkalova managed to keep her house, which she bought with the proceeds of the sale of four diamonds. This was after she was able to reasonably prove to the court that the diamonds were not smuggled into SA, but extracted from a piece of jewellery which she sold.
The court also heard then that Ivanov was the owner of a ship called the Defiant, but strangely his staff knew him as Alex Novak, a Slovakian national. Bulgarian news agencies reported last week that the Bulgarian government claimed three Bulgarians and a Slovakian national were arrested in SA for the cocaine shipment. Sources said that Ivanov may have another Slovakian identity, making it difficult to ascertain which country he really comes from.
According to John Adams, an engineer on the ship who was interviewed by the Hawks in 2014, the Defiant was a 55-metre “floating armoury” providing weapons and ammunition for security companies operating off the coast of Sudan in the Red Sea against Somali pirates.
“Alex usually carried a bag of cash around with him. He conducted most of his business in cash and regularly paid the Defiant’s crew in cash,” read extracts from the judgment.
A businessman linked to the Defiant, who did not want to be named, told Sunday Times Daily the Defiant previously belonged to Ivanov, who he also knew as Novak. He also said Ivanov told him he owned another ship called the Windward.
Sources have linked at least two other vessels to Ivanov. One of these is the Nesa 7, which was renamed the Atlantic Warrior and, like the Windward, flew a Panama flag after she was converted from a Japanese fishing trawler to a supply ship. According to ship tracking website MarineTraffic.com, the Atlantic Warrior’s position was last received in the Bulgarian port city of Burgas in February 2019.
Ownership records on shipping information website Equasis.org listed her as owned by various offshore companies, but in 2013 she was owned by a company called Satomi Universal Ltd, another offshore company.
However, an added listing for Satomi Universal on Maritime Connector, a classifieds website for the maritime sector, displayed the Defiant as one of its ships, giving its full range of specifications.
But even tracking the Windward has proven difficult. Her automatic identification system (AIS) was turned off during two trips out of Saldanha Bay between February 26 and March 1.
Shipping agents who spoke to Sunday Times Daily in the harbour last week said they had worked on the Windward before in Cape Town and in Saldanha Bay and they believed it was used to resupply ships just off SA territorial waters, 12km off the coast.
Law enforcement sources believe the Windward would head into international waters where it would rendezvous with a mother ship, which brought the cocaine from Central or South America.
The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime’s senior drug expert Jason Eligh told Sunday Times Daily that it was likely the cocaine was going to be repackaged and shipped to Europe where the price is much higher.
“You could get anywhere from $40,000 (R595,522) to $80,000 (R1.191m) a kilo there. It’s not unlikely that some of it would remain in SA, because there’s a vast market for crack cocaine in particular in SA and also a modest market for powder. SA is a growing consumer market for cocaine” he said.
“But this cocaine was probably heading to the EU given the nature of the group. You’re talking about Bulgarians, you’re probably talking about a move towards the eastern part of Europe,” said Eligh.
It’s not unlikely that some of it would remain in SA because there’s a vast market for crack cocaine in particular in SA and also a modest market for powder as well.
— Drug expert Jason Eligh
He said the modus operandi allegedly used by the syndicate coincided with research showing a gradual movement to Eastern Europe in the trafficking of cocaine from Latin America through Africa.
“This seizure was made at the point of original importation, so really in the supply chain we’re quite high up. So this would have been a vessel that more than likely docked with a mother ship at sea and the load was then transferred,” he said.
“The load that was transferred at sea would have probably come one step away from the original production point, from probably a Central American or South American port connection. The cocaine is probably quite pure. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s extremely high in its purity,” said Eligh.
Sources said switching off a ship’s AIS in SA waters was unusual and suspicious behaviour, usually coinciding with illegal activity.
The Windward started its life as the humble Dutch fishing vessel, the Deo Volente II, but changed her name and her career to the Telco Torres, a blue and yellow vessel guarding the ocean oilfields in 1991.
Ten years later she became the Furore, but her life seemed to take a turn for the worse when she came to Cape Town and became the Windward in 2010. Equasis.org showed the ship’s owner since then as Carina Offshore LTD, a company with an address in the Cook Islands, an offshore tax haven north of New Zealand.
It also emerged from the high court case that in 2013 Ivanov, this time pretending to be Alex Novak again, paid R114,400 upfront for one year’s full rental on a property from a Pretoria owner.
He told the owner that he would rent the property for him, his wife and daughter to live in as he was going to work in Saldanha Bay.
The judgment said the payment reference, however, was for “Ilias Manolis” whom the Hawks discovered was a Greek citizen employed at the time by a company called Helenic Shipping.
It’s possible, said sources, that the ship may have made many undetected cocaine runs before being caught last week.
But Ivanov is not the only suspect with a chequered past.
Bulgarian journalists confirmed for Sunday Times Daily that Borislav Atanasov — who was arrested in Saldanha alongside Ivanov — was kidnapped in the Bulgarian capital Sofia in July 2009.
Mediapool.bg quoted the Bulgarian Interior Ministry, which said he was a criminal registered for car theft, robbery and possession of explosives and was banned from leaving Bulgaria.
A Mediapool article written after his 2009 kidnapping said his business associates were involved in trafficking drugs through Europe, along with a Nigerian syndicate by using human drug mules.
He was released by his kidnappers in mid-August 2009 according to an article by Bulgarian news agency Vesti.
The Bulgarian suspects all lived in the same flat during their stay in SA , in the luxury Majorca Island Club Hotel Apartments in Century City.
The Bulgarian mafia in SA has proved to be elusive, only briefly making the news with the murders of Angelo Dimov and Nessie Peeva at their Bergvliet home in February 2018.
Police found 930 mandrax tablets in the couple’s garden shed and the Sunday Times reported at the time that the couple tried to sell millions of rands worth in uncut diamonds to an overseas buyer before their murder.
It is believed that both Dimov and Ivanov are linked to the same crime network which specialises in diamond trafficking, credit card fraud and drugs.
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