Brexit ferry firm boss left trail of angry creditors in Hong Kong

Ramsgate Ferry Port Dredged In Preparation For Brexit Freight
The port of Ramsgate is being dredged to accommodate larger vessels Credit:  Leon Neal/Getty Images Europe

The head of a new cross-Channel ferry venture awarded a £14m no-deal Brexit contract by the Government left a trail of angry creditors in Hong Kong when his marine insurance company failed, the Telegraph can reveal.

Mercator Marine was liquidated in 2011 after a court issued a compulsory winding-up order, according to official documents.

A former backer said he was “astonished” to learn that Ben Sharp, its founder, had re-emerged as chief executive of Seaborne Freight and won a lucrative deal from the Department for Transport to help secure food supplies from the continent .

Mr Sharp founded Mercator Marine in 2005 with the help of a low-interest loan from FP Marine Risks, a marine insurance broker. Within two years the broker applied to the Hong Kong courts to shut down the company over unpaid debts in a lengthy legal process.

The disclosure raises further questions for Chris Grayling, the Transport Secretary, who awarded the contract to Seaborne Freight and has said it had been “looked at very carefully by a team of civil servants who have done due diligence on the company and reached a view they can deliver”.

The former backer of Mercator Marine, who led the court action and remains involved in the shipping industry in Hong Kong, said he had not been contacted by any representative of the British government about his dealings with Mr Sharp.

Records show that after his failure in Hong Kong, Mr Sharp, a former Royal Navy submariner, returned to Britain and set up Mercator International, a legally separate company under a similar name.

His Hong Kong creditors, which also included a travel agent, pursued him to London and considered further legal action, but said they ultimately decided the costs would have outweighed any recoveries. It is understood the debts amounted to tens of thousands of pounds.

The former backer said: “We tracked down the new Mercator to an office somewhere near Bank in the City. By that time we had pretty much decided to cut our losses and move on. We may have issued the odd desultory letter of claim, but that would have been about it.”

Mr Sharp insisted he had repaid debt to FP Marine in the UK - an account disputed by Hong Kong sources. He said he left the Far East amid upheaval in his personal life and that his business record was otherwise strong.

“The truth is the business didn’t work out and I was fed up of Hong Kong, but I did the right thing and I don’t owe anyone anything,” Mr Sharp said. “When you operate in distant lands things are never as simple.”

Mercator International thrived for a few years providing services to shipping threatened by Somali piracy, including escort vessels and what an archived copy of its website describes as security specialists with “experience in boarding/counter boarding drills, waterborne interdiction and maritime/amphibious warfare”. However, the company ultimately collapsed owing creditors including HMRC nearly £1.8m.

Seaborne Freight is due to receive nearly £14m in taxpayer funding to run ferries from Ramsgate to the Belgian port of Ostend beginning in late March.

The contract has attracted criticism as the port at Ramsgate is too shallow for large vessels and Seaborne has no operating history.

Further concerns were raised by the collapse of Mercator International and the discovery that the terms and conditions on the company’s website appeared to have been copied from a takeaway delivery service.

Mr Sharp said: “Seaborne Freight is not me. The contract is between the government and Seaborne Freight. We have experienced people on board and we are backed by institutional investors.”

The port at Ramsgate is now being dredged to open it up for larger vessels. Mr Grayling told MPs on Monday that the government had gained a “further level of assurance” from the institutional lending secured by Seaborne.

“These lenders undertake their own rigorous due diligence before making financial commitments,” he said.

A government spokesman added: “Our contractual arrangements clearly reflect Seaborne Freight’s status as a new ferry operator and as such it is obliged to meet a number of stringent time-staged requirements to demonstrate that it can provide an effective service, with break clauses in the DfT’s favour if it fails to meet them.

“Taxpayers’ money will only be transferred following the provision of an effective service.”

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