Italian police arrested Dutch salvage firm owner secretly invited by Govt. for MV Barima recovery

Aug 07, 2026 News

---

(Kaieteur News) – Police in Italy previously arrested the owner of Koole Onshore and Koole Offshore (KMS), the Dutch firm secretly invited by the Government of Guyana (GoG) to salvage the sunken MV Barima that claimed the lives of over 100 persons.

Research by Kaieteur News uncovered that the owner and founder of the demolition and salvage company, Paul Koole was arrested in Italy and was held in prison there for embezzlement.

KMS is headquartered in the Netherlands and has established a base in Suriname recently where it can easily mobilise staff and resources to Guyana.

The company completed multiple casualty-removal contracts for the government of Guyana in the Demerara River.

A news report from AT5, a media house in Netherlands reported on 2^ndAugust,2019 that there was an Interpol alert from Nigeria, where Koole has a company. The Italian police arrested him after he had checked into a hotel. At the time, there was suspicion that Koole would be extradited to Nigeria.

AT5 reported that Koole’s lawyer, Niels van der Laan, assured that everything was being done to prevent the extradition. “It is terrible what is happening here. We don’t understand it at all. It is unclear to us what the arrest is based on,” the lawyer added.

Beyond the Italian detention, Paul Koole and his extensive constellation of corporate entities (including Koole Contractors, Koole Maritime B.V., Koole Mammoet Salvage, and various holding companies) have been deeply entangled in a series of high-stakes litigations and scandals over the past decade.

These controversies range from fierce administrative battles with the Dutch state over international waste export laws and high-profile trademark infringement suits, to complex corporate discovery actions in United States Federal Court, and intense, ideologically charged disputes over urban land redevelopment in Amsterdam.

Kaieteur News reported on Tuesday that the Dutch firm was invited by the government to submit a proposal to raise the MV Barima, days before an official publicly opened a competitive bidding process. This raises questions as to whether the government has already selected a company to salvage the vessel and has merely launched a bidding process to satisfy the public and assure family members and victims of the dreaded incident of a “transparent process”.

This newspaper found that as Koole Contractors expanded its footprint in the 2020s, the legal exposure of the corporate structure escalated from domestic administrative and real estate disputes to high-stakes transnational litigation within the United States Federal Court system.

Freemantle Highway salvage

The most prominent, financially significant, and legally convoluted controversy involving Paul Koole in recent years surrounds the Fremantle Highway, a Panamanian-flagged roll-on/roll-off vehicle carrier.

On 25^thJuly, 2023, the Fremantle Highway suffered a catastrophic blaze while transiting the North Sea off the coast of the Dutch island of Ameland. The vessel, which had departed from Bremerhaven bound for Singapore, was carrying approximately 3,783 vehicles, including nearly 500 electric vehicles. The fire rapidly engulfed the upper decks, resulting in the tragic death of one crew member and forcing the remaining 22 crew members to evacuate, many by jumping into the sea.

After a prolonged and highly perilous firefighting effort by the Dutch Coast Guard and international salvage teams, the badly damaged, listing vessel was towed to Eemshaven to prevent an environmental disaster in the ecologically sensitive Wadden Sea, and was subsequently relocated to the Damen Shipyards in Rotterdam.

Recognising an immense arbitrage opportunity, Koole Contractors engaged with the vessel’s Japanese owners, Luster Maritime (a subsidiary of Shoei Kisen Kaisha Ltd.), and their insurers.

In October 2023, Koole purchased the heavily damaged ship for the symbolic, nominal sum of €1.

Koole’s strategy was to completely strip the burned-out upper superstructures and extract the thousands of destroyed vehicles, leaving only the structurally intact lower hull and engine room. Because there is a massive global shortage of vehicle carriers, an equivalent newbuild would cost upward of €160 million. Koole negotiated a contract to sell the salvaged hull to a Chinese shipyard (Qingshan) in Xiamen for €11 million. Under the terms of the financial arrangement, the transport to China via the semi-submersible heavy lift vessel Boka Vanguard would cost approximately €5 million; Koole would retain the first €3 million of profit, with the remaining €8 million split evenly between Koole and the original Japanese owners.

Koole’s highly lucrative plan immediately triggered a massive administrative and legal blockade orchestrated by the Dutch Environmental and Transport Inspectorate (Inspectie Leefomgeving en Transport, or ILT). The core of the dispute rested on a singular, highly contentious legal definition: was the Fremantle Highway a “vessel” or a “waste substance” (afvalstof)?

The ILT formally blocked the export of the vessel, classifying the Fremantle Highway strictly as hazardous waste due to the extensive thermal damage to its upper decks and the presence of toxic residues from the burned electric vehicles.

To break the regulatory deadlock, Koole Contractors initiated emergency summary proceedings (kort geding) against the Dutch State in the District Court of The Hague in the spring of 2024.

The litigation, however, initially faltered on complex procedural and jurisdictional grounds. In April 2024, the civil judge ruled that the civil courts were the incorrect venue for the dispute. The judge determined that the classification of a highly complex maritime casualty as an “afvalstof” required a comprehensive review of a full technical dossier—a process that fell strictly within the jurisdiction of the specialised administrative courts. Consequently, Koole Marine Service (KMS) was declared inadmissible in the civil summary proceedings, dealing a temporary but significant blow to the project.

Following subsequent ILT inspections of this heavily modified structure, the regulatory authorities and Koole Contractors finally reached a negotiated agreement in August 2024. The Dutch authorities conceded that, stripped of its hazardous, non-viable superstructures, the remaining hull legally constituted a commercial asset rather than waste. The export permit was officially granted for its voyage to China.

BMV litigation

The Fremantle Highway saga also generated severe secondary litigation involving third-party corporate giants. When Koole Contractors removed the roughly 2,800 burned and damaged vehicle wrecks from the ship, attempts were made by various entities to commercialise, sell, or process the salvaged vehicles.

This immediately prompted a swift and aggressive legal response from the German automotive manufacturer BMW, which had a significant number of vehicles aboard the stricken carrier. BMW filed an urgent summary proceeding (kort geding) asserting severe trademark infringement and brand dilution. The automaker argued before the court that selling the fire-damaged, structurally compromised vehicles into the secondary market would not only violate their intellectual property rights but also pose an existential risk of reputational damage. BMW contended that the structural integrity, safety, and electronic reliability of the salvaged BMWs could no longer be guaranteed, and allowing them to be driven or sold would irreparably harm the brand’s standing.

The court ruled decisively in favour of BMW, issuing a strict injunction that legally prohibited the sale of the compromised vehicles, forcing them to be treated strictly as scrap metal to be fed into the furnaces of entities like Tata Steel in Velsen-Noord.

Caribbean wreck removals

Koole has also been heavily involved in post-hurricane wreck removals in the Caribbean, particularly following the devastation of Hurricane Irma. In 2022, Koole Contractors secured a €5.5 million contract (heavily subsidised by European Regional Development Funds) to remove 140 abandoned wrecks on the French side of St. Martin, following similar operations on the Dutch side (Sint Maarten).

These operations are legally fraught. They involve seizing private property (where owners have been stripped of their rights due to abandonment), managing highly toxic materials (fuels, fiberglass, engine fluids) in fragile lagoon ecosystems, and navigating complex geopolitical borders between the French Collectivité and the Dutch administration. The removal of vessels like the 100-ton Victoria, which had crashed into a house in Sandy Ground, required immense technical precision and constant coordination with local environmental departments to prevent toxic leakage into the groundwater. While Koole successfully navigated these operations, the environment is highly litigious, with local consumer protection groups frequently taking utility and infrastructure companies to court over post-hurricane recovery efforts, creating an atmosphere of constant legal vigilance.

Tax evasion

While Koole Contractors (industrial demolition and salvage) is Paul Koole’s primary enterprise, the broader Koole family brand is deeply intertwined with Koole Tanktransport, a massive liquid bulk storage and transport entity.

In 2011, the Swedish private equity firm EQT acquired a majority stake in Koole Tanktransport, valuing the company at nearly €323 million.

To finance this massive acquisition, EQT utilised a highly complex financial structure involving three subordinated loans. Notably, €110 million of this financing originated from a specialised entity set up in the Channel Island of Guernsey, a jurisdiction where no tax is levied on received interest.

This capital was provided by sub-funds of EQT that were also indirect shareholders in Koole. The specific entity was established with the explicit goal of securing interest deductions in the Netherlands to artificially lower the corporate tax burden.

The Dutch tax authorities aggressively challenged the deduction of this interest from the company’s taxable profits. The litigation ascended through the judicial system to the highest authority in the Netherlands, the Hoge Raad (Supreme Court). The Supreme Court decisively upheld the ruling of the Amsterdam Court of Appeal, concluding that the separate entity in Guernsey was established exclusively for improper motives—specifically, to artificially reduce tax liabilities in the Netherlands. The Court ruled this a clear case of “misbruik van de wet” (abuse of law), heavily penalising the financial structuring of the Koole Tanktransport acquisition.

---

• arrested, Italy, KMS, MV Barima, Paul Koole, salvage

---