For Daniel Guerra, an aspiring Brazilian sailor keen to travel the world, the job ad was a dream come true.
A British yacht owner was seeking two deck-hands to help sail his boat from Brazil across the Atlantic, one of the great ocean journeys.
There would be no salary, but all expenses paid – and, crucially, Mr Guerra would gain some of the sailing experience he needed to qualify as a sea captain.
“My dream was to become a captain and go work in Europe,” remembers the 43-year-old, who saw the advert from an online sailing recruitment agency.
“So I was super happy, knowing that my path to my dream was beginning.”
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Things looked even better when Mr Guerra and his fellow recruit, Rodrigo Dantas, 32, met their new British employer.
They had feared he might be some snobbish yachtie or posing Instagrammer, who would make sure they knew who was boss.
But no. George Saul was a smiling, friendly figure, who did not insist on formalities. The sailors, he said, could even call him by his nickname – “Fox”.
“I used to work on some boats and the owners were old, super demanding, super rude and talked down to me,” adds Mr Dantas. “He was like, very cool, very friendly.”
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Daniel Guerra
George Saul (C) asked the sailors – Daniel Guerra (L) and Rodrigo Dantas (R) – to call him by his nickname “Fox” and they were impressed by his friendliness
Fox even passed the approval test of Mr Dantas’s parents, who were worried about their son doing such a long journey on a yacht owned by a total stranger, and asked to meet him for themselves.
To borrow the old sailing expression, they liked the cut of his jib. They learned that Fox had brought the Rich Harvest over to Brazil for renovations, and wanted a competent crew to sail it back to Europe on his behalf.
As well as the rookies, Mr Dantas and Mr Guerra, there would be two others, including a qualified captain.
“I said: ‘Look, watch out for my son’,” remembers Mr Dantas’s father, João. “He said: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of Rodrigo.’”
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As it turned out, his parents were not the only ones who wanted to check that all was well on board the Rich Harvest.
Before the departure from Brazil, local police spent around six hours searching the yacht for drugs, with the help of a sniffer dog.
They did not find what they were looking for, though, and the sailors assumed it was just a routine check.
They had heard stories about cocaine being planted on boats, and now at least knew they were in the clear.
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“When you travel through an airport… your bags go through the X-ray machine,” says Mr Dantas. “So I thought, well, it’s an international trip and they’re coming to inspect the boat.”
Brazil police
The Rich Harvest was searched by police for six hours before leaving Brazil
Such worries were far from their mind when they eventually embarked on their epic journey on 4 August 2017, the Brazilian coastline slowly receding behind them.
With them were an additional crew member, Daniel Dantas (no relation of Rodrigo Dantas) and the yacht’s newly hired captain, Frenchman Olivier Thomas, 56, a replacement for a previous British captain whose sailing skills had not proved up to scratch.
Fox, meanwhile, had made his way back to Europe by plane two days before.
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“It was a beautiful day, perfect weather, sun,” recalls Mr Guerra, who posted a message of thanks to Fox on his Facebook page.
It read: “I’m really grateful, Fox, for this… chance to learn and for our bond that has made me stronger. Thanks mate.”
After two weeks of sailing, the yacht developed engine problems, forcing it to stop in Cape Verde, an archipelago off the coast of West Africa.
Once more, Mr Guerra and Mr Dantas found reasons to look on the bright side. The islands are a tourist paradise, and Fox said he would wire them money to enjoy themselves while repairs were done at a local marina.
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And when yet more police came to search the vessel, Mr Guerra was not worried.
“They didn’t find anything in Brazil,” he thought to himself. “They won’t find anything in Cape Verde either.”
The Cape Verdean police were even more thorough than their Brazilian counterparts, using specialist cutting equipment to open up the yacht’s innards.
Hidden inside below false floors, they found nearly 1.2 tonnes of cocaine – worth an estimated £100m ($134m) if sold on Europe’s streets.
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“I felt that all my freedom was going down the drain,” said Mr Guerra. “I was furious, couldn’t accept what was happening, you know? I’d been really fooled.”
In March 2018, the crew went on trial in Cape Verde, protesting their innocence.
They had never even heard of Rich Harvest or its owner until they answered the job advert, they insisted.
They were sentenced, however, to 10 years in jail each – in what was hailed as one of the country’s biggest busts.
But while the haul was impressive, the man Brazilian police regarded as the big catch got away.
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They believed that the mastermind of the operation was Fox, whose yacht was first drawn to their attention by a tip-off from the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA).
Brazilian police believe he was the leader of the operation to smuggle the drugs.
Cape Verde police
These are just a few of the cocaine packets officers in Cape Verde discovered hidden under the Rich Harvest’s fake floors and in fake water tanks
In August 2018, Fox was arrested in Italy, where Brazilian police filed extradition proceedings. They wanted him to be returned to Brazil to answer the allegations against him.
But the paperwork arrived too late, and he was freed – much to the frustration of Brazilian police inspector Andre Gonçalves.
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He feared that Fox had subsequently gone into hiding.
“We were left with that feeling that after all our work, we’d never get to the bottom of it,” he told the BBC. “It was very, very frustrating.”
Mr Gonçalves said his team had kept both Fox and the yacht under surveillance in Brazil. They believe the “renovations” on the boat were partly to fit it with secret compartments, and that the drugs were loaded on to the vessel before the sailors were hired.
Mr Gonçalves admits that at first, he presumed the four sailors were involved too.
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“If someone is on a boat that’s full of drugs, you think that person must have something to do with it,” he said.
But as he dug into their backgrounds, he could find nothing previously linking them to the drug world or to Fox.
“The deeper I went I still couldn’t find a connection… but at the same time it strengthened the evidence we had against Fox.”
The sailors’ pleas of innocence also got backing from an unlikely source – fellow Briton Robert Delbos, a man who was alleged to be an accomplice of Fox.
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Delbos, 71, is a convicted drug trafficker, having been jailed for 12 years in 1988 for attempting to smuggle 1.5 tonnes of cannabis into the UK.
Before the Rich Harvest left Brazil, Mr Gonçalves’s team observed Delbos supervising the first stages of the yacht’s renovations.
They initially suspected he was fitting secret compartments, and filed successful extradition proceedings for him around the same time as those against Fox.
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Delbos spent months in a Brazilian supermax prison awaiting trial, but he too said the drugs were later planted without his knowledge.
He was acquitted after the judge in his case ruled it could not be proved that he knew about the smuggling plan.
In an interview with the BBC, he claimed that even drug traffickers had codes of ethics, and that Fox had violated them by using innocent sailors as mules rather than hiring professional smugglers.
“This is completely beyond the pale. I mean, you don’t do this,” he said.
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“He was a stupid man who was greedy. Instead of paying the crew properly and getting himself a professional, bloody smuggling crew – he hired four innocent guys.”
As doubts about the sailors’ guilt grew, their families began a campaign on their behalf, which became a cause célèbre in Brazil.
In 2019 their convictions in Cape Verde were overturned, and they were allowed to go home.
Fox, meanwhile, has never faced trial, and returned to the UK.
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George Saul
A selfie of George Saul, AKA Fox, posted to his Instagram
The 41-year-old lives in Norwich in eastern England where he grew up, attended college locally, and was an accomplished amateur yachtsman – sailing off the nearby Norfolk coast.
Today, he resides in a Norwich suburb and runs a property firm.
He belonged to a local business networking association, and on his social media feed last March, posted photos of himself with the city’s then Lord Mayor, James Wright.
There is no suggestion that Mr Wright was aware of the accusations against Fox.
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The BBC tracked Fox down as he arrived at one of his networking association’s weekly business breakfasts, at a Norwich hotel.
He declined to comment on the Rich Harvest and the sailors’ ordeal.
Asked about the allegations that he was a drug trafficker, he replied: “I’m not.”
An NCA spokesperson said if Brazilian police still wished to pursue the case, they would have to file an extradition request.
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Brazil’s ministry of justice said it did not comment on individual cases.
Meanwhile, Rodrigo Dantas and Daniel Guerra are trying to rebuild their lives in Brazil, their dreams of becoming yacht captains abandoned.
Brazil police
The dreams Daniel Guerra (L) and Rodrigo Dantas (R) toasted to in 2017 are long gone
Mr Dantas says he struggled to find sailing work on his return home, with some employers assuming he must have been guilty after all.
Mr Guerra’s round-the-world sailing ambitions “stayed locked up in Cape Verde”.
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He says he lost his ability to trust people, vital during the challenges on any long yacht voyage.
Even now, he still wonders who Fox really was – that “cool” British guy he once felt so grateful to, whose job advert then turned his life upside down.
He says that he would “really like to see justice done”, but has no wish to meet Fox ever again.
“If I meet him, it won’t be me who’s going to talk. It will be another Daniel. All the bad feelings I had in jail will come up and I won’t be able to be a civilised person.”
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Coming in October World of Secrets, Season 5: Finding Mr Fox.
A jointBBC Africa Eye, BBC Brasil and World of Secrets podcast investigation into a plot to smuggle cocaine valued at more $100m to Europe.
THIS is the terrifying moment smoke billows from a burning chemical lab as a massive fire has sparked evacuations.
Footage shows a huge plume of multi-coloured smoke gushing into the air as the fire in Conyers, Georgia, ripped through the building.
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Smoke erupted from the blaze as the chemicals burnedCredit: Facebook
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The chemical plant burned in Conyers, GeorgiaCredit: Twitter
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Evacuations and stay in place orders have been introducedCredit: Rockdale Government
Thousands of people have been evacuated and others given a shelter in place order as hazardous smoke drifts through the air.
The site, run by BioLab, is about 30 miles east of Atlanta and manufactures swimming pool and spa treatment products – including using chlorine, according to CNN.
Those chemicals have now been burning for hours with the fire still going 12 hours after it began.
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The blaze started at around 5am EST when a sprinkler at the facility malfunctioned and sprayed water on a chemical that sparked an explosion, Atlanta News First reported.
Hazmat crews and other emergency services have respond to a the fire with the nearby highway also blocked off.
Rockdale County Sheriff, Eric Levett, said: “I want to strongly ask all of you to please spread the word to stay away from this area at this point.
“It’s burning pretty good. We’re trying to get that under control, but at the same time we’re also trying to get the traffic under control.”
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The southwest wind is blowing the smoke across to Walton County.
Walton County Emergency Management director, Carl Morrow, has shared an alert for the county residents.
The alert stated: “Walton County EMA is aware of what is happening in our neighboring county of Rockdale.
Shocking moment 470mph fighter jet plummets into the ground and erupts in fireball killing two top gun pilots
“We are monitoring the situation and advise that if you smell a chlorine odour you should turn off your air conditioners, turn on your ceiling fans and if possible bring your outside animals indoors.”
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A BioLab statement said: “Our employees are accounted for with no injuries reported. Our team is on the scene, working with first responders and local authorities to assess and contain the situation.”
“As always, the safety of our community remains our top priority.”
Conyers Mayor Vince Evans urged residents who choose not to evacuate to stay in place and not wander or drive around the city.
He said: “This is not the time to do any type of sightseeing. We are strongly encouraging everyone, no matter where you’re coming from, but especially Rockdale residents, to stay out of this area.”
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Residents between Sigman Road and Interstate 20 have been asked to evacuate.
In September 2020, BioLab experienced a “thermal decomposition event” that also led to a fire that temporarily closed Interstate 20.
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The smoke could be hazardous as chemicals are burningCredit: Rockdale Government
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Sudan’s last civilian prime minister warned that the country’s brutal civil war risks turning it into “fertile ground” for the spread of regional terrorism at a time when several African countries are struggling with an onslaught of jihadist violence.
Some 150,000 people have been killed and 10mn pushed out of their homes since military president General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy and paramilitary leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti, went to war last year. About half of Sudan’s population of 49mn is now on the verge of famine.
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Abdalla Hamdok, prime minister between 2019 and 2022 who now leads the Taqaddum — Progress — coalition of democratic forces, said Sudan’s descent into violence risks bolstering jihadis across the region.
“I really feel quite frightened about this,” he told the Financial Times. “With Sudan bordering seven countries, it will become fertile ground for terrorism in a region that is very fragile.”
The Sahel, the semi-arid strip of land below the Sahara that is home to some 400mn people, has become a haven for jihadis. They range from Boko Haram in Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad to Isis, which is most active in the border area between Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.
Hamdok fears the descent into violence in Sudan, which hosted Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, could also connect groups allied to al-Qaeda in the Sahel to jihadis such as Somalia’s al-Shabaab in the Horn of Africa, which is linked to Yemeni Houthis.
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Analysts and officials in neighbouring countries have echoed Hamdok’s concerns. The country was long on the US’s list of state sponsors of terrorism before it was removed under Hamdok in 2020.
Burhan’s army this week launched a major assault to retake the capital city, Khartoum, from Hemeti’s Rapid Support Forces, which captured most of it last year.
Negotiations for a ceasefire to stop the fighting began in Geneva last month, led by the US and brokered by a range of countries — including Egypt, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia and the UAE — but without direct contact between warring parties.
Hamdok and members of Taqaddum criticised the process, saying that while it could help “put more pressure” on the warring parties there could not be a “sustainable” solution without including civilian politicians.
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“There is a tendency to try to get a quick fix, to just bring in the belligerents. The fact is that all attempts have failed,” said Khaled Omar Youssef, a senior member of the Sudanese Congress party, which is part of Taqaddum, referring to previous unsuccessful talks in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
A western official involved said the focus of the Geneva negotiation was “to open up humanitarian access and ensure protection of civilians as well as trying to get ceasefires”. The official said “efforts to transition to the civilian government is outside of the realm” of the current talks.
A critical challenge for civilians is to unite Sudan’s array of political forces amid differences among groups who have competing views on how its political future should unfold. Many Sudanese see Taqaddum as aligned with Hemeti, something Hamdok labels as “propaganda” spread by the army.
Among other things, there is a sharp divide between those pressing for a purely civilian government and those who advocate power-sharing with the military. Sudan has suffered some 17 coups and a string of civil wars — including one that led to the creation of South Sudan — since independence from Britain and Egypt in 1956.
Hamdok took charge in 2019 following the ousting of longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir in a putative transition government backed by Burhan and Hemeti. He was ousted in a coup in 2021 before being briefly reinstated.
“The only formula that would keep this country together is a government led by civilians,” said Hamdok. “The military has messed up the country for over 50 years. They cannot be entrusted with the future of the country.”
Top War, another Russian military outlet, claimed that the attack triggered widespread air raid alerts across Ukraine, including the capital, Kyiv.
There were also reports of explosions at the Starokostiantiniv airbase and in Khmelnytskyi, as well as in Kyiv. The Ukrainian Air Force later confirmed that Russian missiles, including hypersonic weapons, had struck various military targets in Ukraine, though they did not confirm any damage to the F-16s.
Some reports, including from Military Watch, suggested that four of the F-16 jets at the airbase may have been destroyed in the strike, but these claims remain unverified.
Despite the ongoing attacks, Ukrainian forces have continued to fortify their air defenses in response to Russia’s advanced missile capabilities.
In an unforgiving stretch of the North Sea roughly 250km east of Aberdeen, Shell’s engineers have been drilling since last September to develop the vast Jackdaw gasfield, aiming to produce its first gas in 2026.
Yet in less than two months, lawyers for the FTSE 100 company will head to a courtroom in Edinburgh to try to defend the project from climate campaigners who want it shut down, after a judge ruled last week the case could proceed.
The legal challenge brought by Greenpeace will be the first involving an offshore oil and gas project to be heard in the wake of a landmark Supreme Court ruling in June that has emboldened activists and tightened the squeeze on fossil fuel projects.
The so-called Finch ruling, named after the activist and writer Sarah Finch who helped bring the case, means that planning officials considering allowing big developers to drill for fossil fuels need to factor in the emissions spewed out when the product is used by consumers.
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It raises further questions for the UK’s oil and gas industry in the North Sea as the Labour government tries to ultimately wind down fossil fuels in favour of renewable energy, and position Britain as a global leader in tackling climate change.
There is also a push for planning officials to take into greater account climate goals when deciding whether to approve other projects beyond fossil fuels.
“One by one, spurious lines of defence are being knocked back,” said Niall Toru, senior lawyer at Friends of the Earth. “Developers have to own the climate impacts of their projects.”
The Finch ruling, a three-to-two majority judgment led by Lord Justice George Leggatt, quashed planning permission for onshore oil drilling in Horse Hill, Surrey. Two further projects have already been stymied in its wake.
Permission for onshore oil drilling in Biscathorpe, Lincolnshire, was knocked back by High Court judges in July, while in September they also quashed permission for a mine in Whitehaven, north-west England, to supply coal to steel mills.
The challenge to be heard in November against Shell’s Jackdaw gasfield will be the next test of the Finch ruling’s implications, as will a separate challenge brought by campaigners Greenpeace and Uplift to Equinor’s giant Rosebank oilfield in the North Sea. If the companies lose, they would need to decide whether to reapply for development consent or walk away. The government is not defending the cases.
Meanwhile, there are 14 UK oil and gas projects with drilling licences from the government that are at various stages of seeking development consent from the oil and gas regulator, and are now affected by the Finch ruling.
The judgment specifically covers fossil fuel projects, given the clear line between production and consumer emissions. But it is “not impossible” to imagine the ruling being cited in other carbon-intensive projects, noted Steven Wilson, senior associate at Vinson and Elkins. Airport expansions are an obvious target for climate campaigners.
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“I think it will be fascinating to see how this will be applied in other types of projects,” said Matthew McFeeley, partner at Richard Buxton Solicitors, which represented South Lakes Action on Climate Change in its challenge to the Whitehaven coal mine. “It’s the million-dollar question.”
Approvals for oil and gas projects are not out of the question, however. The Finch ruling does not prevent authorities from approving projects, as long as they have considered their impact. The law does not specify what level of emissions is acceptable.
“That’s a hard question that will need to be taken case by case,” said Robert Meade, partner at Bracewell. “These [legal rulings] are about the procedure.”
At Edinburgh’s Court of Session in November, Shell’s lawyers will argue the energy security benefits of its Jackdaw project. It was approved at the height of the energy crisis in 2022, when gas prices soared in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
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To help clarify what officials should do, the UK government said last month it would develop new environmental guidance for oil and gas projects. It is expected to set tough standards, given its approach towards the sector so far.
Planning policy beyond oil and gas projects is also evolving. The government is continuing to explore potential changes proposed by its Conservative predecessor to the national planning policy framework, which covers planning in England. Ideas include a “carbon impact assessment”, although a consultation raised doubts over the proposal.
In the meantime, the legal cases are likely to further undermine oil and gas drillers’ confidence in the UK following Labour’s decision to increase taxes on the sector and reduce investment allowances. It also plans to stop issuing licences for new exploration.
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“You’ll get to the stage where investors would be doing a disservice to their shareholders if they were to allocate capital here,” warned one industry figure. Oil and gas still supplies 75 per cent of the UK’s total energy demand, but domestic production has been dwindling as the basin ages.
Climate campaigners, on the other hand, sense the growing opportunity for legal victories. “We are always looking [at potential legal cases],” adds Toru, at Friends of the Earth. “I wouldn’t rule anything out.”
Is there life after Top Gear for its presenters? Freddie Flintoff, whose life-changing accident led to the BBC’s flagship car show being “rested for the foreseeable future”, proved that there was with his brilliant and moving sequel to Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams. Alas, no such luck with co-presenters Paddy McGuinness and Chris Harris’s new BBC project, Paddy and Chris: Road Tripping.
If the title of their new series suggested something like the original Top Gear trio’s other programme, The Grand Tour, then car fans will have been bitterly disappointed. This was a road trip alright, but with little interest in cars as McGuinness and Harris visited various European countries in search of the secret of a healthy and happy long life. “We’ve decided to tackle getting older head on,” as McGuinness put it (a rather unfortunate turn of phrase given Top Gear’s record of accidents).
McGuinness had recently turned 50, while Harris was a year short of this milestone, but is still seemed like a weak excuse for sending them on the road. A lazily contrived job creation scheme, more like.
Anyway, their first stop was Sweden, “home of flatpack furniture and Abba” – a taster of the upcoming shallow dive into the Scandinavian psyche. They began by joining a bunch of naked (but suitably pixellated) male Swedish pensioners in a sauna, before a forest workout with a triathlete called Jonas that involved chopping down trees and throwing rocks. So much nicer than exercising in the gym, they both agreed.
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Paddy and Chris played a game of ice hockey in Gothenburg (Photo: BBC/BBC Studios)
Then it all became a bit Rob and Romesh vs… (the Sky series in which Rob Beckett and Romesh Ranganathan try activities way beyond their skill set) as the pair joined in a game of ice-hockey with some professional players. They also trespassed on Travel Man terrain by riding on a big dipper in a Gothenburg amusement park (“having fun boosts your immune system” was their excuse). In fact, the programme was such a medley of other travelogues that by the time they got to eat some seaweed, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Joanna Lumley had joined them.
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The only time either presenter felt properly engaged was when Harris started enthusing over the 23-year-old Volvo V70 that they were driving around in. Having admired the car’s “nicely spaced pedal box” and “five-cylinder warble”, Harris was immediately shut down by McGuinness. “You’ve got to stop doing that on this trip… we’ve got a different set of viewers.” Have they really? I predict a sizeable overlap in the Venn diagram illustrating shared viewer demographics with Top Gear – to start with at least, as committed petrolheads may not stay the distance.
With all their musings on ageing and assurances that they were having a great time, I was forcibly reminded of the superior Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing. But there’s a reason why pairs of comedians dominate this type of programme – they spark off each other. McGuinness (a comedian) and Harris (not a comedian) did make each other laugh with their lads-on-tour bants – the difference between the words “arse” and “anus” received much discussion – but their on-screen hysterics didn’t make me laugh.
The seeming obsession with intimate body parts continued with McGuinness, showering with the professional ice-hockey players, claiming he’d “never seen as much penis as I have in Sweden”. Harris meanwhile opined that “I can’t believe I’ve gone from test-driving Lamborghinis to sharing a shower with McGuinness”. He wasn’t alone there.
‘Paddy and Chris: Road Tripping’ continues next Sunday at 8pm on BBC One
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