There is a particular kind of commercial sabotage that does not involve breaking a contract, stealing a cargo or damaging a vessel.
It involves damaging the truth.
I know this because I have experienced it personally.
In international business, reputation is a form of capital. A company can spend years building relationships with banks, shipowners, traders, investors and counterparties, only to find that a few carefully placed false stories can undermine that work within days.
What makes this particularly dangerous is that the information does not have to be true to be commercially effective. It only has to be repeated often enough, in the right places, and at the right moment.
In my own case, material was published about a commercial dispute which, in my view, went far beyond legitimate reporting. Two international journals published articles containing information that I maintain was false or seriously misleading. The timing and circumstances surrounding those publications had a direct impact on our commercial position and, importantly, on the way our case was perceived by people who had no knowledge of the underlying facts.
That is where fake news becomes something more than journalism.
What was particularly disturbing was that, on one occasion, money was requested for the removal of articles which I regarded as false. I will leave the precise circumstances and the identity of those involved to the evidence and the appropriate proceedings. But the experience left me with a question that I still find difficult to answer:
What happens to international commerce when information itself becomes something that can be bought and sold?
Markets depend upon information.
Banks assess information. Shipowners assess information. Investors assess information. Traders assess information. Insurers assess information.
A false story can therefore have consequences far beyond someone's reputation. It can affect credit, negotiations, financing, counterparties and the willingness of people to do business.
And unlike a physical asset, a false story can travel around the world almost instantly.
The most troubling aspect is that once something has appeared in a supposedly reputable international publication, many people do not ask whether it is true. They simply assume that somebody, somewhere, must have checked it.
That assumption is dangerous.
I have learnt that the best response to false information is not another falsehood, nor an angry public campaign. It is documentation.
Dates. Contracts. Bank records. Correspondence. Court documents. Independent evidence.
Ultimately, facts have a rather useful quality: they do not need to be advertised. They simply need to survive scrutiny.
I also believe there is an important distinction between legitimate journalism and the deliberate circulation of commercially damaging misinformation. Journalists must be free to investigate, question and criticise. That freedom is essential. But with freedom comes responsibility.
My experience has made me less interested in who can create the loudest story and much more interested in who can produce the evidence.
Because in international business, a lie may travel faster than the truth — but it does not necessarily travel further.
Eventually, the documents arrive.
And when they do, the market has to decide what it believes.