Colombia’s President is entering a legal battle to exhume what he called the “Holy Grail” of shipwrecks carrying treasures thought to be worth £16 billion ($20 billion).
President Gustavo Petro ordered his administration to bring up the Spanish galleon San José from the bottom of the Caribbean Sea, Colombia’s Ministry of Culture told Bloomberg.
Petro wants to bring up the huge treasure ship before his term ends in 2026, according to Minister of Culture Juan David Correa who said it was a priority for his administration.
He said: “This is one of the priorities for the Petro administration. The president has told us to pick up the pace.”
However, there is currently a dispute as to who owns the gold, silver and emeralds believed to be aboard the vessel worth between £3billion and £16billion ($4billion – $20billion), according to a lawsuit.
In 1981, the US company Glocca Morra claimed it discovered the ship’s lost treasure nearly three centuries after it was sunk in 1708.
The three-masted, 62-gun treasure ship sank around 2,000 feet with 600 crew members onboard coming to rest on the bottom of the Caribbean Sea following a naval battle with the British during the War of Spanish Succession.
In 2015, Columbia’s then-President Juan Manuel Santos claimed the country found the wreck of the San José in another area on the sea floor.
Colombia hasn’t released those coordinates but Glocca Morra – now Sea Search Armada – believes Bogotá found part of the same debris field that the company claims to have discovered in 1981.
It is now suing the Colombian government for half of the treasure – it estimates £8 billion ($10 billion) – under the US-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement, Bloomberg reported.
Correa told the outlet that the government searched the coordinates where Sea Search Armada says it discovered the wreck but that there “is no shipwreck there”.
