TIMOTHY MCDONALD: And once you've found the treasure, then you have to figure out how to keep it. Sub Sea Research says it's doing everything by the book and it hopes to keep up to 90 per cent of the treasure for itself.
But Forrest Booth says the original owners may have a claim on the ship.
FORREST BOOTH: If the location of the wreck is unknown or the depths of the water is so deep such that recovery was not possible until the newest technology came along, the courts have been receptive to the idea that there was not an abandonment.
Now the salvor will still get a reward for his efforts of bringing the cargo up but he doesn't get 100 per cent usually. Now if he can prove that it's been abandoned and that is a whole other story and then he may get 100 per cent.
TIMOTHY MCDONALD: If the ship was insured, that could add another layer of complexity because the original title then passes onto the insurer and in this particular case, governments are also involved.
It's claimed the treasure was en route from Europe to the US as payment for war materials. As Forrest Booth explains, it's extremely unlikely that a government would relinquish the treasure.
FORREST BOOTH: Well that adds another wrinkle because governments basically never lose title to their own property. There's been a lot of litigation about fighter planes from World War Two that have been discovered, I think one frozen in the ice in Greenland and various other, one was fished out of a lake near Seattle Washington.
And the Government always wins those cases, the US Government. And I believe the British Government as well has won some cases like that where they say that once it's their property, it's always their property.
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2008/s2478396.htm
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