[Hodar]

Interesting .... kidnap and molest children; and if you get away with it for 7 years, no crime was committed.

If a ship sinks in unknown waters 250 years ago, the country may still exercise a claim to it. With that logic, I would hope the Aztec and Inca tribe would sue Spain for the gold that was stolen from them, plus interest. Chances are nearly 100% that this was forcibly taken from them to start with.

[Fudd]

My first thoughts were of the USS Central America, which sunk off the coast of NC with a, well, boatload of gold. The final court ruling (in a U.S. court) was that the insurance companies that had covered the shipment had ~140 years to try to find the gold. The Columbus America Discovery Group had taken all the risks in recovering the treasure, so the court rewarded them 96-97% of the insured cargo, plus 100% of the uninsured cargo, as salvage rights. It left the lawyers of the insurance agencies to prove their claims.

I suppose it could be argued that the Spanish government of 2003 is not the same entity that existed when this ship sank, and thus has no claim on the wreck. But I thought there was a well-established nautical law that governed salvage rights (in international waters), which in this case would establish a finder's fee as a percentage of the salvage value.

[ninonitti]

Can you say reparations?

[xrp]

Not only that was the gold and silver taken from the Aztecs, Incas, etc of the Americas, but also the Aztecs and Incas, etc themselves were the slave labour that extracted the precious metals. Certainly there is room to through a reparations lawsuit in there.