Stealing and selling fuel was certainly a group affair.
The crew on the cargo ship saw the police return, and as soon as they boarded, they started questioning people one by one. The deputy director from the Port Supervision Department who came aboard with them went straight to investigating fuel usage and directly assumed that the Captain and the third officer had confessed, leaving everyone on edge.
Dong Bangjun and Zhang Bigong played a bit of a bluff and quickly "bluffed" out the truth.
It was an engineer from the engine department who confessed first. On October 28th of last year, when they were waiting to enter Zhehai port for unloading, they sold more than forty tons of fuel to an oil trader.
The Second Officer had a conflict with the Captain and had formed cliques on the ship.
The Captain, wary of the Second Officer messing things up, found an excuse before the fuel theft to call a service boat, which sent the Second Officer and a few of his close followers ashore first.
