A Clean Pair of Hands (22 page)

“By working with us, Johnny was risking his life. Anyway, he fed in the idea to the suppliers that he could be interested in a more mature woman. This journalist was a very attractive lady for those who appreciate more rounded female forms. He didn’t expect to get what he wanted and he was afraid that they would guess he might be fishing. If there had been any suspicion of that, he would have been in big trouble and we would have had to bail him out quickly. However, a few days later Clara Rémy was part of a new consignment to the hotel.

“The only reason I could think of for the captors to fulfil the order was there was so much heat that they decided to put her somewhere where she might later be found without a trace back to them. They don’t feel comfortable with close surveillance, so they will always do whatever is needed to create an environment in which they can act
with impunity, and they probably felt they had gone as far as they could with this project.

“Even at this stage it was difficult for us to intervene by walking in and collecting Clara without blowing Johnny’s cover, but people at the top in the police were getting jumpy and pressing us to act decisively. They didn’t understand the nuances of a case like this.”

“So what could you do?” asked George.

“We paused to consider our options, obtain necessary permissions, and try to get some really accurate intelligence. We were playing for time. Then within a week we had a break; Johnny received a message from his suppliers suggesting he should call the police to say he was suspicious about the activities of one of the guests in his hotel, and not to mention his contacts if he wished to remain healthy. This break came at a good time for us because we still hadn’t come up with a scenario whereby we could release Clara Rémy without implicating Johnny. It was just what we needed and within hours Clara was freed.”

“What state was she in by then?” asked Thérèse.

“Let me explain here, the gang has what it calls a ‘doctor’, who keeps the women sedated for most of the time. This man was important to us because he had contact with the operational leaders, and thanks to Johnny, we knew who he was and thus were able to monitor his supply and distribution routes. So, this journalist was first conditioned with drugs, then initiated into the working stables at a building site and was being visited by between ten and twenty men a day. Before she was transferred to Johnny’s place, we managed to get someone in there who was able to talk to her and confirm who she was. For protection of our sources, we couldn’t use that information widely. We tried to find out more, but couldn’t get much because she had no view of what was going on and she was kept in
solitary confinement and under sedation all the time. But the fact that we had confirmed she was there, added to what we already had, gave the Public Prosecuting Attorney confidence, or, you might say, no choice but to authorise an operation once she reached Johnny’s. You can see that even at that stage, the authorities were not prepared to authorise a raid on the building sites to free thousands. We were confined to this particular case. Well anyway, as a result, we managed to clear the whole chain going right back to their main centre in Bulgaria where we sent in a snatch squad and, in collaboration with the local police, came back with two of the top men in the syndicate and several other financiers and beneficiaries. All were sent to prison for long periods, and perhaps that alone explains why Johnny and Michel wanted to lie low in Haiti.”

There was a long silence after this.

“What part did Michel play in all that?” asked Thérèse.

“He was the single link man. We couldn’t make any direct contact with Johnny, but Michel was perfect for feeding back information to us and sending down instructions or advice to Johnny. They just acted normally.”

“Did he really do that alone?”

“He had a team of young hopefuls who did some of the running for him, messages, money couriers and the like. He made it look as though he was running a dope ring, but that was just a front.”

“Zu and Ahmed?” volunteered George.

“They were involved, although they were just kids at the time, but since then they have all converted into decent businessmen,” Patrick chuckled.

“I thought Ahmed was now a drug baron,” said George.

“Where did you get that from?”

“I thought that’s what Michel or Lydia told me.”

“No, they wouldn’t know because they are out of touch
now.” Patrick explained, “You may remember that one of Charlotte’s sisters had a son who was in computer technology?”

“Wasn’t that Christian, the one who spent Christmas with us once and later got a degree in international business studies?”

“That’s right. Well, in his student days he started making videos at Johnny’s club. Some were commissioned by the clients themselves and others by us. He was the house photographer. Later, that developed into a business and they received government grants to acquire more professional equipment till they had a fully operational, high quality pornographic movie operation. Zu and Ahmed were involved too. That’s how they made their money. Christian designed and operated websites as outlets for their videos and Michel continued to invest, though I don’t think he knew exactly where the money was going. Johnny recruited actors from the throughput of young men and women at the hotel. His daughter, Beatrice, became quite a star.”

“How did Johnny start up in that business?” asked Thérèse, with a frown of disapproval.

“I understand that when they were younger, he and his wife were very fond of dancing, and they worked up an exotic dance routine that they took around various clubs. It was considered very suggestive for its time and it evolved into a combination of a strip show and live sex on stage. Very arty and stylish, I am told. Then Charlotte’s sister, the one who was working in the media at the time, got them a slot on a television show and they never looked back. By the time they were in their thirties they could afford to pay others to do the arty work.”

George remembered seeing something like that years before on French television during a chat show interspersed
with guest performers. A couple performed a strip dance routine surrounded closely by a rousing audience who screamed and applauded every contortion. The sequence ended with both participants naked and having sex, which looked vigorous enough to be real rather than simulated. George had been shocked at the time, but in retrospect thought it was more artistic than the regular mush on UK television. What he saw might have been Johnny and Ayida. It must have been Sandrine who got them the break. He continued to debate in his mind what constituted erotic art and where pornography begins, and concluded that it was just a matter of personal taste. He emerged from his reverie to hear Thérèse ask a question.

“Christian designed our web site. Does that mean we have been inadvertently financing porn movies?”

Patrick laughed loudly. “I think it’s the other way round. You have benefitted from the porn movies because that is where they make their money and develop techniques that they apply to other respectable businesses. You probably paid a lower price thanks to the more obscure work.”

The conversation moved on and eventually Thérèse asked, “Why was Michel’s house broken into and then he was robbed and hit by a car? Was that because he was involved with drugs and pornography?”

“No. It wasn’t directly related to that business. Apparently he promised something to someone that he couldn’t deliver and that was just a shot across his bows, so to speak, but I thought at the time that he was getting himself into a very messy place and although it started as small stuff, it was likely to turn nasty. I don’t know what happened in the end.”

“It sounds as though Michel was treading in quite a few messy places. Wasn’t he already in quite deep with his investments in what were illegal operations? After all,
he was financing some pretty marginal activities,” queried George.

“Anyone seeing massive returns on investment must suspect that either it is a Ponzi scheme, where eventually a lot of people will lose their money, or the money is funding racketeers who want to dilute their dirty money with a fresh supply of clean investment. So yes, there was a risk, but no doubt he got a lot of satisfaction from that too. He got big kicks from taking risks.”

Thérèse was quietly relieved to be able to add a little weight to Michel’s ‘good box’, even if it could not balance the harm he had done to his family and others. She could however still not reconcile herself to what had happened in Haiti. There was still a niggling doubt in her mind that the story had really ended, even though the investigation was closed.

“Where do the big flows of dirty money come from now, apart from the French government?” asked George provocatively.

“Yes, we were watching that too,” responded Patrick, raising the palms of both hands. “It varies over time, but these days there are massive investments in criminal activities from corrupt regimes around the world who want to divert public money into private accounts and from there, through legitimate banks to ‘investments’.”

“But surely you can trace those movements back to source with the information systems available now,” commented George.

“Yes, technically it can be done, but all sorts of procedural and political obstacles stand in the way, not least because the French government has made its own illegal money movements to and from European and other tax havens. Do you remember the speech Sarkozy gave at the beginning of his period in office? He was condemning the
tax havens around Europe and virtually declaring war on all of them. Then one of the journalists in the audience mentioned that he had missed Monaco off the list.
Sarko
replied that Monaco complied with French banking regulation. So, we all know what that means.

“Some of the big political corruption money has been channelled through ‘legitimate’ companies like Urba, who were set up by the socialists before Mitterrand was elected President, to skim a percentage of local government contracts and channel the money to party funds from where it settled into all sorts of accounts. There are several cases in the courts now which have dragged on for thirty years, frustrated because the tradition of party funding in France is based on corrupt appropriation of public funds for private use. I’ve seen quite a few water-tight cases of corruption filed for no further action because of intervention from high up in the government. Remember, the President is the head of the judiciary. All judges report indirectly to him. Threats are levelled not only at the person thinking about or actually going public with some revelation, but also at their family, and it could mean they suffer penalties while perpetrators go free.”

“It’s absurd,” interjected George.

“That’s just the point,” responded Patrick. “The absurd is necessary. Our world is made of absurdities, without which nothing would happen.”

Thérèse asked, “Do you not think sometimes that you are fighting a losing battle, not knowing who is honest, who you can count on, and especially when you know how high the corruption goes?”

“I still don’t understand why such a large proportion of politicians and heads of industry can get away with such anti-social behaviour when France is supposed to be a socialist republic,” added George.

Patrick grinned widely before replying. “It’s in our history; stemming from a sociology of political centralisation. Look at how Napoleon behaved. Emperors, monarchs and more recently presidents succeeded each other in excess, and every Frenchman dreams of emulating them. It’s a dream everybody shares.”

“So it’s a re-enactment of George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’,” George mused.

“Yes,” agreed Patrick, “the behaviour of the pigs is part of human nature. Power corrupts and France is a nation which, with a few exceptions, has been corrupted by a succession of leaders and their acolytes of every political stripe. They all want to travel in executive jets and helicopters, rather than by train. They still treat public money and resources as if they were their own.”

“So is there a solution? Is the new socialist government likely to follow Mitterrand in robbing the country?” asked George.

Patrick thought for a while before responding. “I suppose it’s about what we deem to be legal and acceptable, not just in France, but there are global precedents too. The last American presidential election cost the Democrats over a billion dollars. Obama’s presidency has so far cost $1.4 billion in personal expenses, but I don’t hear the American taxpayers shouting that they are being robbed.

“Our problem today is not just the economic one that most countries share. France needs fundamental changes in the way the country is governed and where the power lies. Some commentators say François Hollande has made a bad start, but others say he has made no start at all. Maybe he is going nowhere because he doesn’t understand the first thing about what business needs to grow, or if he does, he fears to confront the changes needed. Whatever he does to move money from non-productive areas to
help to generate new business, he will be opposed by the traditional socialist supporters, so he may be waiting for the economy to get bad enough for there to be a stronger consensus on what to do.

“Why can’t we move forward? It’s a good question. I think one reason is what I just said, that making the right moves would mean the socialists would have to admit that their election promises and political principles are not only failing to help, they are actually damaging the country, but the left fears any loss of centralised power because it works in their favour.”

Patrick took another sip of coffee and meditated briefly, “The right is just as bad. They had a chance and they have also proved to be corruptible. We are beginning to see the curtains draw back to reveal some of the goings on, but it’s not reasonable to expect governments to be completely transparent, any more than parents expect to be completely honest with their children.”

“I must stop making speeches though.” He took another sip of coffee.

“No, do go on,” urged Thérèse, “it’s interesting because what you are saying explains a lot of what we suspected all along, but, sticking with France, what do you think can be done?”