Geneva Connection, The (9 page)

They left his office and walked over to the meeting room where Wright was waiting. His face was red, and he was pacing up and down the room like a trapped animal. He had his lawyer with him, a senior partner from one of the top international law firms in London.

Kent had not even sat down, when the Henderson Wright lawyer fired the first salvo. “Mr. Kent, your colleague, Ms. Kirkland, has informed my client that you’re unable to complete the transaction set out in your offer letter of two days ago.”

Kent had plenty of experience in handling condescending lawyers. “Good afternoon to you too,” he said.

“I have informed my client they’ll be entitled to recover considerable damages from CBC, in the event they suffer loss as a result of your failure to meet your obligations under this contract.”

“Are you interested at all in hearing why we have a problem?”

“I don’t give a damn about your problems. You made a formal written offer, which we accepted,” spat Wright. He was leaning against the window, his arms crossed.

Kent wanted to shove him through it; he’d heard enough. “Our offer letter said the financing was subject to us being satisfied with our due diligence.”

“And?” asked Wright, placing his hands on his hips, as if to say, “Is that the best you have?”

“Well, we’re not satisfied.”

“What the hell are you talking about? You haven’t carried out any due diligence yet.” Wright shook his head.

“We’ve done enough.”

“My client would know if you had,” said the lawyer.

“We started it today, Doug, when you walked into our offices. I decided I don’t like your judgment.”

“What?” Wright’s face looked as though it was about to explode.

“Turning up here with your mad-dog lawyer and acting all belligerent shows very poor judgment in my view. It’s not how we expect a CEO of one of our investee companies to act when he’s under pressure.”

“I object to that, Mr. Kent,” said the lawyer. Kent ignored him.
An irrelevant stuffed shirt.

“If we can’t trust your judgment, there’s no point carrying on with further due diligence. It would be a complete waste of our time and your money. You’ve fallen at the first hurdle, I’m afraid.” Kent smiled.

“That’s not due diligence,” said the lawyer.

“We decide what to assess when considering an investment. That’s why we’re investors and you’re just a lawyer. Now, gentlemen, we’re busy here. I think we’ve completed our business.”

Kent stood up, offered no handshake, and left the meeting room. Kirkland followed, her jaw still wide open in awe.

One week after the BBC interview, Kent was sitting in his office reviewing his firm’s latest quarterly return for the FCA, the industry regulator. The draft return had been prepared by Kevin Long, the most junior CBC partner and compliance officer. Long had suggested Kent might want to write a covering letter to update the FCA on the financial state of CBC. He’d reminded Kent that the FCA’s rules required an open and transparent dialogue with the regulator. Kent thought this was a good idea; the market was now alert to CBC’s situation so it would be wrong not to explain the details to the FCA. It was also right that Kent, as the CEO, should write the letter.

His phone rang. It was Tara. “I have a Mr. Baumgart for you. He wants to talk to you about our fundraising plans,” she said.

“Thanks. Put him through,” he replied.

Kent was now becoming pissed off with these inquiries. In normal circumstances, CBC might have expected one or two calls a month from potential investors. Since CBC’s troubles had hit the press, however, the firm had received several calls a day. The problem was all of them had been secondary investors looking for a bargain. Kent had seen these vultures rise in prominence during the recession. They waited for large institutional investors, like Grampian, to run into financial difficulty so they could buy their fund investments at a large discount. For easing the existing investor’s liquidity pain, secondary investors would normally enjoy discounts of between fifty and seventy per cent on the assets they were able to buy. He quietly admired these opportunists, but they were of little direct value to him. CBC’s stock response was to request them to call Grampian Capital directly, as the dialogue needed to be between buyer and seller and not CBC as fund manager.

Kent dropped his shoulders and prepared for another waste of time. “Good afternoon. John Kent speaking.”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Kent. My name is Dieter Baumgart and I’m calling from Geneva, Switzerland. I understand you are fundraising.”

“Yes. That’s correct. We’re in the market for new investment capital.”

“I represent a multifamily investment office called Tritona. I’d appreciate a meeting to explore a potential investment commitment on our part.”

“I’d be delighted to meet you.”

This doesn’t sound like a secondary investor
, Kent thought.

“How much are you looking to raise?” Baumgart asked.

“Between five and seven and a half billion pounds.” Kent was making this up as he went along. He had nothing to lose, so he decided to go for the full amount CBC had lost from Grampian.

“Okay. Those amounts are well within our investment parameters. I’ll ask my assistant to liaise with your PA to arrange a meeting. I assume you’re happy to come over here for our initial meeting?”

“Yes, of course.” Kent realized the fundraising was unlikely to succeed, but he had to exhaust all options; his firm’s survival was on the line. “In the meantime, I’ll have our fundraising document e-mailed over to you. I look forward to meeting you.”

“Perfect. I shall look forward to the meeting. I’ll have my assistant join me to capture some notes of our discussion. I trust you’ll do the same?”

“Of course,” said Kent, automatically, but immediately thinking it was a slightly odd request.
Must be a cultural difference
.

“Good-bye, Mr. Kent.”

Tara brought in Kent’s usual coffee. “Any good?” she asked.

“What? The coffee?” He smiled.

“No. The investor. He called a couple of times this morning and seemed keen. I offered to take a message, but he chose not to and would only speak to you.”

“I don’t hold much hope, but he seemed interested in our fundraising. You’ll be able to judge for yourself, anyway.”

“How’s that?” Tara slanted her head to one side.

“You’ll be coming with me to Geneva to meet them.”

“That’s unusual, isn’t it?”

“It is, but he seemed keen to have personal assistants attend the meeting to take notes. I’m not quite sure why it’s necessary. It all seems a bit over the top to me.”

“At least I’ll get to see Switzerland. I’ve not been there before.”

Chapter 12

J
IVARO
C
HOSE
I
SLA
T
IBURON
for his head office location because of its isolation in the middle of the Gulf of California, off Mexico’s west coast. There were no roads to speak of, and the only practical way into the interior of the island was by helicopter. It took two years to build his underground fortress, complete with its own power supply, sleeping quarters and water desalination plant. The total build cost was one point two billion dollars.

Everything happened underground. The only thing visible from the air was a cream-colored, concrete-block hut about the size of a basketball court. There was nothing to indicate what sat beneath the earth. No cars, no people; in fact, no signs of human life for miles around. Only red desert, sparsely punctuated by green clumps of gorse.

Sand flew everywhere when the helicopter came in to land, shrouding the four men as they climbed out. They ran into the building, passing three other men coming out on their way to the aircraft. Jivaro did not allow the helicopters to hang around as they risked drawing unnecessary attention.

Once inside, the four men took an elevator down into the main building. The one dressed in the smart suit got off at the third floor. The doors opened up into what looked like a NASA control room with at least thirty men and women at computer terminals. The pace of work was intense with little conversation between the employees. The dominant sound was of clicking keyboards. He scanned the room as though he was looking for someone.

“Welcome to head office, Arturo. I’ll have your bags taken to your room. Please leave them here,” said Raul Safuentes as he came over to greet Vargas. Safuentes broke into one of his rare smiles when they shook hands. “I trust you had a good flight?”

Vargas had taken one of the cartel’s private jets for the two hour flight from Monterrey to Hermosillo and from there he flew by helicopter to Isla Tiburon. The cartel owned a helicopter charter business in Hermosillo. Its main function was to ferry cartel members back and forward to the island. Jivaro decided long ago it was small price to pay for the isolation and protection afforded by the remote location.

“A relaxing journey, thanks. Now I’m keen to get started.”

“Good. Let me show you around.” Safuentes led Vargas over to one of the computer terminals.

“This floor is the financial heart of the organization. Each one of these screens gives the operator access to certain limited aspects of our business. For example, one operator might be monitoring our cash movements over the US border. Someone else may be handling the bank deposit records you have been sending in from Corolla, while another, more senior, operator will be reconciling these amounts and accounting for any differences on a daily basis.”

Vargas struggled to take it all in. The operation was much larger and more sophisticated than he’d imagined. “How many people are based here at head office?” he asked.

“It varies but, generally, we have between three and four hundred people here at any one time. All of the living quarters are on the first two floors. I’ll show you those later. As a senior member of staff, you will have your own room.”

“As we entered the building at the ground level, I noticed there were many armed guards.”

“Yes. My brother takes these matters seriously. We have at least twenty security personnel on each floor. You never know when we might be attacked.”

“By the authorities?”

“I’m pleased to say that, so far, we’ve had no trouble from the authorities. We make it our business to take care of the right politicians and police chiefs.” Safuentes smiled again.

“I understand. Then the threat must be from the other cartels?”

“That’s right, but our location makes it extremely difficult for our enemies to attack us by surprise.” Safuentes led Vargas down a flight of stairs to another level and through a security coded metal door. “Now it gets interesting. In these offices are our most senior accounting staff members. You will be based on this floor. I work over there.” He pointed to a corner office.

“It’s good to know I’ll be working so closely with you. What happens on this level?”

“From here we have electronic control of all of our bank accounts.”

“I know from my work at Corolla how much we deposit with the banks each day. It must take some supervision.”

“We settle our raw material purchases and overheads out of our physical cash resources first in order to minimize the trail. However, once we have deposited cash with our chosen banks, we move those monies around the globe and into other assets as quickly as possible. All of those instructions are issued from here using our encrypted communications network. As I mentioned, you will be involved in this work.”

“I noticed the restricted access to this floor.”

“That’s right. Other than our senior accounting staff, only the fifteen lieutenants have access to this area. Everyone has individual access codes for the doors, so we know exactly who is coming in and out, and at what time.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting the lieutenants. I’ve heard so much about them.”

Safuentes nodded. “Now, follow me. You will see where they work in a moment.”

Vargas was led down one more floor and through a fingerprint scanning security door. He looked up the CCTV cameras following their every move.