“No…”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you’re brilliant, beautiful, intelligent, resourceful and amazing.”
“And boring?”
“You are the sexiest actuary to ever run a ruler over the numbers and I would happily look at your spreadsheet every day.”
“Was that so difficult?” she says.
They’re working at Keith Gooding’s desk while Ruiz dozes between two chairs. Holly and Joe are sleeping on sofas in the editor’s office. The night sky is giving way to a yellow glow, and shadows lengthen across rooftops. Ruiz groans and arches his back, swinging his feet to the floor. He rubs his eyes, adjusts his crotch and looks out at the dawn.
Daniela lets out a soft yelp of triumph. Another number has fallen into place. Ruiz glances at the Moleskine notebook in her hands and wonders how something so small and ordinary and seemingly innocuous could have caused such mayhem-the deaths, the violence, the secrecy.
Keith Gooding has arrived with decent coffee, pastries and juice. Shortly after nine, Daniela and Luca emerge from their huddle. They eat a little and freshen up, before pulling chairs into a rough circle.
Daniela begins. “You’re probably wondering about the notebook,” she says, holding up a double page. “These are codes.”
“Like account numbers?” asks Ruiz.
“Similar, but not quite the same,” she says. “See this one here: No. 2075. That code belongs to Banco Internacional de Nassau Ltd in the Bahamas. No. 20966 is an account opened by the Banque Assandra in the Cayman Islands.”
“So the codes are given to foreign banks?”
“Banks, companies, corporations, private individuals… They’re non-published.”
“What does that mean?”
“They’re secret, off the books. In essence they are ghost accounts with no paperwork, just a number. Clients can transfer funds or buy stock or swap derivatives, but nobody knows who they are and Mersey Fidelity keeps no central record of the trades. Only the number is ever mentioned in the transaction.”
Daniela turns her laptop to show Gooding. “Some of the biggest corporations in the UK have taken advantage of the scheme. Look at these names.”
The journalist whistles through his teeth. “How many accounts?”
“Thousands.”
“What did Mersey Fidelity get out of it?”
“Handling fees. It used a debit and credit system. Often the actual funds never left Syria or Jordan or Lebanon-they were just credited to the client’s account as a paper transaction.”
Daniela taps on the mouse. “With me so far?”
Everybody nods. She points and clicks. A new landscape of information unfolds before them.
“It’s a brilliant system for doing dubious deals. It launders money. Avoids tax. It hides income or the ownership of assets…” Daniela points to a page of the notebook. “Look at this. There are twenty-three Colombian accounts, thirty-two from Syria, eighteen from Afghanistan and more than a hundred from Russia, but there are just as many from the US, Germany, France, Britain… Anybody could use the system, from legitimate corporations to crime gangs or drug cartels-there’s no way of knowing who owns the accounts.” Daniela calls up another list of accounts. “We looked at Syria and found twenty-eight ghost accounts linked to the same banks that secretly channeled money to Saddam Hussein. This time the transfers went the other way. Forty-six in the past three years.”
“Going where?” Ruiz asks.
“Into Mersey Fidelity and then out again.”
“How much?”
“Close to three billion dollars.”
Gooding: “How could they keep amounts like that off the books? Surely it has to show up somewhere.”
Daniela points to another note she’s made. “Here is where it gets even more interesting. Most of these non- published accounts were opened in the morning, used for a transaction and closed in the afternoon. The only person who would know about that transaction is the guy who gave the order. The auditor won’t see the account because it existed for less than twenty-four hours.
“Look at this unpublished account, No. 3625. The bank that opened it is in Lugarno, Switzerland, but the final destination of the funds was a company registered in the Bahamas. See the name: Bellwether Construction. It was the company that won a contract to rebuild Jawad Stadium in Baghdad. The work was never done.”
“Where does Richard North come into this?” asks Ruiz.
“He was the compliance officer,” says Luca. “It was his job to report any suspicious transactions, no matter how small.”
“Why would he risk keeping a notebook?”
“Someone had to have the codes. My guess is they weren’t digitalized because that creates a record that is difficult to wipe from a computer hard drive.”
Ruiz wants to be clear. “So this is money-laundering?”
“Money-laundering, tax evasion, insider trading… on a massive scale,” says Daniela. “The notebook reveals more than two thousand ghost accounts in fifty countries.”
“Can we see where the money was going?” asks Gooding.
Luca takes over. “We can trace the transfers to offshore banks, but we need more time to locate the end- user. I think Richard North was researching some of the transactions. Elizabeth North found a file that her husband had hidden. We’ve been matching some of the account numbers to the transactions he circled and grouped together. Once money has entered the European banking system it can be wired and withdrawn anywhere without any controls. Members of terrorist groups can be using ATM machines to access cash, just like the 9/11 hijackers did. It was the same in Bali and Madrid before the bombings.
“Look at this,” Luca points to the computer screen. “North identified a bank in Madrid and another in Bali. They’re the same banks the bombers withdrew funds from.”
“Are they the same accounts?” asks Gooding.
“That’s what we need to find out. We have to trace each transaction.”
“Which could take us months.”
Holly has woken and come looking for food. Ignoring the conversation, she picks up a croissant and pulls it apart with her fingers. Pastry sticks to her nails and she sucks them clean, almost purring like a cat.
She’s watching the TV above her head, Sky News, a Bambi-eyed newsreader sternly reading an autocue. The headlines are running as a banner across the bottom of the screen.
“This is huge,” says Gooding. “Money-laundering. Tax avoidance. Terrorism. Mersey Fidelity was being touted as the beacon of the new banking system. It’s supposed to provide the Bank of England with a blueprint for new banking laws.” He looks at Luca. “Who knew at the bank?”
“It could go right to the top.”
“They’ll deny it.”
“Or destroy any incriminating evidence.”
“We can’t publish this without independent verification. We need someone from Mersey Fidelity to go on the record.”
“Someone senior.”
Ruiz marvels at the strange light in both the journalists’ eyes, like they’ve discovered the Holy Grail or stumbled upon a fortune in gold.
“Maybe we should think about this more carefully,” he says, letting his fingertips rest lightly on the pages of the notebook. “You don’t have the resources to investigate something like this properly. The police can get warrants, tap phones and seize documents. SOCA specializes in this sort of thing.”
Gooding scoffs. “We’re not just handing this over to the police.”
“Why not?”
“Because our exclusive won’t be exclusive anymore.”
