The Financial Terrorist Read online

  The bank will lend several billion to these companies and they will all fall. It will appear that the money was lost on wildcat ventures. The money though will simply have been paid over to us, although no one will be able to prove that.

  That will cramp the style of the establishment people on our board and their buddies in the market. It will also earn us a bundle in diverted cash.”

  Ryder intervened, “So you plan to make around a billion by selling fake investments to PAF’s customer base? Then you reckon to sell the bank to the public? You could raise around five billion, if you manage to sell half the shares and the bank’s profits soar as you described. Stephens and I should be able to make a couple of billion on the markets through fraudulent trading. And then the phoney loans will take out, say, another two or three billion. We should make another billion on insider trading. That makes just about twelve billion. IBE cost a billion. PAF must be worth a couple. As that will be lost money, it looks as if you are heading to make around nine billion. That’s easily in the range you just mentioned.

  I assume that the profits on the bank sale would be split with Di Maglio fairly evenly and so we are talking six or seven billion for us and two to three for them.”

  Giovanni shook his head, “We need a better deal for our side than that. I agree we split evenly the money from the bank sale. We should own around half the shares and you should own the other half. But we need more than you just said. I guess our cut on all the scams you are suggesting should be around forty per cent. As for the rest around this table, they should each be in for a few million performance bonus “

  It was a fair deal and Charles nodded in agreement, “We have to sort out an agreement with you Giovanni but that’s about the basis I had planned, although I think you are a bit high on your take on the scams.”

  Charles waited. Giovanni was silent. That meant he would take a lower cut. Charles and Jacqui glanced at each other; the split was more in their favour than they had expected. Charles looked at Di Maglio. He nodded too. Everybody smiled in agreement. This clearly meant a few million personally for Stephens, Giovanni and also Maria. Every one else had a finger in the Di Maglio Empire or the Rossi and Di Maglio holding company, which would get the bulk of the money. Greed triumphed over logic as the outsiders failed to notice that, ominously, the figures were getting to be worth more than their lives.

  Charles interrupted the eager looks. “There is one extra deal. Once IBE’s shares have slumped on the disastrous news, they will be the subject of a bid. The bid will be from Associated.”

  “How can you manage that?” gasped Ryder.

  “It’s simple really. We still have compromising papers on their chairman, Sir Piers, although he does not realise that. You don’t all need to know the details or how we got them, but Jack, Jacqui and I know them. And they are dynamite.”

  Charles had no reason to reveal their contents to Di Maglio or Stephens. The papers showed that Sir Piers was involved in insider dealing at the time of the Associated take-over of their US bank. He had personally made five or six million from that deal. Charles also had some perfectly forged papers that showed he ordered a hit man to take out Jim, Jack Ryder’s former colleague.

  Maria giggled; she also knew of the papers and had been the killer in that incident. The tabloid press had gone to town on the case; it had been a fairly sordid murder. But then everything had been set up to make it look that way to ensure the stories were about the victim and not Jack Ryder. Maria was a perfectionist without any inhibitions when it came to the killing game.

  “I’ll offer Sir Piers his papers once and for all if he takes over IBE. I will play it as if I am contrite. I will worry about his moronic friends on our board, play concerned about our customers. The man’s an idiot and will fall for that. In the end I reckon he’ll pay a couple of billion for what’s left of the bank. He’ll have to act quickly, as otherwise it will have no customers left. But he will. It’s the sort of deal that will appeal to him. Above all he wants his name kept clean. The fool could even get another title for his actions. He’ll save a lot of people from embarrassment. And so the final sale of our stake will bring us in another billion or so.

  That brings us up to around ten billion or so on your figures. Mine would be higher, but that depends on how well we manage to run the scams. There are more gullible investors and idiot bankers out there than you would expect. I’m sure that we can take them for a very bad ride! And the worst it is for them, the better it is for us!”

  Charles stopped talking. Jack Ryder realised that he expected to make quite a bit more. Perhaps they would make another 50% or even more than that. They could really push the boat out on the fraudulent loans. Perhaps they would sell off more than half the shares in the initial public offering of IBE. But the bait was already good enough and they had no need to embellish it further.

  Jack Ryder grinned. Di Maglio was beaming. Everyone else was too.

  “We have a deal,” said Di Maglio.

  Ryder said, “You bet we do.”

  Giovanni asked, “Is it OK if I draft the agreements by tomorrow evening. I’ll keep them simple.”

  Jacqui laughed and suggested, “There should be the usual penalty clauses for non performance.”

  That joke made Di Maglio roar with laughter and slap his thigh theatrically. He winked at Charles and pulled his hand across his throat. The others just sat there in open-mouthed agreement. They were again totting up their greedy vision of unlimited wealth.

  “Are there any other questions?” Charles said, if only to ensure that they all snapped back to reality.

  “Well, yes,” replied Stephens. “What is the timing going to be?”

  “The first thing is that we need an agreement. That should be simple. It will outline the role of each person. It would recognise that I call the shots for everything.”

  Charles waited, just in case there were any objections. Di Maglio, almost automatically, shook his head. He did not say anything. Nobody else reacted.

  “I would ask Giovanni to sort that out. It has to identify the split. The one I had in mind is close to the one Giovanni suggested. We should keep that simple. Other than for the share sale and the profit from insider trading, fifty percent of all remaining profit goes to our holding company. Forty per cent goes to the Di Maglio organisation.”

  “What happens to the insider trading stuff?” queried Giovanni sharply.

  “That goes to Rossi and Di Maglio. We fund it. We take the risk and the profit. That’s our territory and it compensates us for all the business we will miss out whilst we work this deal.”

  “That’s a hell of a bonus for you,” growled Di Maglio.

  “It is part of the deal and it’s not negotiable. Anyway it would be hard to say what insider trading was deal related and Rossi and Di Maglio related. We could never agree a split.”

  Di Maglio looked angry for a moment. It was not a pleasant sight. Then he shrugged his shoulders, “As long as you hit your figures on the shared part, I’ll buy it. But don’t try anything fancy!”

  Charles grinned, “Not with you guys watching. I know your punishment schedule.”

  That raised a wry smile, even from Di Maglio, although his eyes remained cold. He knew he would have no qualms about revenge on Charles or even Jacqui if he felt he was being cheated. And little did he know how much the plan was to cheat him and to what extent.

  Charles allowed a short silence and then continued, “The remaining ten percent of the scam monies is split equally between Giovanni, John, Maria, our holding company and the Di Maglio organisation. That actually would mean that Giovanni, John and Maria will each get around a hundred million. Is everyone happy?”

  This last comment was directed especially at Giovanni, Stephens and Maria, all of whom gasped in astonishment at the size of their cut.

  Giovanni glanced over at Di Maglio, who nodded curtly, if unenthusiastically. Giovanni would need to be careful, Di Magli
o did not want him to have two masters and Charles had just played him into the deal for much more than he would ever have considered.

  Maria smiled, her eyes showing how excited and pleased she was at the prospect. She really was beautiful when she smiled like that. Charles couldn’t recall having seen such a reaction before.

  Stephens jumped in, a sneer on his face, “Why does Maria get a cut? She does nothing.”

  Charles turned round to him and Stephens shuddered as he noticed the look of fury on his face, “Don’t ever question my judgement. I decide why. There are no travellers on this show. We need Maria, believe me.”

  “Sorry,” said Stephens, backing off. “I was just curious.”

  “Then don’t be. Just do as you are told and you can add a nice sum to the five million you made from your last scam. You’re playing with the big boys now. So keep your eye on the ball.”

  Di Maglio came in at that point. His voice, as usual at times like this, was chilling. “If you don’t keep your eye on the ball,” he drawled, “you may find you have none to keep your eye on. So don’t act stupid.”

  Charles grinned over at him, “I think we’re on the same wave-length. But let me carry on. The first thing I want to do is to fabricate some investments for the American market. We need to make them simple. Otherwise they won’t fly. How long do you need to put a package together?”

  Jack Ryder thought for a moment for the question was targeted at him. The others waited expectantly. “You have five million customers in the US. You definitely need simple products.

  We should do the same scam that we ran with Union Bank of Europe a couple of years ago. We can launch a series of funds, which PAF can push at their clients. The sales commission needs to be rich so the bank earns a bundle.

  We make money by creating phoney investments for them to invest in. There are enough options there as that game has been running for years now. We can buy some genuine shares for the funds to invest in, but, before they buy them, we’ll push up their stock prices. We make even more money for ourselves that way.”

  Giovanni chimed in, “If you can start up the funds within a week, I could have the sales literature around the banks within weeks.”

  “I’ll need a few weeks to identify the shares they should invest in. They need to be ones whose prices we can manipulate. We also need to create the phoney securities the funds will buy. I’ll be ready to roll on this one in about three or four weeks.”

  “What about the trading you wanted us to do?” Stephens demanded. He was starting to irritate with his impatience, he could be for the high jump quicker than had been planned. Maria and Charles exchanged knowing glances.

  “Give me time. We’ll come to that later,” Charles said sharply. Stephens flushed. His eyes betrayed anger. Charles ignored that, although he now knew for certain that he would have to use him quickly and then dispose of him as soon as possible.

  “Before we start to boost profits, we need to take over PAF. They are not as profitable as IBE despite their strong customer base. They haven’t been run for profit.”

  Charles looked over at Di Maglio. He had not cared about profits on the banks. That was not why he ran them. He had needed something to help him launder the profits of his other illegal enterprises. That took his energy. But, over time, he had also built up a series of commercial relationships with banks outside his control and really had no need for his own. They were a legacy of the past when bankers used to be honest. These days, with tax and other havens all over the world, there was no shortage of corrupt bankers with dodgy values.

  Charles said, “Both banks should be equal partners. You will own half of the combined bank. I want it to be just under half. We will own the balance and the majority. That way we still call the shots.”

  Di Maglio told Giovanni to get the deal done. The terms were irrelevant. He was looking for the big killing. The deal would be done as soon as the authorities allowed it. Charles guessed that it would be waved through and quickly. The idea of moving the banks out of Di Maglio’s clutches would appeal to the regulators. They had never intimated it, but there was no way that they could not know of his ownership and involvement. But what could they do about it when any action against him could cause a panic among the banks’ five million customers and among the customers of other banks as well? The regulators were in the business of calming markets, not exciting them. IBE could use its token directors from the great and the good to sway them. That would be easy despite Jacqui’s involvement and Charles’ slightly dubious past.

  Charles now turned to Stephens. He was still visibly angry. But, once he saw his role was to be explained, he soon cheered up, “You and Jack Ryder must arrange for a whole series of deals that the bank will undertake and which will not appear accurately in their books. We will play around big time in the markets. We will cash in the gains; the bank will take the losses. You, John, will need to flee and take the can. You have done that before, it shouldn’t be hard. You have no family or relations, and you will be fabulously rich as compensation for your pain! Does that make you happy?”

  He nodded eagerly, “Will you give me a new identity? I’ll need it.”

  “We’re experts at that.”

  “You will work out the trades with Ryder, and you only trade if he agrees with all the details. Can you agree?”

  “No problem. We should start planning next week.”

  “You can start to trade next week as well. You can do it for IBE. After a while, once both banks are put together, you will have more to play with.”

  He was now happy. “It’s going to be fun,” he said, “bloody good fun.”

  Again Maria and Charles exchanged glances. They thought that his use of the word bloody in this context was a bit unfortunate and wondered if he would fall off a tall building or in front of an express train. Maria could organise that.

  Jack Ryder looked pleased, “We make fake trading profits for the bank. If we use state of the art products, we can fool any auditor. People with more integrity and much less skill than us have managed that in the past. But the bank will bleed cash in the end when it fails to get its money back. We’ll have salted that away long before they realise it.”

  “But before that we go to the big deal,” Charles said, “I want that to happen after the next profits are announced. I want us to make at least a billion of profit this year on the combined Group. I suspect that will mean we could sell half of our shares for around five billion. The company as a whole would be worth ten.”

  “The current combined profits are round five hundred million,” said Giovanni. “I suspect we could get the value up to a bit more than ten billion if we manage to turn in over a billion profit in the year of the merger. We could add further to the profits by taking on larger loans for some of the Di Maglio companies. I’ll arrange it and could see that some of those borrowers also go bust once the time is right.”

  “Excellent. We think alike. But don’t be too greedy or it will look too suspicious. Together, though, we could make another billion.”

  Giovanni smiled, pleased to have a more direct role.

  “What about the final scam?” Ryder asked.

  “It’s simple. You go for the ultimate inside trade. You sell shares you don’t own in the bank. You know how to do that. There will be a lot of demand at the time of the sale to the public. Once you have a big enough position, spread widely so it is pretty invisible to the regulators, we’ll put out a profit warning or something to dampen down the market. We then hit the shares.

  There will be scandal after scandal. First, Stephens disappears and we find out about the trading losses. The share price will slump.

  Then we’ll announce the bad loans. The price slumps again.

  We can then get the regulators looking at the investments we have been selling to the bank clients and they’ll find that they are invested in some fairly dodgy and worthless stock. The shares will go into free fall.

&nb
sp; As the shares slump, you buy back; and then I manufacture the bid. Hey presto we’ve made another fortune!”

  “It’ll work,” said Ryder. “No problem. We’ve done similar things before.”

  Di Maglio spoke again, “You reckon you’ll make ten billion over the next year or so. You’re good. But what do you do next? You won’t exactly smell of roses.”

  “I’ll pretend to have been duped. I’ll play the hard luck story. And I’ll be back as I will still have the bulk of my wealth in Rossi and Di Maglio. It’s only the bank that will fail. But we’ll also weaken Associated by the deal. A lot of the business over there will leave the bank. And I believe Mr Di Maglio would agree to stop using them and he is their biggest depositor. When they are weak, we may be able to take them over. But that is not in the plans. That’s an option for the future.”

  There were no other questions. Di Maglio said he had to leave. He needed to get back to the US. Giovanni would go with him. He’d call the next day. Stephens headed off, as did Maria. Jack Ryder, Jacqui and Charles were alone.

  “Charles, that’s brilliant.” Jack Ryder glowed with pride at the ruthless simplicity of Charles’ plan. “And it will work. I’ll get back to Tropez now. I can get the afternoon flight. Tomorrow I’ll start planning. I was getting tired of being a boring fund manager.”

  He was already deep in thought. He gave Jacqui an absent minded kiss, and shook Charles’ hand, clapping him on the back, before heading out. Charles strolled over to the security monitors to see Di Maglio and Giovanni walking to their car in front of the bank. Stephens was in the car park and driving out in his BMW. Maria was getting into her Mercedes coupe. She smiled and waved to the monitor, blowing it a kiss as if to tell them she knew they would be there. Ryder came to the lobby and walked out of the building. He was lucky for a cab was passing. He hailed it and then left their field of vision.