there's what's euphemistically called 'layering', which is a middle-class way of saying 'burying'. The more layers of mind-numbingly complex transactions you make with your dirty money, the cleaner it seems, if only because anyone who tries to follow the paper trail quickly ends up on Prozac. Then there's integration: now your dirty money is indistinguishable from clean, you can feed it back into the economy: legitimate money making more legitimate money, the way Adam Smith and Margaret Thatcher intended.
At the dirty end of the business there's a vibrant and well-lubricated social scene. A criminal mastermind (at least by his own estimation) meets a sharp broker (ditto) at some cocktail party or other - usually in Happy Valley - and gets him good and plastered. The next day the broker, all pie-eyed, is buying hair-of-the-dog for all his office pals on account of he just pulled this really great new client at last night's shindig. And it's only weeks or even months later, when his instructions get all muddled up - full of last minute changes, investments in unrelated third parties, purchased outside a regular custodial system, cancelled early, refunded to third-party accounts, or what you will - that your credulous broker starts getting a nasty taste in his mouth.
At the other end of the business - the end we had most to do with - is the slew of strategies, practices, legal obligations and compliances that are supposed to prevent this kind of scenario from ever happening. If companies don't put safety procedures in place, or more usually if they fail to comply with their own safety procedures, then they're breaking the law. And the only way you find out about that is by chasing paper. Lots of paper. Mountains of bloody paper.
Maybe my old boss in Rio had a point about my buccaneering instinct, because soon my disappointment and frustration began to show in my work.
'You can't go pulling people around in bars. You haven't the authority.'
'For God's sake, Frank,' I said - and sank uninvited into the chair opposite him - 'he knew when they approached him that the deal wasn't straight. What kind of investments were they suggesting anyway?
Two-per cent. Who the hell invests clean funds at such a shitty rate of return? If we can only - '
'You're not a policeman and you're not empowered to question witnesses.'
'Frank, the paper trail's cold, like I said. Haven't you read my report?'
There was a moment's impasse and then, quite unexpectedly, Frank Hamley grinned. 'You're a little monkey, Adam.'
'Oh?'
'Don't take it as a compliment. Right now you're my office's biggest liability.'
'Because I meet someone in a bar?'
'Because you scared the life out of him.'
'Well - '
'Tipping off a suspect carries a jail term, Adam.' He left that hanging over me for a good long while. It soaked in well enough. At last he relented: 'I can't use you in here,' he said. I stared at him. I'd never been sacked in my life.
'Oh don't look so gobsmacked,' Hamley complained, waving away my astonishment. 'It's not like we're going to stick your head on a pike.'
My dad was delighted when I told him I was moving desks. I tried playing it down, but it didn't do any good. 'It's not a promotion, dad. It's a secondment.'
'Do you get more money?'
'No, dad.'
Hamley had been very friendly, very avuncular. He promised to smooth things over at work about what he dubbed my 'over-zealous approach'. And, since I was not 'a natural team player', perhaps it would be best, he said, if he gave me 'more of a roving brief.'
This wasn't unusual. With few resources of its own, Hamley's Serious Crime Group team regularly provided expert assistance to other Hong Kong agencies. 'ICAC would really benefit from your perspective,' he said.
'I don't know anything about them.'
'Four legs and a tail: what's the difficulty?' Victor Pang took a final slurped spoonful of bird's nest soup and leaned back in his wing chair, weather-eyeing the monitors strung above the
At the dirty end of the business there's a vibrant and well-lubricated social scene. A criminal mastermind (at least by his own estimation) meets a sharp broker (ditto) at some cocktail party or other - usually in Happy Valley - and gets him good and plastered. The next day the broker, all pie-eyed, is buying hair-of-the-dog for all his office pals on account of he just pulled this really great new client at last night's shindig. And it's only weeks or even months later, when his instructions get all muddled up - full of last minute changes, investments in unrelated third parties, purchased outside a regular custodial system, cancelled early, refunded to third-party accounts, or what you will - that your credulous broker starts getting a nasty taste in his mouth.
At the other end of the business - the end we had most to do with - is the slew of strategies, practices, legal obligations and compliances that are supposed to prevent this kind of scenario from ever happening. If companies don't put safety procedures in place, or more usually if they fail to comply with their own safety procedures, then they're breaking the law. And the only way you find out about that is by chasing paper. Lots of paper. Mountains of bloody paper.
Maybe my old boss in Rio had a point about my buccaneering instinct, because soon my disappointment and frustration began to show in my work.
'You can't go pulling people around in bars. You haven't the authority.'
'For God's sake, Frank,' I said - and sank uninvited into the chair opposite him - 'he knew when they approached him that the deal wasn't straight. What kind of investments were they suggesting anyway?
Two-per cent. Who the hell invests clean funds at such a shitty rate of return? If we can only - '
'You're not a policeman and you're not empowered to question witnesses.'
'Frank, the paper trail's cold, like I said. Haven't you read my report?'
There was a moment's impasse and then, quite unexpectedly, Frank Hamley grinned. 'You're a little monkey, Adam.'
'Oh?'
'Don't take it as a compliment. Right now you're my office's biggest liability.'
'Because I meet someone in a bar?'
'Because you scared the life out of him.'
'Well - '
'Tipping off a suspect carries a jail term, Adam.' He left that hanging over me for a good long while. It soaked in well enough. At last he relented: 'I can't use you in here,' he said. I stared at him. I'd never been sacked in my life.
'Oh don't look so gobsmacked,' Hamley complained, waving away my astonishment. 'It's not like we're going to stick your head on a pike.'
My dad was delighted when I told him I was moving desks. I tried playing it down, but it didn't do any good. 'It's not a promotion, dad. It's a secondment.'
'Do you get more money?'
'No, dad.'
Hamley had been very friendly, very avuncular. He promised to smooth things over at work about what he dubbed my 'over-zealous approach'. And, since I was not 'a natural team player', perhaps it would be best, he said, if he gave me 'more of a roving brief.'
This wasn't unusual. With few resources of its own, Hamley's Serious Crime Group team regularly provided expert assistance to other Hong Kong agencies. 'ICAC would really benefit from your perspective,' he said.
'I don't know anything about them.'
'Four legs and a tail: what's the difficulty?' Victor Pang took a final slurped spoonful of bird's nest soup and leaned back in his wing chair, weather-eyeing the monitors strung above the
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