Informant

by Kurt Eichenwald

  The ADM executives were perplexed by the news. They had met with the Koreans not long before, and everything had seemed fine. They had not raised any complaints.

  “Hopefully, they’ll come to reason,’’ Whitacre said.

  Andreas stroked his chin. He remembered one thing the Koreans had said at the last meeting, when he had brought up the idea of having ADM invest in Sewon.

  “Remember them commenting, ‘Would that be legal?’ ” Andreas said to Wilson.

  “Yeah.’’

  “He asked that?’’ Whitacre asked.

  “I wonder if that’s got something to do with it,’’ Andreas said.

  Whitacre shook his head.

  “No?’’ Andreas asked.

  “You mean, worry about antitrust and so on?’’ Whitacre asked.

  Andreas nodded. “Mmm-hmm.’’

  “They’re not concerned about that,’’ Whitacre said.

  The discussions continued over whitefish and salad, but nothing was resolved. Andreas patted his mouth with a white linen napkin as a waiter arrived to pour coffee. They skipped dessert and headed out of the restaurant. They had accomplished what they needed—updating each other on the conspiracy to make sure that it held.

  Andreas shook Mimoto’s hand. “Good luck in all your businesses.”

  “Thank you very much,’’ Mimoto replied.

  “We hope you make a lot of money,’’ Andreas said. “And if you do, we will, too.’’

  In the cab, Andreas reviewed the meeting with Whitacre and Wilson. The three laughed at how upset the Japanese executives had been about Andreas’s failure to visit Tokyo.

  Abruptly, Whitacre turned to Wilson. “Did Kuno Sommer call you this morning?’’

  Wilson ignored the question.

  “He was getting a little bit irritating, really,’’ Andreas said of Mimoto. “Sorta like I’m not coming over on purpose.’’

  Whitacre agreed. “Mick Andreas took buying an acquisition and making money over coming to Japan to have dinner and sushi.’’

  Wilson chuckled. Then they all laughed about Whitacre’s repeated mispronunciation of Toba’s name.

  “I should have said, ‘Tell Tobi hello for me,’ ” Andreas joked.

  Whitacre turned to Wilson.

  “Kuno Sommer call you this morning?’’

  About an hour later, the three were on the corporate plane nearing Decatur, still joking. Eventually, there was a long silence.

  “Hey, Terry,’’ Whitacre suddenly said. “From a business standpoint, is Kuno pretty reasonable?’’

  “Who?’’ Wilson asked.

  “Kuno Sommer.’’

  Wilson stared at Whitacre. What was all this about Kuno Sommer?

  “I’ve only been around him once,’’ Wilson said. “He seems to be pretty reasonable.’’

  “Nothing like the Japs here,’’ Whitacre said.

  Wilson shifted in his seat. His back was killing him. Whitacre asked if it was true that Hoffman-LaRoche was stronger in vitamins than in citric acid.

  Wilson changed the subject. He wasn’t comfortable with all this talk about Kuno Sommer and citric.

  At the airport, the three climbed into Whitacre’s car for the drive to the office. From the backseat, Wilson stared at Whitacre’s head. It looked funny.

  “Whitacre, what are you doing?’’ Wilson asked. Whitacre’s hair looked like it was two-toned, he said. Was he dying it?

  “Kinda bleaches a little bit,’’ Whitacre said. “Especially in the summertime.’’

  “Has Sue told you it looks better that way?’’ Wilson asked, referring to a woman at the office. “Or what’s the deal?’’

  “Sue likes that,’’ Whitacre said.

  Andreas smiled, half raising a hand. “I’m gonna ask you a few questions about that,’’ he said. “Sue is getting married, right?’’

  Yes, Whitacre said. Sue was getting married and moving to Canada.

  “What else is new around the office?’’ Andreas asked.

  “Amy’s divorced,’’ Wilson said.

  Whitacre asked if they were talking about the same Amy who used to spend time with another senior ADM executive.

  “He used to fuck her, but he doesn’t anymore,’’ Andreas said. “She loves to give head and fuck.’’

  Whitacre looked in the rearview mirror. “Is she really getting a divorce, Terry?’’

  “Yeah,’’ Wilson said. “I’ve been tryin’ to tell her how to—”

  “How to give blow jobs?’’ Andreas interrupted.

  “No,’’ Wilson answered, smiling. “How to take care of the kids so she doesn’t have any problems.’’

  Andreas looked into the backseat.

  “How about that little fat one over there by you?’’ he said.

  “Anna?’’ Wilson asked.

  “No, no. Yeah, Anna, too. Who’s fuckin’ Anna now?’’

  Wilson shook his head. “I don’t know who’s fucking Anna.’’

  “You think she’s pretty much of a rounder?’’ Andreas asked.

  Whitacre smiled. “She’s very, very, very friendly. I think she’s very bored with her life here. I don’t mean ADM, either; I’m talkin’ after-ADM life.’’

  “So,’’ Andreas said, “she likes to just go out and fuck?’’

  A minute later, the men brought up another woman at the company. Andreas shot Whitacre a look.

  “I know you fucked her a few times,’’ he said.

  “No, no,’’ Whitacre replied.

  Andreas smiled. “You look at her up close, she is not that attractive.’’

  “No,’’ Wilson said. “But she is built.’’

  “I don’t like her, though,’’ Andreas said. “She’s so masculine or something.’’

  Wilson sat up. “She’s got lips, look like a black. Sensual. You know they’d fit right around.’’

  Whitacre coughed. He was painfully aware that this conversation was being taped.

  “Her makeup disguises what she really looks like,’’ Andreas said. “She’s got kind of a flat face and oval eyes.’’

  Wilson coughed. “I thought she might be somewhat Hispanic.’’

  “Could be Hispanic,’’ Andreas said.

  “Latin,’’ said Whitacre.

  “She’s got big lips,’’ Wilson repeated. “Like a black.’’

  Andreas smiled. “She’d give great head.’’

  He turned to Whitacre, asking to hear about some of the new women at work. Whitacre mentioned a woman who had recently joined ADM.

  “You were trying to get in her pants, and she wouldn’t talk to you,’’ said Andreas.

  “She’s just a quiet gal,’’ Whitacre said.

  “Sort of a little meek-lookin’ gal,” Andreas added.

  “Yeah,’’ Whitacre said. “But she looks like she’s an—”

  “Looks like a whore,’’ Andreas interrupted. “Looks like a fuckin’ whore.’’

  Whitacre pulled into ADM, circling the car around to the parking garage. In an instant, the three executives—the vice-chairman and two division presidents of a Fortune 500 company—walked back into the corporate headquarters, smiling and politely bidding hello to some of the female employees they had just been tearing apart so venomously.

  “Brian, I’ll tell you, Terry was really angry with me today,’’ Whitacre said over the telephone.

  It was the next day. Whitacre was calling Shepard from Scottsdale, saying that Wilson had confronted him at 9:15 that morning, furious with him for speaking too openly during the taxi ride in Chicago.

  “He told me, ‘You never talk that openly because there could be undercover agents everywhere, especially in Chicago,’ ” Whitacre said.

  He had argued that Andreas had been just as talkative, but Wilson didn’t want to hear it.

  “And, Brian, there was another thing bothering him.”

  “What?’’

  “Kuno Sommer.”

  “What about him?’’

&
nbsp; “He told me, ‘Don’t worry so much about me and Kuno. He may be your friend, but the part I’m talking to him about has nothing to do with you.’ ”

  Shepard hung up the phone a few minutes later. If Wilson was getting this antsy about Kuno Sommer, they were going to have to figure out another way to develop information on Whitacre’s friend.

  Two days later, Whitacre glanced up at Mummy Mountain in Scottsdale as he walked past a sparkling swimming pool near the lobby of Marriott’s Mountain Shadows Resort. Palm trees swayed in the breeze, but the scenic panorama didn’t deter Whitacre from the business at hand. He headed into the hotel, toward a conference room reserved for a sales meeting. Near the room, Whitacre saw a few other ADM employees. Some of his best friends at the company were here with him.

  By the doorway, Whitacre ran into two friends, Sid Hulse and Reinhart Richter. The three greeted each other effusively before heading in to find their seats. Whitacre had recruited both men to ADM. Hulse ran ADM’s lysine sales effort from Atlanta and was probably Whitacre’s best friend at the company.

  Richter was the head of ADM Mexico, but maintained frequent contact with Whitacre. In 1989, while the two had been palling around at an industry conference in Atlanta, Whitacre had told him about being orphaned at a young age and adopted by a wealthy man. Richter had listened, enraptured, as Whitacre told of his adoptive father’s generosity—how he had given one million dollars to each of Whitacre’s three children. At the time, Richter had cautioned that Mark and Ginger had a great responsibility in making sure that children blessed with so much remained motivated.

  Richter took his seat on the left side of the room, across from Hulse. The room quickly filled with ADM staffers. Marty Allison, Whitacre’s first hire at ADM who now was a top sales representative in Europe, slipped into the room. He traded a few laughs with Whitacre before settling into his chair.

  Sunlight draped the room in a golden glow. Whitacre smiled.

  “Okay, well, we’ve got a lot to talk about,’’ he said. “So let’s get started.’’

  The discussion began with a review of general sales topics for the lysine market. The assembled executives took notes as they listened to Whitacre.

  “Let’s look at some numbers,’’ Whitacre continued.

  He turned on an overhead projector and a white light hit the screen behind him. Whitacre placed a chart on it, filling the screen with bar graphs that showed the production for each lysine manufacturer.

  “Okay, these are the quarterly production figures we obtained in meetings with our competitors,’’ Whitacre said.

  Allison could not believe what he was hearing. He knew about the price-fixing meetings—he had already attended a regional meeting himself. But few others in the room had been told about them. And there was no way Whitacre could have obtained the numbers without breaking the law. Such quarterly production figures were not even disclosed to company investors, much less competitors. It was clear evidence that price-fixing was taking place.

  Glancing up, Allison eyed the other executives in the room. All of them—Richter, Hulse, and six others—were staring at each other in amazement. The room was filled with seasoned sales professionals, and none of them had ever seen anything like this before.

  “Now,’’ Whitacre said, “I’m not handing out copies of this, ’cause I don’t want them going around. But go ahead and take notes if you want.’’

  The executives wrote down the once-secret numbers from ADM’s competitors. No one objected; no one expressed discomfort at participating in a crime.

  And no one from the FBI knew that this was happening.

  The length of the Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich was jammed with shoppers marveling at store windows that beckoned with Sprungli chocolates, Cartier watches, and Tiffany jewelry. The road opened up at the Paradeplatz, the erstwhile parade ground that serves as the town square. There, a uniformed employee held open the door of the Savoy Baur en Ville, one of Switzerland’s most elegant hotels. Whitacre emerged from the lobby, nodding his thanks.

  Whitacre had arrived in Zurich the day before, October 24, in preparation for the next lysine price-fixing meeting, scheduled to be held that afternoon at the Dolder Grand Hotel. This time, there would be no recording, and neither Shepard nor Herndon had accompanied him. The meeting today was little more than another update on the conspiracy; a briefing from Whitacre would be ample evidence. For once, Whitacre was alone. He could do as he pleased.

  Outside, Whitacre watched a train headed to Zurich’s central railway station. Close by, a church bell tolled the hour. It was 10:00 in the morning. Whitacre picked up his pace as he headed toward a building on the edge of the Paradeplatz. The Zurich office of the Swiss Bank Corporation. His destination.

  Whitacre headed briskly into the lobby. A hall porter dressed in a topcoat stood nearby.

  “Guten Morgen,’’ Whitacre said to the porter. “Ich möchte Herr Briel finden, bitte.’’

  The porter pointed toward an elevator. “Herr Briel ist nach oben am vierten Stock,’’ he said.

  Whitacre nodded. “Danke schön.’’

  As instructed, Whitacre headed across the lobby to the elevators, then pushed the button for the fourth floor. There, he approached a receptionist.

  “Guten Tag,’’ he said. “Wie geht es Ihnen? Ich suche Herr Briel, bitte.’’

  The receptionist gestured toward a chair. “Nehmen Sie Platz, bitte,’’ she said.

  Whitacre eased into the rich leather chair in front of the receptionist’s desk. He watched as she walked back toward the bank offices. In a moment, she returned, followed by a young, clean-cut man with brown hair and a wide smile. Whitacre had never seen the man before but knew this must be Daniel Briel.

  “Mr. Whitacre,’’ the young man said enthusiastically as he extended a hand.

  Whitacre stood, flashing a smile as he clasped Briel’s hand. “Jawohl. Guten Morgen, Herr Briel. Wie geht es Ihnen?’’

  “Gut, gut,’’ Briel said, inwardly wincing at Whitacre’s pronunciation. “Wie geht’s? Gut daβ wir uns eben getroffen haben.’’

  Whitacre nodded, smiling.

  Together, the two men headed back to a private area, toward a windowless office. Whitacre walked in, taking a seat. Briel quietly closed the office’s heavy wooden door. No one outside the room could hear them. Their conversation wouldn’t take long.

  The news Whitacre brought back from Switzerland was incredible: The lysine conspirators wanted to meet again in the United States, this time in Atlanta.

  At a meeting in Springfield, Whitacre told Shepard and Herndon that the others had been spooked by news of a price-fixing investigation of European cement manufacturers. Jacques Chaudret was particularly worried, saying he would not meet again without the cover of an industry meeting. Everyone agreed. The next such meeting was a mid-January poultry convention in Atlanta. Most of the executives were already scheduled to attend and agreed that it would be safe to hold a price-fixing meeting there.

  The prospect of another American meeting set off an enormous debate among the antitrust team. Since they already had the evidence against the foreign nationals—but might not be able to extradite them later—should they all be arrested in Atlanta?

  Quick arrests presented big problems: Indictments would have to be handed up within weeks. The prosecutors would have little time to use the grand jury as an investigative tool. Making it worse, once the executives were indicted, they could insist on a speedy trial. That could leave the government hanging—a thousand pages of tape transcripts were yet to be typed. The prosecutors could be forced to go to trial without being fully prepared.

  The realities forced the decision: The foreign lysine competitors would be allowed to leave the United States. But the debate underscored the need to begin massive transcription efforts. Right away.

  Ginger Whitacre descended the staircase at her Moweaqua home, listening as rain drummed loudly on the roof. A fierce weekend thunderstorm had just blown in, and it sounded pa
rticularly vicious. Strolling through the living room, Ginger wondered where Mark was. Despite all their years together, Ginger found that she no longer understood her husband. Something in him had changed, something had been lost.

  It wasn’t just his frequent absences anymore, or his repeated failure to attend family events or to just come home for dinner. Those aspects of his behavior had almost become accepted in the household as a given. But now, even when he was home, he wasn’t completely there. Mark seemed to be drifting through his family, with the detachment of a commuter waiting for a train to take him away.

  But there was more. Ginger didn’t understand it, but Mark had just become weird. Over the summer, they had built horse stables across the street, and Ginger loved to relax with an occasional ride. But Mark would disappear to the stables for hours, often not returning until 2:00 in the morning. Usually he would come home saying that he had been brushing the horses. Brushing horses for three or four hours? Then, a few hours later, he would head for work. It just wasn’t normal. He seemed to be getting almost no sleep.

  Ginger was getting ready to call out Mark’s name when she heard a gas-powered engine turn on outside.

  “Oh, no!’’ she said, walking over to the window.

  Mark’s other obsession. He had been leaning on their gardener to keep every leaf off the driveway. It was no easy task—the leaves from a two-hundred-year-old walnut tree covered the property in the fall. But Mark couldn’t stand them there, ever.

  Ginger reached the window and looked outside.

  Wind and rain rustled the walnut tree, sending leaves cascading onto the driveway. Waiting there with a leaf blower in hand was Mark. The rain soaked him as he aimed the blower at the sopping-wet leaves. Puddles of water blew into droplets as clumps of leaves tumbled off the driveway. A flash of lightning lit the sky. Mark kept working, dripping wet.

  Ginger closed her eyes, feeling frightened and helpless. What in the world was wrong with him? What was happening to her husband?

  • • •

  In October of 1994, the Antitrust Division was making plans for how to handle the criminal trial of ADM. Raids of the company were expected in a matter of months, but the lawyers needed for the case were still not in place. The Chicago antitrust office did not even have a permanent chief. On top of that, while Robin Mann was talented, she was not among the division’s most experienced litigators.