Cornucopia

by John Francis Kinsella

  *

  Even though the Russian had feared the worst he was surprised by the speed and determination of Moscow. Suddenly he was a wanted man, hunted by the Kremlin and its all powerful occupier. Like all Russians he had grown up in the knowledge that he could never win against the unpredictable, all present, corrupt state. It was a fact of life, like the Russian winter, that had to be lived with in the same way Russians always had.

  Fortunately for Tarasov, British courts treated extradition demands from Moscow in such cases as politically motivated. A similar such case had been that of Boris Berezovsky, who was later found hanged in his bathroom under mysterious circumstances. Another was the demand for the extradition of Yevgeny Chichvarkin, which was debooted after he claimed his business had been seized by corrupt officials.

  The banker’s outspoken criticism of the governments programme, in which businesses exchanged their dollar reserves for rouble denominated government bonds, had angered the Kremlin and set in motion a smear campaign piloted by Andrei Azhishchenkov. Tarasov was accused of unpatriotic acts, bordering treason, including encouraging and facilitating capital flight.

  Almost every Russian oligarchs owed his wealth to the privatisation of state enterprises during the period that immediately followed the demise of the Soviet Union. More by good fortune and opportunism, than by their skills, certain Russians, used to the brutal take it or leave it business environment of the Communist world, found themselves at the head of industries that were often monopolistic on a local, regional or national base.

  Fortunes were made overnight. High ranking officials and self appointed political leaders took advantage of their power either by seizing businesses and markets for their own advantage, or that of their families and close friends.

  Everything was up for grabs: natural resources, basic materials, refining and manufacturing industries, construction, banks, distribution, transport, food and drinks, the list was long. Combinats were dismantled, their different divisions grabbed by a hitherto unknown species of entrepreneur formed in the roughshod methods of the Soviet Union.

  Tarasov had financed such entrepreneurs, one of which was the new owner of a huge industrial bakery plant, previously part of a vast virtually bankrupt industrial complex, a former Soviet combinat, which had dominated the life of a middle-sized town near Ufa. In the economic conditions that reigned in the early post-Soviet period, the combinat could no longer fulfill the social role it had played under the old regime. Its dismantlement, or rather abrupt financial collapse, saw its multiple services handed over to any dynamic manager who seemed capable of running them on a viable business basis.

  The banker provided the loans necessary to capitalise the business and soon the enterprising manager found himself sole owner of the town’s only bakery with its buildings, equipment and workers, supplying tens of thousands with their daily needs. With hard work and careful management it was transformed from an inefficient loss making, socialistic style, production unit, into a thriving business. In the space of the three or four years that followed his takeover the baker became a rich man, expanding his market to nearby towns and villages without any real competition to speak of.

  It was an extraordinary make or break moment for such men, and Tarasov himself had been one of them.

  However, many of the changes that had taken place since the dismantlement of the Soviet Union were superficial and corruption was rampant in all its diverse forms. Material improvement had come for many, mostly those in Moscow, Saint Petersburg and large cities. Home ownership, cars, foreign holidays became common place on condition the economy prospered. Regrettably, the economy of the Federation had not evolved, in reality industry withered, as the country became even more dependent on commodities, that is to say oil, gas, basic chemicals and minerals, leaving it vulnerable to the caprices of global commodity markets.

  When the crunch came, those who could got out, and those who could not, ordinary Russians, hunkered down, waiting and hoping life would improve, a long tradition in Russia.

  Tarasov in his soul was like any other Russian and behind his brash style was the dread of the age old Russian demon that came with a knock on the door in the depth of the night. Perhaps the demon had changed, abandoned his trademarks: his heavy leather coat, a fedora pulled down over his forehead, but the result was no less brutal and the prison cell as hellish as ever.

  He feared assassins in the pay of the FSB who stalked the enemies of the Kremlin. He had known others and had lived in their shadow for over two decades. As a young banker, in Yeltsin’s days, bodyguards watched over him day and night as bankers and businessmen were gunned down in broad daylight on the streets of Moscow, when gunslingers walked the streets when assassination, kidnapping and extortion were rife.

  Gangsters were paid to eliminate business rivals, to settle debts, rival underworld groups fought over almost everything. Casinos sprung up everywhere and gang warfare went with the business. There was so much money to be made from gambling, nightclubs and prostitution that Tarasov’s bank worked overtime, laundering the vast sums money that flowed in, most of which was converted into investments in real estate.

  Just like Wyatt Earp, Putin’s no nonsense methods changed all that. He had the most unruly criminal elements run out of town, and in Moscow and Petersburg the Bratva withdrew from sight into its sinister world. At the same time banks cleaned up their game and turned their attention to financing aboveboard residential and commercial property development as the economy boomed.

  As his wealth grew and in spite of an improved climate of security in Moscow, Tarasov’s security team was reinforced, their role was to watch over him and his family around the clock, protect his multiple residences, offices, motor vehicles, jets and yachts, travelling with him wherever he went, vetting those who met with him, securing the hotels and places he visited.

  In London it was different. There he discovered he could walk the streets in Chelsea or Knightsbridge with little risk of danger, though he took the precaution of not openly displaying his wealth, unlike certain of his countrymen who flashed their money around with high profile receptions and in extravagant nightclubs.

  Tarasov’s most urgent task was to protect his family before the news broke and the media circus arrived. He informed his housekeeper they would be spending the weekend in Dorset, where he owned a property in Poole. Then, with his wife Kseniya and their two young children, they discretely quit their Knightsbridge home.

  To avoid arousing suspicions they packed no more than a couple of overnight bags with the children’s usual affairs. Tarasov switched off his mobile and removed the SIM card. From his safe he took a couple of new unused phones; a ready prepared envelope containing passports, driving licences and other essential documents. In addition he took a substantial sum of money: pounds, dollars and euros as well as three credit cards registered to offshore accounts.

  George Pyke, his loyal head of security was alerted and informed by Tarasov of his plans. Under a veil of the strictest security Pyke set up an invisible round-the-clock vigil, posting his most trusted men, armed and ready for action, to watch over the oligarch and his family. The oligarch’s security was not to be taken lightly after the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London and more recently one of the most Kremlin’s outspoken opponents, Boris Nemtsov, on a Moscow street just one hundred metres from the Kremlin.

  Tarasov had his driver deliver the Land Rover to the front door and help put their affairs in the rear, it was as though the family was taking off for a weekend break. Then with no more ado his housekeeper and driver politely waved goodbye and he turned out into the Knightsbridge traffic and headed for Chiswick and the M4.

  The oligarch had never had the least illusion as to risks great wealth and the power it engendered, financial power that is, a position that provoked both jealousy and envy in high spheres where courtiers vied for influence and the prince’s favour.

  Tarasov had witnessed how others, who had been equally privileged m
embers of the prince’s inner circle, had suddenly fallen from grace. The court of the Kremlin was fraught with as many dangers as that of a medieval czar’s.

  Hardliners, like General Alexander Bastrykin, part of the select circle of silovoki1, known for their hard attitudes and brutal methods, would show no mercy. Bastrykin, an opponent of democracy, civil rights and what he described as pseudo liberal values, saw the fall in oil prices and the devaluation of the rouble as part of an ongoing plot against Russia and men like Tarasov as instruments of the West.

  Bastrykin, responsible for the investigation of serious crime, favoured the criminalisation of denial of the Crimea’s annexation, and he saw Tarasov, a partisan of a negotiated settlement, as a traitor, who should be given short shrift.

  Tarasov did not take the Newbury exit, but continued west along the M4. Four hours later they arrived in the small port of Fishguard situated on the Welsh coast, where he booked a passage on the next ferry for Rosslare in Ireland. He registered as Henri Pijselman, a Belgian national resident in the Republic of Ireland. At immigration he presented Belgian passports for his family and was waved through without any further formality.

  His flight had been carefully planned. Early on in his career, Tarasov’s now defunct protégé, Nikolai Yakovlevich Dermirshian, a brutal gangster, had warned him of the dangers that stalked men in his position and the unquestioning need of a plan B, an échappatoire, which could be instantly put into effect in case of imminent danger.

  At the first hint Vladimir Putin’s rule hardening, Tarasov had quietly set about establishing an offshore safe haven for his family. If things ever went badly wrong in Russia, or if a confrontation such as with the Ukraine got out of hand he had much to lose.

  Thus in 2011, after a quiet visit to Ireland, in the company of his close friend, Steve Howard, in whom he had an implicit trust, he bought a large country house on the banks of the Shannon to the west of Limerick City, registered in the name of an offshore company based in Panama. Apart from serving as a very private retreat for breaks with his family and very close friends, it was a safe house, equipped with all essential needs, on permanent standby, for an extended family stay.

  1. Powerful former members of the state’s security apparatus, KGB, GRU, FSB and SVR.

  SHALE

  Barton was not an advocate of Paul Samuelson, Nobel Prize winner for economics in 1970, who had said: Investing is like watching paint dry or grass grow. If you want excitement go to Las Vegas. Investing for Barton was a fast moving game, though he never saw it as gambling. It was an art of considerable skill where the pros and cons were carefully weighed, and the moves fast.

  However, before getting into shale oil and gas he had hesitated. The risk of a bubble was definitely there, but after discovering China he knew alternatives to conventional oil had to be developed and the only one of real promise to an individual investor like himself was in unconventional sources. His investment of a quarter of a million dollars in a US shale oil and gas producer had doubled in value in a little under a year in an almost incredible reversal of American fortunes.

  The US, already one of the world’s leading producers, was on the point of becoming a net exporter of oil and gas, releasing it from the trap of Middle East energy suppliers. High oil prices had stimulated the development of new extraction technologies, which increased its exploitable oil reserves almost overnight.

  On the negative side was the real possibility of an oil glut as markets sought to develop alternatives sources of supply. Geopolitical risks were on the increase and energy independence became primordial. The Arab Spring instead of bringing peace and democracy had transformed the Middle East and North Africa into a bloody war zone. Libya had become dysfunctional state of warring factions, Egypt had fallen under the control of a new military strongman, whilst Iraq, Syria and the Yemen burnt.

  Barton could not have been described as a novice in investing. But he was, or had become, a risk taker. It was however untrue to imagine he had decamped because of recent losses: not only were they modest, but he could afford them. His decision was more to do with his disgust after the debacle at INI, as well as the ensuing media attention which had troubled him.

  It was not the first time he had dropped everything and cut loose, which was not, contrary to what could be imagined, the simplest response to the ambient problems, but it was expedient. It took a certain amount of audacity, and money, to drop everything and set out to in search of a different world, for that’s what it was. Beyond that Tom Barton realized deep down he had a certain predilection for adventure.

  American shale oil rig

  But life did not only consist of adventure, there were obligations and a certain number of those he had admittedly left in suspense.

  Having bet on shale oil and on Russia, his winning streak had come to an abrupt end, in the same way as it had for those he had often disdained as being naive, those who had taken out unreal mortgages, who had spent extravagantly on consumer goods and luxuries: the ‘chaves’, as they were frequently described. Was he not one of them now? He felt the need for purification, a fresh page, financed of course from his rainy day accounts beyond the reach of the taxman and society’s other distasteful executors.

  Perhaps he was a prudent man, a contradiction in terms, considering he was about to plunge into the unknown.

  His ideas were vague. He knew next to nothing about Colombia, beside its infamous reputation as a producer of cocaine, its battle against the Farc guerillas and its all pervading violence.

  From there he would perhaps go north to Central America, or perhaps head south to Peru or Brazil. But first, he would to see what Colombia held.