Sohlberg and the White Death

by Jens Amundsen

  ~ ~ ~

  “Fabrizio,” said Domenico Pelle, “very few members of the 'Ndrangheta know all of the details about our businesses. Granted that all members know some stuff . . . but all they see is the outline of the shadow. . . . Correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “The great majority of our people only know the most general and vaguest of information. We need to keep it that way in case any family member feels the need to talk to the police. Understand?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “You agree with this?” said Domenico Pelle with the solemnity of a confessor priest.

  “Absolutely.”

  “You swear to never reveal to anyone what we will speak about?”

  “I do.”

  “Fabrizio . . . I’m going to give you a lot of information to digest. You will hear a lot of details about our operations.”

  “That’s okay.”

  Domenico Pelle stared straight into the eyes of the young mobster. “Fabrizio . . . I know that you’re going to make an effort to memorize this information because you are not lazy or stupid. You are willing to learn. Lazy and stupid people get bored with details and facts. You don’t. That’s why Don Zappia picked you.”

  “I understand.”

  “Are you ready to learn?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you understand that we must make sure that very few members have full knowledge of all the facts as to all of the 'Ndrangheta businesses . . . specially our coca business?”

  “I do.”

  “Only the bosses and their number two men know everything because every family has agreed to keep the right hand from knowing what the left hand is doing. For example . . . if members of the Pelle family work in buying Columbian product then the Pelle family is not allowed to work in coca distribution or in money laundering. Do you agree to keep it that way?”

  “I do.”

  “Fabrizio . . . we have a special challenge because we make so much money from the import and distribution business. Every day in our coca business we collect an average of 120 million in cash currency all over Europe . . . Australia . . . and parts of the Americas where we are establishing more branches with family members who need the work.”

  “I understand.”

  “Most of the cash is in euros. About a third comes in U.S. dollars. Keep in mind that we only deal with local wholesalers and major retailers and that we only take payment in the 500 denomination for the euro and 100 for the U.S. dollar. We never accept bills in smaller denominations.”

  “Of course.”

  “We take the cash to money brokers . . . we call them street brokers . . . they help us change the cash into bank deposits that can then be easily moved around by check or wire transfer. . . . The money brokers are all legit businessmen who need easy profit to subsidize their legal business operations.

  “The street brokers let us use their facilities and names and bank accounts for a 2% or 3% commission. Some own bakeries or bars or nightclubs or concert venues or restaurants or casinos . . . some are small or medium-sized supermarket chains or retail chains . . . or they own vending machine companies. Depending on the country they might own stores that sell lottery tickets or stores that operate as pawn shops. . . . They are all people who deal in a lot of cash and don’t attract attention. Sometimes we even buy and own the business. Understand?”

  “I do,” said Morabito.

  ~ ~ ~

  The consigliere recited the names of the families and capos who were in charge of making sure that the street brokers did their job quietly and without stealing a dime from the 'Ndrangheta. Pelle resumed his lesson:

  “The street brokers deposit our money in their bank accounts . . . they then pay us that day with many checks and wire transfers because we own companies that pretend to be their vendors or lenders. We own hundreds of companies in all sorts of industries that act as vendors and finance companies to the money brokers.”

  “Are these real companies that we own?”

  Pelle appreciated the question. Fabrizio Morabito was the right man for the job. Pelle said:

  “Oh yes. Our companies have offices and employees and accountants and bookkeepers and the companies pay taxes. The companies help us hide our ownership of the money from the law. These vendors and finance companies have their own vendors and finance companies that they do business with. We also own those companies . . . and that’s where we start to consolidate the amounts into multi-million euro or dollar transactions that flow up through several cycles and companies that we control until the money is parked with the piggy banks.”

  “Piggy banks?” said Fabrizio Morabito with an arched eyebrow.

  “They’re legit companies that we own . . . each company has yearly revenues in the hundreds of millions of euros or dollars.”

  At this point Pelle stopped to name the families and capos in charge of the piggy banks.

  Fabrizio hoped that he could remember all of the names. Some of the names surprised him because he thought that those families or capos were small bit players of no consequence. Now he knew better.

  ~ ~ ~

  Domenico Pelle observed his initiate and gave him a few seconds to absorb the secret knowledge. “The piggy banks lend money to legitimate commodity brokers and traders who are based all over the world but mostly in New York and London and Geneva Switzerland. . . .”

  “Like who?”

  “Billion dollar companies with names that you and 99.9% of the world have never heard of . . . Vitol . . . Glencore that used to be owned by the great tax evading criminal Marc Rich of New York . . . Cargill . . . Dreyfus . . . Trafigura . . . Gunvor . . . Mercuria Energy . . . Bunge . . . Wilmar . . . Arcadia . . . and Phibro which is now part of Citibank.

  “Some are even subsidiaries of giant corporations like British Petroleum and Exxon and Shell and Conagra and Rio Tinto. The commodity brokers . . . big fat powerful companies . . . buy and sell hundreds of millions of dollars or euros of commodities every day across the world.”

  “What commodities?”

  “Oil or gold or silver . . . diamonds . . . platinum . . . wheat or cotton . . . pork bellies . . . fertilizer . . . aluminum . . . zinc . . . or copper. Most of the commodity brokers and traders know that we are the owners of the piggy banks that lend them money . . . others don’t ask or care. Or they deal with companies that they trust but that we have secretly bought out and taken over a long time ago.

  “Commodities brokers and traders need huge amounts of money and that’s something we can provide them for decent interest rates that are better than what banks offer. Plus we’re much faster in making credit decisions than some stupid bureaucratic banker.”

  “But what happens if the price of these commodities goes down?”

  “We have liens on every cargo and we buy options and futures and other fancy contracts to protect us if the price or value of the collateral goes down.”

  Fabrizio Morabito nodded. He did not understand all the terms that Pelle threw out. But Frabrizio knew enough to know that the 'Ndrangheta families were protected with some kind of contracted insurance. And if that should fail then a good old-fashioned kidnaping and torture session or a quick curb-side execution would work wonders with any cowardly tycoon or corporate lackey who was stiffing them for the amount due.

  “Money,” continued Pelle, “in the hundreds of millions of dollars and euros comes in and out of the piggy banks every day. . . . The law does not look at these transactions because governments and politicians are in love with the big corporations that our piggy bank companies do business with. . . . After all . . . governments and politicians are too busy milking taxes and donations out of these giant and very legit companies.”

  “This is a very very good system,” said Pasquale De Stefano with immense satisfaction. “Domenico invented it. It’s much better than what we used to do.”

  “Thank you,” said Pelle in amazement at the first compliment that he had ever heard from the capo’s mouth.
“In the end the piggy banks wire their money to other companies that we own in Cayman Islands and Switzerland and Luxembourg.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Fabrizio Morabito rubbed his hands. “Where do the Swiss banks fit into all of this?”

  The consigliere gladly expounded on many wonderful and precious truths:

  “Switzerland is the prettiest country with the whitest people and the dirtiest money. Money laundering is the Number One industry. Dirty money in the billions of dollars arrive every day from dictators and tax cheats and corrupt government officials and assorted criminals throughout the planet. We are the dirty and dark and ignorant people who bring our dirty money to be washed clean of our sins by the almighty and holy and blessed Swiss. Their sinless and perfect purity absolves us and our soiled money and we and our money are therefore saved and reborn to a new life in the eternal covenant between the Swiss banks and the money of dirty people.

  “Swiss banks take the dirty money as interest-free deposits. Most of that money comes from Swiss bank branches in Cayman Islands or Luxembourg. In our case we send all our profits from our piggy banks to the Swiss banks here in Switzerland or to their branches in the Cayman Islands or Luxembourg or Liechtenstein or Guernsey Islands.

  “The Swiss bankers mix their clients’ money and then wire billions of it as loans to other giant banks around the globe where the Swiss banks earn interest on that money. The Swiss bankers keep that risk-free profit which adds up every week to at least $ 10 billion U.S. dollars.

  “If interest rates are in the low single digits—like 3%—then Swiss bankers make $ 520 billion a year. And that doesn’t include all the fees that they charge their clients. Nor does it include the interest income they earn when they loan out their $ 520 billion in profits from wiring and parking dirty money worldwide with a few keystrokes of a computer. Meanwhile the Swiss bankers allow their dirty foreign clients to start withdrawing their much cleaner money through another group of anonymous corporations and strawmen such that the money is sanctified and certified to be sparkling clean.

  “At this point in the money cycle we and our money have been redeemed by our Swiss saviors.

  “After another wash cycle through more shell companies and strawmen the dirty money’s true sources and true owners are finally 100% untraceable. The spotless money without stain or blemish is then invested in and with legitimate businesses and the dirty can therefore sleep soundly at night . . . knowing that their once dirty money is now perfectly legal and working hard for them thanks to the greatest church and biggest laundry shop that have ever existed in the history of mankind.”

  ~ ~ ~

  The mobsters’ cavalcade entered Lucerne—a sleepy Christmas toy village on the northwest shores of a mountain-ringed lake that bears the city’s name.

  De Stefano scrutinized the newest # 3 Man. “Are you ready for this?”

  “Absolutely,” said Fabrizio Morabito. “Everything is in order.”

  The convoy snaked its way east to the low-key suburb of Meggen. Marc Rich and other criminal billionaires found shelter inside enormous lakeshore villas behind stone walls in the Canton of Lucerne. Their newly-washed lucre protects them from prosecution in Switzerland. Laundered billions can also buy presidential pardons through bribes and campaign donations such as in the case of New York City’s Marc Rich and Pincus Green.

  The Calabrian caravan stopped in front of the lake at the intersection of Seewarte and Seeacherstrasse. Pasquale De Stefano placed a cell phone call and issued the password. Black metal gates swung open to admit the travelers into the sumptuous manicured grounds. The Italian bodyguards remained in the driveway which was surrounded by a platoon of heavily-armed Russian bodyguards.

  The three mobsters went inside the cream-colored 4-floor villa with twelve bedrooms.

  Yuri Timchenko—a gap-toothed bear of a man—greeted his Calabrian guests at the grand vestibule. He yelled in a heavily accented English:

  “Welcome!”

  The Italians answered with uncomfortable faces.

  “What do you think about this house? . . . I bought it from Mogilevich for thirty-eight million dollars. It’s fabulous . . . no?”

  Domenico Pelle translated for Pasquale De Stefano: “It’s okay.”

  “Come in. Let’s go to the library.”

  In addition to eye-popping views of Lake Lucerne the 3,000 square foot library came equipped with a second and third floor mezzanine packed with old and beautifully bound leather books. None of the Italians were impressed. Their own interior decorators in Milan had also bought antique books and great works of art by the yard—or the pound—for decoration.

  “Gentlemen. Say hello to Arkady.”

  An acne-scarred scarecrow with deep-set blue eyes stood up. He grudgingly shook hands with the Italians. Arkady Kovalchuk had risen in Semion Mogilevich’s organization until he went out on his own as a bagman in shadowy deals. His sour disposition was positively acidic at that moment.

  The men sat down in Louis Quinze chairs arranged in a circle.

  Yuri Timchenko wasted no time offering food or drinks. The Italians never ate or drank anything. He knew that they had a well-grounded fear of poisoning based on their country’s rich history of powerful bigwigs like the Borgias who used Renaissance poisons to eliminate secular enemies, cardinals, and popes. The Italians were also aware that the Russians had their own history of modern poisons with clever delivery systems such as the KGB umbrella that shot a fatal ricin pellet into a Russian dissident in London.

  Yuri Timchenko also wasted no time in small talk with his guests. “This kidnaping thing with the chemist Edvard Csáky is not good. It’s bad for business.”

  “Very bad,” said Pelle in translation for De Stefano.

  “It was not our doing,” said Yuri Timchenko with the straight face of a sincere liar. “Putin and the rest of us did not know about this. We did not authorize it.”

  “This kidnaping went on under your noses?”

  “Some greedy men in high circles of Moscow police and F.S.B. ran their own operation . . . to line their own pockets and sell the chemist to the Columbians who are your partners. No?”

  “No what?”

  “They are your partners. Not ours. They wanted him.”

  “You sold Edvard Csáky without asking our permission. We put the money down for Ultra. A lot of money. You put no money down. We also paid your boss in Moscow one billion euros . . . cash.”

  “Our contribution was the Bulgarian government which approved the drugs.”

  “That’s not a big deal. We have politicians and government people that we own in Spain . . . Italy . . . France . . . Germany . . . they would have obliged us.”

  “But they are too slow in approving drugs. We gave you fast . . . very fast approval. And no questions asked when you turned in clinical studies.”

  “That’s no big deal. In U.S.A. the American drug companies turn in their own scientific studies on humans. They too can lie all they want in their reports. So it’s no big deal if you do that for us.”

  “Okay,” said Yuri Timchenko. “You want Bulgaria to cancel the approval? . . . We will arrange for that immediately. The Bulgarians might even say the Ultra drugs are dangerous. Same with Russia and Poland. There are rumors. Bad talk about bad drugs from this chemist Edvard Csáky.”

  “We picked you and your people because you made it faster. We didn’t pick you to kidnap and sell the chemist to the jungle monkeys in Columbia.”

  “It’s out of our hands. What can we do? . . . It’s not our fault that a crazy and greedy gang in Moscow took him. Edvard Csáky is gone. He’s as good as dead with the Columbians. No one survives with the Columbians. They are a kiss of death. There’s nothing we can do. Nothing.”

  “There is something.”

  “What something?”

  “Rearrange the percentages in Ultra. You take less because you got careless with our chemist.”

  “Maybe. I will tell my bosses. How much?”

&
nbsp; “We take ninety-eight percent. You and your people in Moscow take two percent and that is too much . . . too generous.”

  “Two is not good. We had a deal for fifty percent.”

  “Two is better than nothing.”

  Yuri Timchenko pointed at the repulsive ogre of Arkady Kovalchuk. “What about his boss? . . . What about Semion Mogilevich? . . . He demands shares in Ultra. He wants to be a stockholder.”

  “He gets his commission from you. Not from us.”

  “That is not the arrangement. You promised Semion Mogilevich a finder’s fee of five percent for introducing us.”

  “Finder’s fee for what? . . . For you losing our chemist to the Columbians?”

  Yuri Timchenko laughed loudly. “That is good point.”

  The escalating tension in the room slowly faded away. It was for nothing that Yuri Timchenko had once been President Putin’s popular and affable Deputy Minister of Finance.

  “Okay,” said the congenial Russian host. “Arkady will tell my friends in Moscow about your proposal. He goes back today. He will also tell Semion Mogilevich about this meeting.”

  “We need answers soon.”

  “No problem. Arkady flies back to Moscow today in my jet.”

  ~ ~ ~

  The Italians left Timchenko’s library without shaking hands to show their continuing displeasure over the stolen chemist.

  Timchenko sat down by his desk. He pushed a button on a sleek laptop and said:

  “Did you hear everything?”

  “Yes,” said the scratchy voice from Moscow. “The situation is unacceptable.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  A soft hiss came out of the speaker.

  Timchenko waited for an answer. He pictured the deadly frown on his boss. The deputy prime minister also got purple-faced whenever he failed to get his way. Nikolai Bashilova was not known for suffering fools or for acting the part of a gracious loser.

  “Listen to me. I want all of my money up here . . . send me all of the cash . . . including the one billion that the Italians paid us for their half of the chemist and Ultra.”