Peter Spiegelman - Black Maps

Mike’s people do excellent research, and their work on MWB was no exception. The file was a compendium of the coverage MWB had received in both the mainstream and the financial press since the first stories had broken about three years ago. It included an overview of MWB’s activities, a who’s who of MWB executives, and a summary of the investigation, with a review of the indictments handed down so far.

I read through it, making notes as I went. Some of the pieces from the trade press were a little heavy going, but I actually know more about Wall Street than what I admitted to Pierro. For three summers while I was in college, I was an intern on the trading floor of a pretty big firm. When I wasn’t too hungover, or busy chasing female interns, I learned a few things. But my exposure to the financial world predated this. It was the world I grew up in, the family business, at least on my mother’s side. My two brothers work on Wall Street. So does my older sister, Liz. My uncles, my mother’s brothers, had worked there too. And my maternal grandfather. And his two brothers. And a hoard of cousins, as well. All in the employ of the small merchant bank started by my great-grandfather: Klein amp; Sons.

Mike’s briefing had hit the high points. The money-laundering operation was extensive, and the file described the wide variety of techniques that MWB had employed. Included in its repertoire was the kind of scam that the fax seemed to implicate Pierro in: arranging loans of clean money to companies controlled by bad guys, who then paid off the loans with dirty money. But MWB had gone beyond just the laundry business. It had leveraged its network of correspondent banks, its vast inventory of shell corporations, and its stable of bought and paid-for politicians and influence peddlers, to become a kind of superstore for shady financial services.

Say you were a hardworking drug lord, being unreasonably harassed by law-enforcement types in your home country. MWB could offer you not only the means to move your wealth offshore, they could provide a squeaky-clean corporate front for you to operate through, and solve your immigration problems, too. Or maybe you were a terrorist, with donations to collect from sympathizers worldwide, and operating cash to distribute to your cells. MWB could be your one-stop shop, aggregating and laundering the in-bound cash, and acting as paymaster virtually anywhere. Or perhaps you were a less-than-honest businessman, looking for help in sidestepping some annoying regulations or a bothersome government probe. MWB had cadres of sympathetic legislators ready and waiting, if the price was right.

That was maybe the scariest part. MWB’s reach was broad, and every place it operated, it corrupted. Its U.S. activities were a good example. Through the firms it controlled, both directly and covertly, and its platoon of gray-haired, heavyweight shills, MWB was a huge donor to politicians at every level-local, state, and federal. Party affiliation was irrelevant; MWB was in the market for access, and it bought in bulk. MWB executives and their proxies were also big charitable contributors, which bought them social access, and influence of a different sort.

The review of the investigation started with MWB’s front man at Southern States buying a couple of pounds of heroin in a San Diego parking lot. A little more than three years after that auspicious event, twenty-eight MWB executives and their proxies were either in jail, under indictment, under investigation, fighting extradition, or on the run. Gerard Nassouli was one of those executives. He had been the treasurer of MWB’s New York branch; but his current title was Fugitive, Whereabouts Unknown. He had last been seen on March 7, three years before.

Mike was right about the investigation-it was a zoo, and a messy one at that. In this country alone, it involved several U.S. attorney offices, the FBI, the Treasury, the SEC, the CFTC, the OCC, the Federal Reserve, and several state banking boards. The DEA had chips in the game because of what MWB did for drug dealers. Likewise, the CIA had an interest because MWB counted terrorists and several heads of state among its clients. Ultimately, an interagency task force was created to tame this sack of snakes. An assistant U.S. attorney from San Diego, a guy named Chris Perez, shared the lead with an assistant U.S. attorney from the Southern District of New York, a woman named Shelly DiPaolo. They were rumored to be smart, ruthless, and politically ambitious-an ideal partnership.

I was surprised that in nearly three years, with a small army of investigators and what was no doubt a fat budget at its disposal, the task force had so far produced only modest results. There had been an initial spate of indictments, and some convictions-a few wins at trial, a few plea bargains-but not much else after these. Rumor had it that more indictments were on the way. With so much time and money down the drain, there were no doubt plenty of people in New York, San Diego, and Washington who were counting the days.

Running in parallel with the MWB investigation, and nearly as complicated, was the liquidation of the bank itself. MWB had gone under even before the first indictments were handed down, and its legitimate customers had been queued up for years trying to get even some of their assets back. Courts and regulators in several jurisdictions had agreed on a committee to oversee the liquidation, but because of the complexity of MWB’s activities and the ongoing criminal investigation, the committee needed specialized help. They had brought in Brill Associates, a high-end corporate security and investigations firm, and Parsons and Perkins, the big accounting firm. I knew Parsons only by reputation, but I had run across Brill more than a few times. They had some good people, a lot of ex-feds. They had some real bastards, too. But I had a friend there, a guy I’d known since my days upstate. I made a note to call him.

By the time I finished, I had several pages of notes. I knew more about MWB than I had, but no more about who might be trying to squeeze Pierro. I hadn’t expected to. That’s where the investigating comes in. There were several places to start looking. People with access to the documents in the fax-that could include Nassouli, other MWB employees, people from Textiles, and maybe even people at French Samuelson. Pierro might have some ideas on that front. The list could also include people working on the MWB investigation, or on the liquidation team. My friend at Brill might give me a way in there, though I’d need to tread very lightly. And then there was the fax itself. It had been sent from somewhere, and there was a phone number printed on the top of each page. However thin, it was a thread to pull on.

I went to sleep at around two a.m., to the thump and slide of boxes being moved around upstairs.

“I don’t know a thing, and I don’t want to know a thing,” the bodega man said. He was a tall, thin Latino in his middle fifties. His salt-and-pepper hair was cut short, and his graying mustache was neatly trimmed. He wore pressed khakis, a gray sweater, and new-looking sneakers. And he was never still. Just then he was vigorously wiping down the small countertop near the checkout, where an earlier customer had spilled a little coffee. The counter, like the whole store, was clean but thick with merchandise. Combs and painkillers, condoms and CDs, lighter fluid and vitamins and an endless supply of batteries were crowded in dense but orderly displays around the register. His morning rush was over, and for the moment we were alone in the store.

“Look, you’re not the police. I don’t have to talk to you. Besides, who ever got into a hassle because they didn’t talk to somebody?” I could think of a few people, but I didn’t comment. He came around the counter and headed briskly down one of the narrow aisles. I followed, sure that I’d be swallowed in an avalanche of tampons and breakfast cereals.