Sarah was nodding as he spoke, obviously familiar with this potted history of her employer.
‘You know this I guess. Sure. Well the arms trade is not exactly full of kindly benefactors and philanthropists set on world peace and the eradication of poverty,’ he said.
‘What are you implying?’
‘I think that one or possibly both men got caught up in some… questionable activity. I found a number of references to the shipment of unspecified goods to Tunisia and then Liberia. I don’t presume they were selling fine art and ancient sculptures to the starving Liberian public.’
Sarah shook her head. ‘Guns obviously.’
‘Well… not that obvious really. There is no direct reference to any arms that I could see — everything is coded, reference numbers and that sort of thing. But there were some unnecessarily complicated transactions in those particular cases and some interesting shipping records. But I have found something else. Like I said, I’m making a few leaps of logic here.’
‘Guesses.’
He nodded but held up a hand that she listen, before dismissing. ‘Western companies that set up operations in third world countries often do so in quite lawless areas. As such they are generally required to provide their own security arrangements. The same is true in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Or was true at least. So you get firms who are ostensibly mining companies — geological surveyors, oil — who also have close ties, even subsidiaries that are involved specifically in providing security — in certain circumstances, that can be quite extreme. I’m talking guns, troops, vehicles. Serious personnel and serious hardware and ex-military guys.’
Sarah was listening intently to Campbell now. He changed tack.
‘Michael Horner is an investment expert. Before Griffin he worked in the city for two different investment banks. He was very successful in a short space of time, real whiz kid. When he set up the venture with Geoffrey Asquith it was a sideways step into a new area of industry. But he never cut his investment ties and continued to play the markets. Shortly after the first shipment of arms to Liberia — of which there were several more over about three years — Horner, or at least a hedge fund of which he was a director — invested heavily in two private security firms. He also personally bought stocks in three mining companies who have clearly established links to these security firms.’
‘How the hell do you find this stuff out?’
‘It's all there if you know where to look, albeit fairly well hidden. Shareholder registers, Companies House searches, that sort of thing. Transparency and corporate governance and all those buzzwords. Anyway, about three months later, the Sierra Leonean government contracted those same security firms in separate operations near the capital Freetown and further inland in the diamond areas and in both cases they assisted government forces in pushing back rebel troops and securing the territory. Subsequently those related mining companies were awarded diamond-mining licences in Sierra Leone. Michael Horner profited handsomely. In both instances.’
‘Slow down Daniel,’ Sarah said frowning. ‘You’re saying he was insider trading?’
‘Keep up because there’s more. I’m saying that he may well have been or he may have just got in to those firms on the off chance that they won the deals. The point is he was profiting from the civil war. Not just that, but these other, more mysterious shipments were going to Liberia. Liberia was generally acknowledged to be the source for most arms supplies to Sierra Leonean rebels. I think Horner was providing guns to both sides one way or the other.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Quite. When the UN tried to go in and stop the fighting, the rebels — the RUF — repeatedly stalled on agreements to disarm. The rebels held huge areas of rich diamond mining country. According to what I’ve found out the official production of diamonds for Sierra Leone was,’ Campbell shuffled through some papers, ‘in 1998, 8,500 carats. The Belgian Diamond High Council in Antwerp had it at 770,000 carats.’
‘Quite a profitable war.’ Sarah said looking stunned.
‘Yes but for who? 75,000 people were killed between 1991 and 1999 in the civil war. 75,000 people. Quarter of a million women and girls were raped or abused. Some unbelievable human rights abuses and atrocities against the civilian population — limbs hacked off, eyes gouged out. Half the population was displaced by the conflict. Half. Sierra Leone has the world’s third biggest reserves of diamonds but in the year 2000 the average annual income was $100. $100 per year. In 2000 it was at the bottom of the UNs Human Development Index — the poorest in the world. Most of the soldiers that fought for the RUF — the rebels — were children. The average age was about fifteen. Most of them were addicted to alcohol and hard drugs. Horner got rich off that.’
Sarah stopped Campbell and began to pace the room, running her hands over her face as if washing something away. ‘This is too much to take in. How is Griffin involved in this? Is this all on the memory stick?’
‘Most of it. Clues at least. The rest of the information is available, so long as you know where to look and you can pretty much fill in the blanks. There is one last thing though. Horner also developed ties with a company in Antwerp not too long after he began his little African adventure. Antwerp is the centre of the world’s diamond industry.’
‘So he was spreading the net a little wider? Investing in the diamond industry in Belgium?’
Campbell stopped her with a shake of his head. ‘The way it works in Antwerp is this: companies or people called ‘Sightholders’ are presented with mixed parcels of rough diamonds from the mining companies which they buy and then sell on, having re-sorted and repackaged them. Horner was not investing in a sightholder.’
‘What then?’
‘He wasn’t buying anything in Antwerp. He was selling.’
36
Thursday. 2pm.
Michael Horner was a very self-assured man who took particular interest in his appearance and was always impeccably dressed.
Walking stiffly at his side, the equally immaculate figure of Geoffrey Asquith was eyeing the camera-laden tourists bunching around Cleopatra’s Needle with a mixture of contempt and caution. He dipped his head a little into the upturned collar of his coat as the two men strode past them.
‘How far does it go Michael? How much did you hide from me?’
Horner took a deep breath before speaking. ‘Everything Griffin told you is true. I was routing shipments of arms into Liberia, through Tunisia and Guinea and did so on seven separate occasions. The illusion of legitimacy was maintained for the company through the fact that there were various waypoints for the merchandise. As far as you were concerned they were delivered on time and accounted for by the clients in North Africa. What you did not know was that the merchandise did not stop there. It was moved on again through another African state and repackaged before arriving in Liberia.’
‘And then?’
‘And then I presume into Sierra Leone. Perhaps it stayed in Liberia. I wasn’t on the ground.’
Asquith shook his head but it was obvious that he was wrestling with a boiling temper.
‘How could you have even contemplated such a thing?’
‘I don’t need to answer that. You were never especially sharp on the operational side of things and that made it easy enough for me to do what I did. You were rarely watching.’