Halpert was building what he liked to call a skeleton. A skeleton was a series of corporations forming the bones to support the skull that held the nerve center of an operation. Each would need to be structured, funded and interlinked until the actual source of ownership and control was as cloudy as a London morning.
He scanned a database of available existing companies.
First would come the skull itself—the eventual owner of the assets that would soon be created. For that he chose a corporation based in the tiny country of Andorra. The company, Cataluna Esteme, had been founded in 1972 with the purpose of mining and trading lead.
Andorra, all 181 square miles of territory, is perched in the Pyrenees Mountains, with Spain to the south and France to the north. The population of Andorra is some sixty-five thousand people, and the primary industry is tourism, with an emphasis on snow skiing. The country had been in existence since 1278 and was modern and progressive, plus Halpert had never used it before.
Cataluna Esteme itself had been active in the lead business until 1998, when the aging owner had been felled by heart trouble while on a visit to Paris. Over the next year or so, the assets of the corporation had been distributed to the owner’s heirs, and the company itself had gone dormant. Cataluna Esteme existed in the desk drawer of a lawyer in Andorra’s capital city of Andorra la Vella.
Halpert scanned the history and found it ideal. The company had perfect credit, a past history of large sums passing through the corporation coffers, as well as the shield of privacy offered by Andorran law. The remaining stock in the company was available for the equivalent of $50,000. This sum would give them complete control of a corporation that had existed for over thirty years, had a charter similar to the intended use, and was completely untraceable.
Halpert decided to buy Cataluna Esteme.
For the feet of the skeleton, he used two companies the Corporation already owned. The first was Gizo Properties, based in the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific. The second was Paisen Industries, based in San Marino, a country on the Adriatic coast completely surrounded by Italy. Accessing the companies’ accounts over the computer, Halpert deposited $874,000 in Gizo Properties and $418,000 in Paisen Industries. In the blink of an eye, Halpert had moved $1.292 million into already existing accounts. The money would not remain there long.
Next, Gizo Properties and Paisen Industries, through a special shareholders’ resolution that Halpert drafted and passed, each agreed to buy stock in two more companies. The first was Alcato, based in Lisbon, the second, Tellemedics of Asunción, Paraguay. Both of these companies were operating concerns—Alcato built specialized marine electronics, Tellemedics made telemetry equipment used in hospitals throughout South America. The Portuguese company had a book value of $3 million U.S.; the Paraguayan, nearly $10 million.
Both had been secretly owned by the Corporation for nearly a decade.
Halpert pulled up the corporate records of both and found sufficient cash reserves for his plan.
With the legs now in place, he looked for the torso.
He would need a recognizable and stable platform that would appeal to the Corporation’s soon-to-be partners. For this he could only use Central Europe. Halpert needed a company based in a country with rock-solid political stability, iron-clad currency and worldwide recognition of financial wherewithal. He scanned his database and found he had three companies to choose from—the first was based in Basel, Switzerland; the second in Luxembourg; the third, which he favored, in Vaduz, Liechtenstein.
Liechtenstein it was.
Albertinian Investments S.A. was a currency-and-gold-trading concern that had proved widely successful since the recent upward move in precious metals prices. The company, secretly controlled by the Corporation, owned a beautiful six-story building in Vaduz, where it occupied the top two stories, had a cash balance in accounts amounting to over $18 million U.S., and frequently invested in other companies that showed promise.
Next, Alcato and Tellemedics passed corporate resolutions making loans of $1.25 million each to Albertinian Investments. These were composed of the monies transferred from Gizo Properties and Paisen Industries, plus some cash from the coffers of each. Albertinian Investments agreed to pay each company 7 percent interest for the loans, as well as an option to convert the loans to stock at a set price for the next five years. The trail of money was becoming cloudier by the minute.
There was now an extra $5 million of washed and clean funds in Albertinian Investments.
Halpert sipped from a glass of iced tea. Then he entered the commands into the computer and Albertinian Investments offered to buy Cataluna Esteme for the $50,000 asking price. The transaction would take several hours for the attorney in Andorra to complete.
Next, Halpert scanned a base of lawyers the Corporation had used in the past in Spain. Finding one in Madrid, he dialed the telephone and waited.
“Carlos the Second, please,” he said in Spanish when the receptionist answered. “Mr. Halpert calling.”
Exactly forty-two seconds later, the lawyer came on the line.
“Sorry for the wait, Mr. Halpert,” the lawyer said. “What can I do for you?”
“I need you to fly to Andorra, immediately,” Halpert said. “We are buying another company.”
“Standard protocol?” the lawyer asked. “Open bank accounts, rent offices and such?”
“That’s the idea,” Halpert said, “and we need it done yesterday.”
“I’ll need to charter a plane, then,” the lawyer said. “I doubt there are commercial flights available at this late hour.”
“We will approve the costs,” Halpert said.
“How big are you looking, sir?”
“The initial funding will be ten million,” Halpert said. “Five will be a direct loan from one of our divisions in Liechtenstein, the second five will be in the form of a line of credit, available immediately.”
“I understand, sir,” the lawyer said. “I’ll leave right away.”
“One more thing,” Halpert said. “Find us a public relations firm in Andorra—I have a feeling what we are planning will garner some press interest.”
“Anything else?”
“If there is,” Halpert said, “I’ll contact you when you reach Andorra.”
“Very good,” the lawyer said as he hung up the telephone.
Then the lawyer sat back in his chair and smiled. He knew his rather excessive fees would be paid in cash—which he would fail to report to the tax authorities. Reaching for the telephone, he called a local company to charter a prop-jet for the trip north.
“LIKE being kicked by a mule,” Cabrillo said over the noise of the droning engine.
Pilston was closing the side door of the Antonov. She wrestled it in place and held it closed while Michaels locked it down. Cabrillo placed his hand on the Golden Buddha to stabilize himself, and then removed the package of papers and the satchel of food. He placed them on the floor, then unsnapped the harness and set it aside. He stared around the cargo bay of the Antonov before walking forward to the cockpit.
“How’s she fly, Tiny?” he asked as he slid into the copilot’s seat.
“She’s as slow and steady as a diesel trawler,” Gunderson answered.
“Did you get any sleep?”
“Yep,” Gunderson said. “Tracy needed to rack up some flight time, so she and Judy flew us here from Vietnam.”
Cabrillo nodded and turned his head back to the cargo area. “How’d it go with Mr. Silicon Valley?” he asked.
“We made it through,” Michaels said.
“I want to apologize to both of you,” Cabrillo said quietly. “If there was any other way…”
“We know, sir,” Pilston said. “It was just a job—and we treated it as such.”
“Still…,” Cabrillo said, “it was above and beyond what we should ask of you. I approved a special bonus for you both, and Hanley has scheduled you for a month off with pay as soon as we finish this mission.”