The Infiltrator, page 19
Passic had disappointing news: “Bob, I’m going to be tied up at the airport for at least the rest of the day, but hopefully I can introduce you to Jann sometime tomorrow.”
“We’ve got targets waiting for us in Paris and London,” I said, incredulous, “and my office back in Tampa thinks I’m yodeling in the Alps. We’d really appreciate it if you could help us get our meets done in Switzerland so we can get out of here.”
Hurry up and wait.
Emir and I began to worry that agency wars were causing the problem.
“Gosh, I’m really sorry,” Passic said the next day. “I’m still overwhelmed with this unexpected matter I can’t leave. I’ll get back to you later today.”
Our offices in Tampa and Austria were working on it, but the only new piece of information I learned from Roger Urbanski, the Customs agent assigned to Austria who was supposed to be “coordinating” for us, was that he had an elevator in his house and was living like a king. And he’d get to us just as soon as he could.
By now my blood was boiling.
On prior trips to Switzerland, chasing witnesses and drug money, I had had the pleasure of developing a wonderful friendship with Urs Frei, a Swiss magistrate in Horgen, a district in the canton of Zürich.
“I’ve got an idea,” I said to Emir. “A good friend is a prosecutor in Zürich. If he knows Jann, maybe he can introduce us.”
“Can we do that?” Emir squinted in thought.
“Our only other choice is to sit here and wait for these bureaucrats to cancel cocktail parties so they can find the time to get off their butts. I guarantee you Tischler will think we’re on vacation, and we’ll have hell to pay if we don’t get things off the ground fast. We’ve got appointments in Geneva and Paris that can’t wait. I’d much rather ask for forgiveness later than permission now.”
Frei lit up like a Christmas tree. “Bob, how are you? It’s wonderful to hear your voice…. No problem, Bob, I know Dieter Jann. Let me make some calls, and I’ll get right back to you.”
In a few hours Urs, Jann, Emir, and I were sitting on the outdoor patio of a remote restaurant in Horgen, atop the Albis Mountains. The view of Lake Zug and the distant Swiss Alps offered a postcard-perfect backdrop as we raised our steins and thanked Jann for the chance to brief him about what we wanted to do here. Customs and DEA had already briefed him, so there were no surprises. By our second stein of beer, he gave us the go-ahead.
Six months earlier, in Miami, I had played the same game with Credit Suisse as I had with Rick Argudo at BCCI Tampa. Just like Argudo, the Credit Suisse officer had no problem opening accounts for me. But before I could pursue them, BCCI, Mora, Alcaíno, and their contacts had me on overload. But when the need to have a slew of offshore companies arose, my Credit Suisse account officer in Miami referred me to Samuel Sommerhalder in their Zürich branch.
Initially Sommerhalder had me call a Swiss lawyer who asked a lot of questions, wanting me to disclose the names of people who owned the money I was managing, to ensure it wasn’t dirty. When he realized I was looking for a lawyer who would acquire offshore companies and prepare powers of attorney without asking questions, he prevaricated, saying he didn’t know any lawyers like that, but then suggested I discuss the issue further with Sommerhalder, who might introduce me to someone else. Sommerhalder then gave me the name of a different lawyer in Zürich. This second attorney had all the documents I needed — for about $50,000. Without those documents, we couldn’t open new accounts with BCCI branches in Europe, controlled by me and Don Chepe’s representative, Rudolf Armbrecht.
When I met him in Zürich, the second lawyer handed me a stack of Hong Kong, Gibraltar, and Liberian corporation papers empowering me to conduct business on their behalf around the globe. I had asked him to form a Lichtenstein foundation that could serve as the owner of all the companies, but he warned against that. A prior client had had him link companies under the ownership of a single foundation, and, when authorities uncovered drug proceeds in one, they seized the assets of all the companies on the basis of common ownership. The second Zürich lawyer’s advice: keep the companies separate, and my Colombian clients wouldn’t lose everything if one went down.
The next stop in Zürich brought me to Samuel Sommerhalder, whom I thanked and told that I’d contact him again when ready to open new accounts in the names of the companies I’d bought from his friend. A lie, as it turned out. There wouldn’t be enough time; it was already the middle of May, and we had less than five months left.
From Zürich, a sleek, spotless Swiss train sped Emir, Kathy, Linda, and me to Geneva. The Hotel Bristol, a four-star luxury hotel, lay in the medieval section of the city, a short walk along narrow cobblestone streets from the Jardin Anglais, an immaculate park filled with statues, fountains, and a rainbow of flowerbeds along Lake Geneva. Hard to imagine that this picturesque setting helped sling billions in drug money around the world.
At Banque de Commerce et de Placements, Emir, Kathy, Linda, and I met Franz Maissen, head of BCP’s private banking division, and Azizulah Chaudhry, the bank’s general manager. The Zürich lawyer had prepared powers of attorney that, if presented at BCP or BCCI, authorized Kathy to move funds in the accounts. That tactic is a kind of insurance policy if criminals land in jail and can’t move money to new hiding places while cops figure things out. It also sent a signal that I knew how to play the game. With that out of the way, Kathy and Linda excused themselves from the meeting, citing an uncontrollable urge to shop at Geneva’s most exclusive jewelry stores.
This gave Emir and me time to talk business. We shared details about our management of funds for South American clients, but I didn’t tell them outright that our clients were drug dealers giving us suitcases of cash. Hard to imagine that experienced bankers like Maissen and Chaudhry couldn’t surmise that on their own, though, just from the transactions they’d already handled.
One of the first-class services provided by banks that cater to crooks like Bob Musella is holding all mail generated by accounts. This prevents law enforcement from linking a bank to a criminal through mail monitoring. At BCP, I picked up the last five months of that mail, crucial records that contained a road map for the money routed by Hussain, Awan, and Bilgrami — and something we’d need at trial.
Criminals also open safe-deposit boxes at banks in havens like Switzerland to hide bank records and other information about their financial affairs. Maissen and Chaudhry opened a box for me and Emir, for which I prepaid with cash to avoid any link to my account. In the privacy of the vault, I pulled a stack of notes from my briefcase and stuffed them in the box. The notes contained bogus passwords, codes, account numbers, names, and contact information. If the bank ever accessed the box, everything would look normal.
As I slid the box into its place, Emir grabbed my arm.
“I’d like you to put this piece of paper in that box for me,” he said.
Emir had drawn an outline of his fist on a sheet of paper with his middle finger extended.
“That’s what I have to say to these assholes,” he said. “They make me sick.”
I laughed, folded the paper into my pocket, and gave Emir the bad news. “We don’t know if someone else will get into this box. Plus, I’d hate to be shown that someday on the witness stand by their lawyer.”
The vault might be bugged, so I couldn’t say more, but Emir knew what I meant.
We had all the paperwork we needed and made our courtesy visit to BCP. Time to go to Paris.
Gare de Cornavin, a dark and crowded old station, made even the brightest day in Geneva seem drab. It was rush hour, but the insufferably polite Swiss orchestrated their escape from the city like a well-practiced drill.
It should have been easy enough to get our tickets, but Linda took the lead and asked the agent in rapid-fire colloquial American English for four tickets to Paris. The agent stared and said something in French. Linda tried to force the conversation. Unfortunately, she was operating under the common misconception that speaking English slowly in a very loud voice would make her understood to a smart person without a hearing problem who didn’t speak English at all.
Linda also suspected that the ticket clerk was pretending not to speak English. So Linda did what a streetwise cummara from New York would do. She stuck it back louder, again and again.
Emir of course played dumb and urged her on after each chorus, whispering, “I think this lady is bullshitting you. She speaks English.” Then he stepped back and rolled his eyes in silent laughter.
“Let me try,” murmured Kathy, who spoke French and easily returned with four first-class tickets on the bullet train to Paris.
We settled into our seats, and Emir set down a brown grocery bag from which he pulled a couple of bottles of wine, a loaf of bread, cheese, and prosciutto we’d picked up at a charcuterie near the station. Before long, we were warmly sharing our Gallic meal with two conductors and a passenger who sang songs and joked with us about the ugly Americans who were about to invade Paris.
Little did they know.
Though I felt relaxed, my mind stayed focused on the Chinoy meeting. There weren’t going to be any second takes. Stumbling could set us back months, and I didn’t have months to lose. As the train sped west toward Paris, through the Jura Mountains, along the Rhone River, and north through Burgundy, scripts churned through my head as they always did before critical undercover meetings.
Unlike the military, the rule in banking circles has always been “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Too much information made for sand in the gears of international commerce. Anyway, I had already had blatant conversations with Hussain and Awan about the source of the funds. Word would get back to them about my conversation with Chinoy, which could arouse suspicion if I wasn’t completely careful.
But the first rule for undercover agents is “Get them to talk, and get it on tape.” If you can’t take your case to a jury, what’s the point? Chinoy needed to confirm verbally that he wanted in. A nod wouldn’t cut it. The jury needed to hear him say yes, preferably in enthusiastic terms. If I came away without hard proof that he knew what was going on, that he was already in the game, and that he intended to engage in a criminal conspiracy to hide drug profits, I was wasting my time. But if I pushed too hard, he would smell a setup. France itself offered the perfect solution: boil him like a frog. If you dunk a frog in hot water, it hops out. Put it in cold water, though, and you can heat the water so gradually that it doesn’t realize it’s cooking. That’s the way I had to handle Chinoy.
The TGV pulled into Gare de Lyon in the center of Paris at midnight. The five-star Hôtel de la Trémoille lay just off the Champs-Elysées. The sheets on the enormous bed smelled as if they’d been dried on a line in the sun. I tried to run through one more scenario with Chinoy, but I was out before I got past the handshake.
In what felt like only a few minutes later, a maid in a traditional black dress and white apron, carrying a tray with coffee and croissants, knocked on my door.
It was time. Chinoy was expecting my call. We made a date for lunch.
I shook out my best suit, a black, double-breasted Carlo Palazzi, a white polished cotton shirt with French cuffs, and gold cuff links. My scarlet tie matched the silk square in my breast pocket.
When Emir spotted me, he sashayed across the room, one hand on his hip and the other extended to be kissed. “Oh, Mr. Musella, you look like you’re going to a wedding,” he gushed.
Better a wedding than a funeral, I thought, and left well enough alone.
While Kathy and Linda were dressing, Emir and I loaded fresh batteries and blank tapes into the recorders in our briefcases.
At the BCCI office on the Champs-Elysées, a few blocks from the Arc de Triomphe, we met a well-dressed, balding man with goggle-thick glasses. Nazir Chinoy introduced himself first, then Ian Howard, the BCCI Paris branch manger, and Sibte Hassan, his executive assistant.
After small talk, he led us outside to where three large Mercedes sedans, chauffeurs standing at the ready, waited to whisk us to lunch at Cercle de l’Union Interalliée, one of the most exclusive clubs in the heart of Paris, housed in an eighteenth-century mansion, and the club of choice for France’s most distinguished political, cultural, and business figures.
We dined in the Salon Duc de Luynes, replete with ornate clocks, wall-length tapestries, and ceiling frescoes. When waiters had popped the corks from bottles of fine champagne and filled our glasses, Chinoy raised his flute aloft.
“I would like to welcome you to Paris,” he said. “Please join me and raise your glasses to the beginning of what I’m sure will be a very wonderful friendship.”
How many others like us had received such regal treatment?
Bottle after bottle poured as Chinoy held forth. He claimed descent from royalty and boasted that his father had been a top General Motors executive in Bombay. His forebears, he said, had been cabinet members and were knighted when India was still part of the British Empire.
In little more than a whisper, while conversation swirled around the table, I filled Chinoy’s ear with my own “family” history. “They came to America from Naples with nothing but the shirts on their backs. We fought our way to where we are today, and we like to think that we have won the respect we deserve in the financial community. My grandfather ran a moving company on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. With the help of ‘special friends,’ he built up the power and resources we have today…. My primary responsibility is to manage our group’s money, but my friends in Colombia have provided us with a new, unique opportunity that I would like to share with you after we enjoy this wonderful lunch.”
“I am one of a handful of our executives,” Chinoy smiled, “who work closely with our president to shape the direction of our nearly five hundred branches worldwide. I’m sure we can be of assistance.”
In fact, Chinoy was third in command at the bank, which employed 19,000 people. He spoke for the company. And on the company’s dime, for two and a half hours, waiters brought an endless feast of caviar, foie gras, salmon, oysters, shrimp, escargots, cheeses, rabbit, lamb, and the finest French pastries.
After that amazing feast, Chinoy, Emir, and I settled down in the privacy of a small living room adjoining Chinoy’s office. The courtship began. I told Chinoy that my company had developed several South American clients during the past several years and, under the watchful eye of Awan and other BCCI staff in Tampa, Miami, and Panama, the bank had enabled us to service our clients well. But we were growing concerned about Noriega’s notoriety. He was destabilizing Panama as a banking center.
Chinoy nodded silently.
“So, we’ve restructured the whole thing all over again,” I continued, “which is part of the reason we’re here for two weeks. We are looking to Luxembourg, Paris, London, Uruguay, and Lichtenstein as the centers through which it would be most advantageous for the funds of our clients to be placed…. And we’re quite interested in placing the funds, but of utmost … interest to them is the sensitivity and the security of their funds in that there really can be no trace between the placement of the funds and them.”
In seconds he had a solution. “I believe I can be very useful to you,” he said, his face barely moving. “The link will be directly here without anybody being aware of it. No one need know who the real owner of the funds is…. Furthermore, you want that confidentiality. I think I can give that to you.”
I explained that our clients had accumulations of large amounts of U.S. dollars in the States. “Although there is a certain degree to which I can and have handled those matters, anytime there’s an opportunity to handle it to a greater degree, it will do nothing other than increase business. Currently, with no help, I’d say we’re somewhere in the range of between $12 and $20 million a month. We could be substantially in excess of that if there were some means through which we could complement what it is that I accomplish.”
Chinoy paused, running the numbers and options. “There are difficult factors, and this … that could make it trip up…. You establish your center goal first. Then let’s sit down and make adjustments you’d like. We on both sides have to gain a certain amount of confidence.”
Not what I expected to hear. Had I gone too far? Chinoy’s reaction could be trouble or caution, but it was the first time he had suggested I didn’t yet have his full trust — that there might be a limit to conversation he was willing to have. Time to throw him a carrot.
“Confidence? It’s taken me two years to sit here and speak with you today…. At the very least, what I’d like to be able to accomplish between today and Monday — I want to transfer some funds from BCP here and place some funds of a very trusted friend of mine. We’ll start with a million dollars for a period of six months in a CD, of which there’s no need to make any borrowings. It can just stay. I have also decided, since we’ve had the pleasure of knowing Amjad for as long as we have, that I’m going to transfer some of my personal funds here. I’d say that that’ll be somewhere between — about two million. Again, no need to borrow against that. And the same thing would go for Mr. Dominguez. We can take things as they develop from there.”
There it was. If a $5 million carrot didn’t earn his candor, nothing would.
Chinoy nodded in approval. “You’ve made an evaluation of Howard. You made the evaluation of Hassan. Every one of us makes an evaluation. Let’s be honest. Do you feel these two people meet — you would be confident for them to be assigned as your account executives?”
“My gut reaction would be yes,” I said. “What would be your recommendation? Because you’ve known them much longer than I.”
“I know Hassan’s family in Europe,” Chinoy said. “I know these guys. I know I trust this boy implicitly.”
