JM01 - Black Maps Read Free Page B

fax again, and went through the five documents in it. The first was a letter on MWB stationery, from an MWB managing director named Gerard Nassouli to Emilio Dias, who had apparently been the treasurer and CFO of Textiles Pan-Europa. It was dated February 14, eighteen years ago. Valentine’s Day. In the letter, Nassouli reports that he has been dealing with a “sympathetic” and “flexible” banker at French Samuelson, who will help to establish a credit facility for Textiles’ U.S. subsidiary, Europa Mills U.S.A. In the letter, he names the banker: Rick Pierro.
    Next was an internal MWB memo, dated a week after the letter, written from Nassouli to “The Files,” and describing a meeting between him and Pierro. At this meeting, according to the memo, Nassouli and Pierro filled out the French Samuelson credit facility application for Textiles, and they prepared the Textiles corporate documentation, required to establish an account at French.
    This was followed about three weeks later by a letter from Pierro to Dias, confirming that a revolving credit facility would be established for Europa Mills. The next document was the list of funds transfers. Each entry consisted of a date, an amount, an ordering party, and a beneficiary. There were well over a hundred of them, listed on two pages, and they spanned a six-year period that began eighteen years ago. Given the context, and the parties involved in the transfers, they seemed to represent drawdowns by Europa Mills U.S.A. against its credit facility at French, and subsequent repayments of the loans, with interest, by Europa Mills’ parent company, Textiles Pan-Europa. If that’s what they were, then in a six-year period, something over $120 million had flowed back and forth between French, Europa Mills, and Textiles.
    The final document in the fax was an article from the Economist, an issue late the previous year. It was a piece about the aftermath of the MWB collapse, or one aspect of it. It focused on four different European companies. According to the article, they had all at one time been vital, expanding concerns, but were now just so much twisted metal in the larger train wreck of MWB. They were a few of the many companies secretly controlled by MWB, the story went, which had turned them all into conduits for money laundering. One of the firms listed, its name underlined in the fax, was Textiles Pan-Europa. According to the article, many of the executives of these now defunct companies were missing. Some, like the Textiles senior executive team, had turned up dead.
    Pierro moved restlessly around the room while I read, for a while reading over my shoulder. Then he wandered into the hallway, to pace. Mike went to the window again and stood there motionless and silent, his head nearly touching the glass. When I finished, I stacked the papers into a pile.
    “So?” Mike asked, without turning around.
    “The implication, I guess, is that Textiles was an MWB front, and that they were using the loans from French to wash money—pumping clean dollars from the loans into Textiles’ U.S. subsidiary, and paying off the loans with dirty money from the parent company in Europe.” Mike nodded, still staring into the night. I leafed through the first few pages of the fax again.
    “And I guess this memo from Nassouli to ‘The Files’ is meant to be the smoking gun. The credit application and the corporate documents should have been prepared and signed by executives from Textiles, not by the salesman making the loan.” Mike nodded again. The dark glass reflected the smile on his face. I continued. “But there doesn’t seem to be anything conclusive here. Nassouli’s memo is the most damning, but you can’t tell from this if it’s accurate, or even genuine. And there’s nothing that tells us if the loans were arranged before or after MWB came into control of Textiles.” Pierro came back into the room as I was speaking and sat down across from me.
    “That’s