Corruption's Price: A Spanish Deceit (21 page)

Accepting the necessity to act, he was going to need to go beyond the borders of what most people regarded as right. One obvious action was to obtain that laptop at ORS. Would Alberto help? Probably not. He was clearly loyal to ORS for having given him his first proper job.

Yet, if that laptop could be 'abstracted'– the lawyer in him shied away from 'stolen' – any problem would disappear before it took root. If he could ensure there was no problem in the first place, nobody would care much. He made a phone call.

Now, back to Marta: what should be done there? He thought it best to wait until the outcome of his previous call was known. Creating unnecessary confrontations was pointless if he could avoid them.

On the other hand, some crisis planning was required in case there was substance to his fears. Should he start at the top or bottom? The latter, he decided.

He also began re-considering that ambassadorial post as being well worth pursuing in case it was needed, though to do so still made him feel unclean. His would be a political appointment imposed unfairly on professional diplomats. This was not how he thought matters should be. It smelled too much of a form of corruption obtained through a system of unofficial contacts. It added up to the sort of bent process lacking in transparency or merit that he detested.

Wednesday: Marta

Marta had woken in a cold sweat in the early morning. A thought had occurred to her, one which now made her quiver in fear.

The day before, when routinely synchronising her smartphone with her personal computer at home, she had noticed, but not thought anything of it at the time, that the last backup had been made the previous Friday. As she normally performed backups on Friday this was routine. It was only in the early hours her brain made the connection – she had been in Madrid on Friday with Salvador at the Santo Mauro. It meant she could not have performed a backup.

Whilst lying under the sheets, for it was still sufficiently warm in a late-lasting Valencia autumn that did not yet demand serious blankets, the appalling thought occurred to her that the only place on Friday where her smartphone had been connected to anything was at ORS. Thinking back, Marta remembered that she had not done what she had always sworn to herself to do, namely to turn off the phone before recharging, not least because the charging was usually faster. She also recalled her flustered state when she arrived, worrying most about her decreasing battery.

Could ORS have taken a copy without telling her? That seemed absurd. It would be unprofessional and probably illegal. The information on the smartphone was hers. She had turned over and somehow fallen back to sleep.

Come the early afternoon, her brain fully in gear, Marta started considering what was on the smartphone. She remembered the photos of her and Salvador. Some were innocuous, of them both. That some featuring her were those taken as Salvador had removed Marta's clothes one by one did not really bother her. That experience was undeniably delicious but the photos showed her alone. She was entitled to these portraying herself, aware that she looked amazing.

Also, there were those picturing Salvador, which she had taken with equally delightful results. As a respectable married woman, and not married to this man, she should not have those. Yet they could be of any man. Not good, yet not dreadful.

It would only be the ones of them together that posed real problems. SPS or 'semi-pornographic selfies' was what Salvador called them. They had laughed with delight when browsing them in bed together during that delightful session after meeting Inocenta at the beach.

Unfortunately, recalling those pleasures now brought back the humiliation, and the unexpected climax, from Saturday morning. She twisted in her chair, without being able to decide if it was with shame or secret delight, or possibly both. Saturday morning still bothered her. Salvador had not contacted her since their arrival back in Valencia on Saturday, though that was hardly unusual given his family obligations and the demands of her own business. But it might also mean that they had had their last fling, in which case those photos mattered much more.

Suddenly it really hit her. Her phone had copies of her client receipts and payments going back several years. If ORS understood what it possessed it would mean ORS could more or less demand whatever repayments it liked. The evidence, the individual transactions, the linkages were all there.

Her cold sweat returned, but this time with an Arctic vigour that not even the best linen suit could soak up fast enough.
Mierda, mierda, mierda.

The only good news was that she had deliberately devised her own inside-out system for recording all these receipts and payments. Wrapped up in triple-layered, interconnected spreadsheets these should be impenetrable to everybody but herself, or that was her intention.

Marta breathed a modest sigh of relief. In addition, this data was in encrypted folders, unlike the photos. That combination should be sufficient to keep her business secrets safe.

The more she thought about what to do the fewer options there seemed to be.

Regarding Salvador and the photos, there was little point in telling him, even if they were prime fodder for blackmail. After all, she had agreed with him to delete those of him erect and of them both together. But she hadn't, because it had entertained her at night to peek at them and remember. He would only blame her, and with justice, if he knew what she feared had happened. It would not be a good way to salvage Saturday, if indeed repair was possible or desirable. No, there was no getting round it. This was an uncertainty that Marta would have to live with. Who knows? It may even come in useful. After all, she still had the originals on her smartphone, though it might be a good idea to shift these off to her computer, though Marta was sure she no longer wanted to look at Salvador.

The receipts and payments information bothered her less. Although a part of her said she ought to tell Alfredo about them, Marta did not want him to know the extent of her personal record-keeping. This had always been her personal insurance in case any client or recipient of one of her payments tried threatening her. While Alfredo was an ally today, he might not be tomorrow. Plus she could not immediately think of an innocent way to explain their existence without telling him much more than she would feel comfortable with.

The trouble was, this left Puri in a sort of middle ground. Puri was the one person who had done nothing wrong. She was on the verge of becoming an intimate friend, two mutual spirits together. Sadly that budding friendship might need to die a premature death for the sake of protecting her own interests.

She didn't like this conclusion. But, if that was how it must be, so be it.

Wednesday: Central Madrid

The
Audiencia
Nacional
is a special court with jurisdiction across all of Spain. Created in 1977 shortly after Franco's death but before full modern democracy was established, it replaced the much hated and fascist
Tribunal de Orden Público
and had unexpectedly survived through the drawn-out
Transición
process after Franco's demise.

Based in Madrid, the
Audiencia
Nacional
works through a number of specialist
Salas,
including the
Sala de lo Penal
(the Criminal Chamber), which has the authority to investigate certain types of particularly serious crimes, like terrorism, money laundering, genocide, etc. It also handles extradition requests and crimes of a sufficiently serious nature to transcend
Comunidad
boundaries. The
Audiencia Nacional
headquarters are in the Salamanca district of Madrid, although the
Sala de lo Penal
operates from a building on the other side of the Paseo de la Castellana.

It was to this latter place that Pedro led his group for the meeting with
Juez de Instrucción
Garibey de Williams. Before leaving Alcobendas, he warned all about the judge who was fiercely independent, albeit entering the last phase of his career before retirement. What he had not added was that the
Juez
had enjoyed a mixed career of great success in his youth but indifference in recent years. Personally, Pedro held him in great regard, having seen
Juez
Garibey face down personal threats in the pursuit of just results. It would be good if he could retire with a bang rather than the whimper most people now expected. He also advised that the judge should formally be addressed as
Señoría
if they should have to appear before him.

On arrival at the courts he took them through to an outer waiting room where he asked them to remain. He went through to the judge's assistant and was rapidly shown into
Juez
Garibey's main working room, which was large enough to hear witnesses as well as contain their arrays of lawyers. He found the
Juez
alone.

Juez
Garibey smiled at Pedro, genuinely pleased to see someone who had supported one of his more difficult investigations some years back, in spite of judicial superiors seeking to frustrate their progress.

Greeting Pedro, Garibey said, "It's a long time since you appeared before me. Your request intrigues me. Is that good or bad?"

"I'm well,
Señoría.
It's good to see you too."

"You don't need to be so formal with me in private. You know that."

"If I may, I'd prefer to be in the hope that it will help my clarity."

"That sounds more ominous. Okay, if that's how you prefer it, please continue. Tell me what you have and what you want from me."

"It's complicated,
Señoría
. There are many players to start with in a complex opening position and with substantial downstream consequences. That is, if you agree that more investigations should proceed. Before describing those whom I will refer to as the 'initial players', this concerns systematic corruption across
Comunidad
boundaries and may reach to the highest levels of government, business and beyond."

"That places it firmly within this
Sala's
remit. On the phone you also mentioned the B Accounts?"

"You'll recall that this was where a supplementary set of accounts, what became known as the 'B Accounts', were found in a handwritten ledger belonging to a past political party treasurer. On the one side were recorded apparent receipts of payments made to this treasurer; on the other side were lists of payments to party members, as well as various organisations for services rendered to the political party."

"I remember." Judge Garibey pondered, before recalling to Pedro that the principle problem had been that, even though various handwriting experts testified these B Accounts were in the treasurer's own handwriting, there was no external proof that what was written was the truth. This applied particularly to the cash payments out. The treasurer could've been paying those he listed in the B Accounts, or equally he could've been lining his own or other people's pockets and 'recording' well-known names as a false trail. There was no evidence one way or the other. Indeed, the only way to verify what was written down was if someone listed as a recipient in his B Accounts came forward to admit accepting cash payments. Nobody was that foolish. Further progress on the B Accounts was not able to occur, however much people might believe in their probable veracity.

"Would that be a fair summary?"

"Sadly,
Señoría,
it would. Which brings me to today. I believe, through a strange set of incidents, that we not only may have another set of B Accounts, but also sufficient detail on both sides of the books to prove not only the sources of illicit receipts but also that many illicit payments out went to verifiable recipients, in ways where denial would be next to impossible."

"Ah ha! I see where you're going. Tell me more."

"Having set the overall scene I need to make you aware of those I referred to as 'the initial players'. Forgive me, but your mind may boggle at the unlikelihood of what I am going to recount. It starts with the Spanish subsidiary of a US company which uses software to identify apparent over-payments made by purchasing departments to suppliers, to keep it simple."

"You call that simple, Pedro? What will the rest be like?"

"This company is called OverPayment Recovery Services SL, normally shortened to ORS, and the business appears to be genuine. Its US parent has been around for more than a decade and has some prestigious and internationally recognisable clients. In Spain ORS has three principle clients at present: MMH, ServiArquitectos and Constructores Equilibris. Each of these has retained ORS in hope that its capabilities will identify and afterwards recover monies which those three companies believe might be owing to them."

Hearing these names,
Juez
Garibey's eyes gleamed. All were familiar, if with varying reputations.

Pedro continued by naming the principal of ORS as an American called Felipe Garcia-Martín. With Mexican parents Señor Garcia-Martín was brought up in Texas. He spoke Spanish at home, hence why he was appointed to Madrid to open a local subsidiary.