“Oui, Monsieur Allon. And other special tasks.”
* * *
To understand the nature of those tasks required Lambert to offer a fuller explanation of Harris Weber & Company and the strategies it used to serve its clients. They were, for the most part, the richest of the rich, billionaires many times over who traveled on private jets and superyachts and maintained lavish residences in every corner of the globe. Rarely, however, were they the owners of record of their expensive toys and properties. Instead, they acquired the symbols of their immense wealth using limited liability shell companies created by Harris Weber. These companies were nominally headquartered not in Monaco but in Road Town in the British Virgin Islands, where the firm maintained a small but busy office on Waterfront Drive. A secretary in the office, a certain Adele Campbell, served as the director of these corporate entities.
“At last count,” said Lambert, “she controlled more than ten thousand companies, which would make her one of the most powerful businesswomen in the world. The real owners of the LLCs are known only to the firm’s lawyers.”
Buying homes and other luxury goods behind the cloak of an offshore shell company, Lambert pointed out, was perfectly legal and had numerous advantages, beginning with the tax savings. But it also allowed the superrich clients to conduct their affairs in secret, invisible to the prying eyes of government, law enforcement, and their fellow citizens. This was the world that Harris Weber & Company offered its clients. It was an exclusive world without rules or taxes where the needs of the less fortunate were of no concern.
“Fifteen years ago the total amount of wealth in private hands worldwide was about a hundred and twenty-five trillion dollars. It is now four hundred and fifty trillion dollars, approximately ten percent of which is held in offshore financial centers where it is beyond the reach of tax collectors. Which means the money cannot generate tax revenue to provide better schools or housing or health care for ordinary citizens.”
Most of the firm’s clients, Lambert continued, came by their fortunes legitimately or through inheritance and were determined to employ every measure legally available to them to avoid the payment of taxes—even if those measures were at best ethically questionable and might well have led to reputational damage if disclosed to the broader public. A significant portion of Harris Weber’s clientele, however, earned their money through criminal activity or by stealing it from their citizens. The firm represented nine kleptocratic heads of state, dozens of corrupt government officials, and numerous Russian billionaires who had grown rich through their proximity to the Kremlin. Much of their ill-gotten money was invested in real estate, which they purchased using offshore shell companies.
“Do you know why most ordinary citizens can’t afford to live in cities like London or Paris or Zurich or New York? It is because the global superrich are bidding up the prices of real estate with the help of offshore providers like Harris Weber. One client alone, a Middle Eastern potentate who shall remain nameless, purchased more than a billion dollars’ worth of commercial and residential property in London and Manhattan while hidden behind a complex web of LLCs and layered trusts created and secretly managed by the firm. And when the potentate decided to sell some of that property at a profit, the transactions took place offshore, with Harris Weber pocketing several million dollars in fees.”
The firm grew wildly rich, as did its many business partners—especially the European wealth managers and private bankers who were an invaluable source of clients. Harris Weber promised everyone absolute secrecy, but inevitably problems arose. When they did, Trevor Robinson gave the names to Philippe Lambert, and Lambert lit them up and sucked them dry.
“Phones, computers, medical and financial data. Anything I could lay my hands on. I gave the material to Robinson, and he used it to make the problems go away.”
“He blackmailed them?”
“The lucky ones. The ones who didn’t get the message he dealt with in other ways.”
“Who were they?”
“Anyone who posed a threat to the firm’s business or its clients.”
“Such as?”
“Tax officials, regulators, investigative journalists, sometimes even the clients themselves.”
“What about an art historian from Oxford?”
Lambert hesitated, then nodded slowly. “Oui, Monsieur Allon.”
“Why was she targeted?”
“Untitled portrait of a woman by Pablo Picasso.”
“The painting was a threat to the firm?”
“Not just the firm. The clients, the partners, the banks . . .” Lambert shrugged. “Everything.”
34
Haute-Corse
It was Ian Harris, a minor collector with a taste for Dutch portraiture, who originally hit upon the idea. He referred to it, innocuously, as “the art strategy.” Not art as an investment, but art as a means of laundering and concealing wealth and, more important, of conveying wealth from its country of origin to offshore tax havens. It was made possible by the art world’s long-standing tradition of secrecy. Nearly $70 billion worth of paintings and other objets d’art changed hands each year, most of it privately. Buyers typically did not know the identity of sellers, sellers did not know the identity of buyers, and government regulators and tax collectors knew almost nothing at all.
But exploiting that inherent vulnerability, explained Philippe Lambert, required a facility like the Geneva Freeport, which permitted customers to store their art in climate-controlled vaults rented by anonymous shell companies. Under the lax rules of the Freeport, the shell company was not required to disclose its beneficial owner. He could purchase a $200 million painting at auction in New York or London and avoid all taxation merely by shipping it to the Freeport. Furthermore, the secret owner of the shell company could sell his $200 million painting at a profit within the confines of the Freeport with no tax implications.
“The Freeport always had a shady side to it,” said Lambert. “But Harris Weber & Company turned the place into a six-hundred-thousand-square-foot washing machine.”
“What was Galerie Ricard’s role?” asked Gabriel.
“Ricard was a washerwoman, nothing more. He changed the loads, pushed the buttons, and got a tiny slice of each transaction. But there were always fights about money. He believed he was underappreciated and underpaid.”
For all its ingenuity, Lambert went on, the art strategy was quite simple. All it required were two anonymous limited liability shell corporations in the British Virgin Islands, which Harris Weber created for a modest fee. The client would then purchase a painting—at auction or privately through the auspices of a gallery—and immediately ship it to the Freeport, where it would be placed in a vault rented by one of the shell companies. The client would then sell the painting, sometimes in a matter of days or even hours, at Galerie Ricard, under conditions of strict secrecy. The proceeds of the sale would then be funneled into the second anonymous shell company, with the money deposited at one of Harris Weber’s partner Caribbean banks. There it would remain invisible to the tax authorities of the client’s host country. He was free to invest the money in equities or commodities—tax free, of course—or he could use it to acquire valuable assets such as private jets, yachts, and luxury homes.
As a result of the scheme, several hundred billion dollars’ worth of private wealth was funneled offshore and buried beneath layers of corporate shells and trusts. Harris Weber & Company and its stable of ethically challenged lawyers received hundreds of millions in legal fees and commissions. Still not satisfied with their earnings, they decided to further leverage the art strategy by going into the art business themselves. With a portion of their profits, they acquired a small but extremely valuable collection of high-priced paintings, which they used primarily for purposes of money laundering—sham “sales” that generated hundreds of millions’ worth of additional commissions and profits. They stored the paintings in the Geneva Freeport under the supervision of Galerie Ricard and managed the collection through an anonymous limited liability shell company based in the British Virgin Islands.
“OOC Group, Limited?”
“Oui, Monsieur Allon. It stands for Oil on Canvas. But there were several other shell companies and layered trusts standing between OOC Group and Harris Weber. It would be extremely difficult for anyone to piece together the puzzle.”
Unless, of course, a problem arose with one of the paintings in the firm’s inventory—a problem that would allow a plaintiff in a legal proceeding to penetrate Harris Weber’s records through the process of discovery. This was the situation confronting the firm when Trevor Robinson woke Lambert from a sound sleep early one morning in mid-December. Robinson was on the slopes of Chamonix. Lambert was at the villa on Virgin Gorda.
“And the problem?”
“The Picasso,” said Lambert. “Harris Weber acquired it ten years ago in a private sale brokered by Christie’s in London. Professor Blake had somehow uncovered details of the transaction, including the name of the buyer.”
“Oil on Canvas Group, Limited?”
Lambert nodded.
“But how did Trevor Robinson know what she had discovered?”
“He didn’t go into the details. He just wanted me to find out whether the professor really had the goods. I hacked into her phone and computer and grabbed everything, including her version of the painting’s provenance. It listed the name of the original owner as well as the name of the rightful heir.”
