BARRY HAD INVESTED A GOOD PART of his pension fund in a luxury golf complex and beachfront condominium up the coast on the San Pedro Peninsula at Ambergris Caye. He together with a local real estate developer had set up an IBC with the backing of a group of Russian investors represented by Igor Vishnevsky, a former banker, who had been introduced to him by Wallace.
Tourism had been riding the crest of a wave, it seemed as if nothing could go wrong. Encouraged by Wallace, Simmo took the plunged, getting in up front, using his pension fund and a loan from a local bank to buy the land that came with a magnificent beach of white coral sand half a kilometre from the barrier reef, the longest in the Western Hemisphere and the second longest in the world, obtain planning permission and set about building access roads and connecting the site with utilities and services.
The brochure described the 70 hectare golf course covered by a soft and smooth carpet of Bermuda grass surrounded by a pleasant tropical environment, a splendid club house and restaurant complex. Adjacent to the golf course a dozen architect designed three stories condos were planned, each consisting of eight to ten units with private balconies, high-end appliances, granite countertops, floor to ceiling windows with beachfront views of the Caribbean and San Pedro to one side and the golf course to the other, each complete with a beachfront pool.
The promotional brochure promised investors first class returns after insurance and management fees.
Well, that was before the pandemic.
Overnight the project went belly-up, leaving the clubhouse foundations and the first condos half built alongside the now overgrown golf course.
Not only had the flow of tourists stalled, sales dried up, construction ground to a halt, the bank pulled its loans and the investors wanted their money back, quick.
To make matters worse Wallace unexpectedly died and Simmo was left holding the baby. Before his eyes his retirement plan fell to pieces and the dream of a new life in his villa on Ibiza suddenly seemed very far away.
Unknown to Barry, the Russian investors represented by Igor Vishnevsky, included a top Kremlin official, Oleg Sedov, a member of the state security apparatus, which through organisations like the GRU and the FSB, used criminal networks as instruments of intelligence activity and political influence.
Now, Sedov was not only very unhappy to lose his money, he was furious at being caught up in a financial scandal in that Caribbean backwater, one that could be used to embarrass the Kremlin, at a moment when it was trying to shore up its friends in the region, especially Maduro’s shaky regime in Venezuela.
Simmo, not entirely unwittingly, had become a part of the Russian laundromat that financed a web of politically subversive operations via its offshore conduits. He had become the victim of his own cupidity which had blinded him to the risks he would have once avoided.
That web reached out into the heart of the British establishment. The rot had eaten into government and parliamentary circles in London, where the members register of interest, showed several lords with links to Russian businesses. One of the lords had even served on the board of a Russian defence conglomerate, Sistema, in which, according the register of interests, he was a shareholder. The strange lord had never hidden his Russian links after he had developed a close relationship with the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and his company Rusal, the world’s largest producer of aluminium, on whose yacht he had been seen.
A lawyer like Barry Simmonds could and had set up firms at Companies House in London with service providers in Belize designated as managers according to official documents. Thus, with a string of bank accounts in London and the Caribbean, large amounts of cash could be hidden to invest in bricks and mortar assets or to finance illegal activities, not forgetting financing Moscow’s dirty tricks wherever the Kremlin pleased.
Britain boasted a tradition of evenhandedness and the rule of law. But its politicians and professionals were the willing servants of Mammon, including lawyers and accountants, not forgetting the establishment and its old boy clubs. Banks and regulatory authorities paid little heed to the goings on, leading politicians had their snouts in the trough, whilst journalists and whistleblowers were kept at bay by libel laws and much more vicious threats, as witnessed by the fate of Julian Assange who had spent years in his virtual prison.
It was a system exploited to the hilt by the Kremlin and its agencies which hired former UK diplomats, politicians, and intelligence officers to lobby on their behalf.
Whistleblowers were not the only ones to be targeted, there were also dissidents like the oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who decamped to London in 2000, setting up his base in Mayfair with the objective of ousting Putin, vilified by the Kremlin as a second Trotsky.
Berezovsky paid the price. He was found hanged in bizarre circumstances, in the bathroom of his home in Berkshire, a crime camouflaged as suicide by complaisant British authorities. His friend Nikolai Glushkov was found strangled in equally strange circumstances at his home in New Malden. And they were not the only ones to fall foul of the Kremlin’s killers.
Be that as it may, London was the residence of predilection for both dissidents and Kremlin cronies, where they could hide their wealth and enjoy gentlemen’s lives in relative safety.