BACK IN BELIZE SIMMO LOOKED ON the Mayan archaeological vestiges with renewed interest as he went about the preparations for his retirement to Ibiza with renewed enthusiasm.
The following weekend he drove to a Mayan site deep in the Chiquibul Forest, 200 kilometres to the south-west of Belize City and close to the border with Guatemala. It was the most important archaeological site in Belize, Caracol, the ruins of a vast city discovered in the 1937, once home to an estimated 140,000 people, larger than Belize City itself, covering almost 180 square kilometres, abandoned around AD900, much of it now shrouded by dense rainforest and inhabited by wild animals.
It was incredible, more than 35,000 structures had been identified, the most remarkable being the Canna, a pyramid, the tallest man-made building in Belize, rising 43 metres above the summits of the forest, with the main plaza surrounded by the remains of temples, palaces, ball courts and an astronomical observatory.
As Simmo drove back to Belize that evening his mind wandered, pondering the Maya civilisation before the Conquest and the destruction of its history. Soon he would be retiring to Ibiza and he made up his mind to visit the Museo de America in Madrid where he could see the Maya codices before taking off for the Mediterranean island.
The museum was said to hold the finest collection of pre-Columbian American art and artefacts in Europe, a unique exhibition of objects brought to Spain at the time of the Conquest, and during the centuries when Spain ruled one of the world's greatest overseas colonial empire ever.
One of its treasures was the Madrid Codex, rediscovered in Spain in the middle of the 19th century.
Its discovery was also shrouded in mystery. It was composed of two fragments, the first acquired from a certain Juan de Tro y Ortolano in Madrid in 1866, and the second from Juan de Palacios who tried to sell the smaller fragment in 1867.
It was said that part of the codex was bought in the Spanish province of Extremadura, the home of many of the conquistadors, including Hernan Cortes, who may have brought it to Spain.
In the same museum was the Tudela Codex, discovered by the Spanish ethnologist Jose Tudela de la Orden in 1940 and considered by many as one of the most significant pre-Columbian discoveries of the 20th century.
The codex dated from the mid-16th century and provided a glimpse into the religions, rituals, language and culture of the Aztecs.
The codex consisted of 125 pages, composed during the early days of the Spanish conquest, and consisted of three sections, written in Nahautl and Spanish, the Libro Indigena, the Libro Pintado Europeo, and the Libro Escrito Europeo.
It had been lost and forgotten for centuries and was rediscovered by chance in 1940, in a private collection at La Coruña, in Northern Spain, subsequently presented to Jose Tudela, then deputy director of the Museo de America in Madrid.
The sun was going down as Simmo dreamily imagined himself in his Ibiza villa overlooking the Mediterranean, a fitting reward for half a lifetime in Belize. Without thinking he drifted towards the centre of the narrow road, as he glanced in the rear view mirror he saw the headlights of a fast approaching vehicle.
Before he knew it was on his tail and flashing its headlights, he pulled over, but the road was narrow, and as the vehicle, a large pickup, passed, it sideswiped him sending his roadster into a violent skid. Simmo lost control, shot off the macadam into the dense jungle covered swamp that bordered the road where the roadster overturned and quickly sank, disappearing into the thick slime.
The pickup braked 70 metres or so further along the road and reversed, the driver shone the powerful spot light mounted above his door into the swamp, there was nothing to be seen, just a few bubbles as the dark green slime settled back into place.
Two men got out, they shouted in Spanish, one swore loudly in Russian, after a couple of minutes they got back into the pickup and disappeared into the night.
It wasn’t until several days later Maria, Simmonds’ worried secretary, contacted the police to inform them of his disappearance. It was nothing unusual in Belize, people came and went, perhaps he had gone to Ambergris or abroad as he often did, perhaps he had been the victim of a crime.
Maria went out to Simmo’s place. His housekeeper knew nothing. He had said something about visiting the ruins, which ones she wasn’t sure.
A week passed, then two, there was still no news, Simmo had disappeared off the face of the earth, without a trace, soon to be forgotten, unmourned...but not by all.
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Vishnevsky had thought he knew everything in the offshore and money laundering rule book, perhaps he did, in Russia's tightly controlled opaque system, where justice was violent and expeditive, and where it was not easy to hide. But he was an amateur compared to those who had grown up in Caribbean offshore banking. Wallace and his likes knew every trick in the book as far as structuring financial schemes designed to hide money, where it came from, where it went, and above all the identities of its owners and the beneficiaries of the transactions.
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Wallace’s system could be broken down into three phases. Firstly, channelling the profits skimmed off commodities exported from Russia, for example, a cargo of nickel, aluminium, platinum, copper or phosphates is sold to fictive offshore company A at below market prices. Secondly, company A sells the commodities now on the high seas to company B, which sells them to a bona fide buyer at near market price. Thirdly the margin siphoned off in the process by company B is used to pay fictive commissions or buy fictive services from company C, which then proceeds to hide the profits behind a cascade of offshore shell companies before they are invested in real estate development, such as the Ambergris Golf Resort, or other solid assets, which can subsequently be placed on the international market and legally acquired by a US, UK or European investor, with the proceeds of the sale recycled into the legal economy through the regulated banking system.
Wallace and Simmonds were the essential cogs in the machine, Wallace the launderer oversaw the movement of funds, Simmonds provided of the legal services related to setting up the various elements of the conduit, mainly shell companies, holding companies, and offshore bank accounts.