ARKADY DEMITRIEV DECIDED HE NEEDED to join the dots. There was something he was missing. Simmonds’ presence in San Sebastian was totally out of character with the mundane life he had lived up to that point in time, that is apart from his adventure into local real estate, when he had gambled all on a throw of the dice.
Simmonds, a small-time lawyer in Belize City, had never, at least as far as what Demitriev knew of him, travelled much outside of the Caribbean area, and only when his clients’ business needs demanded it, which was relatively rare.
Simmonds’ law firm handled business matters as well as property conveyance, wills and probate, mostly for expatriates. In more recent times his business services had grown as the demand for offshore shell companies and bank accounts increased, these were generally one shot affairs, for which he charged his overseas clients around one thousand dollars and upwards.
It was like that he became involved with Wallace, an English expat like himself, who provided him with a regular flow of clients, Russians and the like, who needed his legal services to hide their money in offshore tax havens.
Russia had no diplomatic representation in Belize, its affairs were handled by the Mexican Embassy, and Arkady Demitriev, a counselor for economic affairs based in Mexico City and consular affairs in Cancun. Demitriev, like certain other embassy staff, was a member of the Russian state security services, as a GRU agent his role was to manage certain of Moscow’s covert interests in the Caribbean region including business transactions to circumvent US sanctions imposed on Venezuela as well as operations in British and former British territories.
Demitriev handled George Wallace, a longtime fellow traveller living in Belize, and had introduced him to Igor Vishnevsky, a former banker with VTB, a state owned bank in Moscow, who had set himself up in Cancun. Vishnevsky had involved high-up Russian government officials in real estate investments set up by Wallace with the help of Simmonds which had gone sour with the Covid pandemic. They had been compromised and wanted their money back. Unfortunately for Demitriev, Wallace and Simmonds had been eliminated by his bungling helpers, leaving him to solve the problem or suffer the consequences.
Unraveling Simmonds last moves had been complicated by an unusually brief visit to Panama City and his inexplicably sudden departure to Madrid.
What had he been hiding? That question led to Simmonds’ death when Demitriev's heavy handed thugs unintentionally ran him off the road into a jungle swamp in the south of Belize City near the border with Guatemala.