It was six in the morning when the two journalists arrived in Paris, tired but pleased to be home. They had flown in from Miami after having first stopped over three nights in George Town to settle the arrangements with Kavanagh and Arrowsmith.
It was an excellent arrangement; it guaranteed the two journalists an income for life, simply from the interest on the capital that the two Englishmen had deposited for them in a trust in George Town.
That trust would cease to provide them with an income if the trustees were to discover that the journalists had infringed their obligations to the trustees, which was ‘to refrain from publishing directly or indirectly any information relating to the trustees’, who were Arrowsmith, Kavanagh plus the partners of Wender’s law firm in George Town.
They had agreed that John Ennis write a book on Castlemain’s activities in Cuba, his relations with Fidel Castro, and his ‘mysterious’ disappearance at sea. The exposé would present Arrowsmith and Kavanagh in the most favourable light and naturally the trustees would approve the final text before publication.
As to Arrowsmith and Kavanagh they had decided that in spite of the untimely end of Castlemain and company at sea, a yacht was an attractive idea and why not a charter service – strictly for friends of course!
Chapter 89
Cayo Cinco Balas
The sun settled over the coconut palms that lined the white coral sand beach, the air was still, the lagoon shimmered like a mirror. He contemplated the white sand watching the crabs scurry to and from their holes.
It was the kind of paradise that millions of Europeans and Americans dreamed of. The grilled lobster was almost ready, it was a pity he had no butter sauce to go with it. Lobster almost every day could be tiring, but a sea bass was a change, when he was lucky.
This would be a wonderful place to build a villa or why not a hotel, he made his mind up that when he got back he would ask one of his consultants to look into it.
That was the problem, if he got back, perhaps never. He had made the tour of the island many times and he was the only inhabitant except for a few loggerhead turtles.
David Castlemain settled down to his dinner of grilled lobster accompanied by a clamshell filled with coconut milk, vintage 2000. He did not know it, but his island was one of a small group called Cayo Cinco Balas, it was situated about 80 kilometres south west of Trinidad de Cuba and had last been visited some six years previously by a couple of fishermen sheltering from a storm.
The End
POSTSCRIPT
A twenty six nation Financial Action Task Force issued a list of fifteen countries that had tax laws allowing criminals and their organisations to hide and transfer their ill gotten gains around the world.
The list included the Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands, Dominica, Israel, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Panama, Philippines, Russia, St Kitts and Nevis and lastly St Vincent and the Grenadines.
A French parliamentary committee listed Monaco, the Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man as places to hide illegal monies.
Drug traffickers, organised crime, corrupt politicians and government officials, terrorist organisations and white-collar frauders laundered their gains freely in those safe havens.
The Caymans was the fifth biggest banking centres in the world, with more than 500 billion US dollars in assets.
Oxfam, the international aid organisation, estimated that fifty billion dollars were siphoned off annually from poor countries into accounts in offshore financial centres.
The tax haven countries where Western businesses and corporations could without fear avoid taxes year after year, were: Andorra, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Belize, British Virgin Island, Cook Islands, Dominica, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guernsey-Sark-Alderney, Isle of Man, Jersey, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Monaco, Monserrat, Nauru, Netherlands Antilles, Niue, Panama, Samoa, Seychelles, Saint Lucia, Saint Christopher and Nevis, Saint Vincent and Grenadines, Tonga, Turks and Caicos, US Virgin Islands, Vanuatu.
Offshore Islands Page 88
