*
They had survived the Lehman crisis and a long succession of aftershocks shocks to emerge stronger than ever; a powerful bank with operations spanning Europe, Russia and China. Why then did things go wrong?
It was not difficult to pinpoint the precise moment in time when the bank’s Russian stratagem started to unravel. It was Friday, 21 November 2013. However, if the same question had been put to Michael Fitzwilliams, he would have pointed to the day he meet Tarasov at the 2009 All England Lawn Tennis Club Championships in Wimbledon, but that was another story.1
Going back to that fatal Friday in November 2013, the then Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, had ordered the suspension of negotiations with the EU on a trade pact.
At that precise moment in time, John Francis, personal advisor on economic matters to INI’s Chairman, Michael Fitzwilliam, had been in Moscow as the news was announced on RT television, Russia’s 24 hour English-language news channel. The Ukrainian parliament had rejected legislation concerning negotiations for an EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, abruptly ditching its plans to sign a historic pact with the European Union, preferring a deal with Moscow instead.
It sounded an alarm to all those who followed Ukrainian politics in as much as it put an end to European hopes that Ukraine would distance itself from Moscow, by joining the nations of the ex-Soviet block that had already adhered to the West.
Putin was jubilant, it was a great victory, however the majority of Ukrainians did not see it with the same enthusiasm.
As Francis stared across the square from the window of his room at the National hotel, he was overcome by a deep foreboding. The walls of the Kremlin reminded him of more sinister times, it was if he had been projected backwards to the days of the Cold War.
1. See The Plan by the author published in 2011
MOSCOW
Two weeks earlier as Russians were about to celebrate their Orthodox Christmas, John Francis arrived in Moscow. It was not for academic reasons or some economic mission. He was there for Ekaterina Tuomanova.
As a respected economist and historian he had always been careful with his personal relationships, steering clear of starry-eyed students and young women attracted by academics of his kind. Men of his age and profession who strayed always seemed to end up in some kind of scandal that inevitably turned up on the pages of the Daily Mail or some other tabloid.
That he had stuck to the less exotic kind of women that were often found in his own somewhat cloistered world was no surprise.
Of course as a personality in the field of economic history he travelled extensively and from time to time had had sexual encounters when he felt sufficiently far from home to be able to avoid prying eyes.
That was before he met Ekaterina.
Up until the moment Michael Fitzwilliams invited him to form an ad hoc think tank to analyse economic and geopolitical events and their impact on his bank, his dealings with the financial world had been at arms length. He to a certain extent had disdained the professionals, and they in turn the theoreticians.
With Fitzwilliams and his associates, John Francis discovered another world, particularly that of the Russian oligarchy and the omnipresence of the wealth that surrounded it.
In the space of his four or five years as a highly specialised advisor to Fitzwilliams’ bank, he had become a wealthy man, that is of course in relative terms. High compensation in the world of banking was nothing new to him, he had lectured and even written learned papers on the subject, but he was not alone, even his barber could hold forth on the inequalities of the bonus system.
It was not that Francis was inadequately paid in his academic profession, on the contrary he was well paid, he was even prosperous, though never rich. But what surprised him most was the banker’s generosity. At the outset, when he saw his bank account grow his reaction was one of suspicious, however his suspicions were quickly transformed into a warm glow of satisfaction, justified, as he saw it, a form of recompense for the advice and knowledge he dispensed, and so it was.
It was the same when Sergei Tarasov in turn showered him with rewards, rewards which he initially refused, but being no ascetic and realizing that international finance was awash with money, he gave in to the call of the Siren. In his more lucid moments he feared he was being transformed into a modern day version of Marlow’s Doctor Faustus, haunted by the idea he would be called upon to justify his avarice, in one way or another, at sometime in future, distant, he hoped, or not so distant he feared. He was of course closer to Thomas Mann’s Adrian Leverkühn: Tarasov his Mephistopheles and Russia his Apocalypse.
He first met Ekaterina eighteen months earlier at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Tarasov together with the London auction house Christies had sponsored an exhibition of mid-Twentieth Century Contemporary Art at the museum and Francis along with Pat Kennedy and Tom Barton had been invited to the inaugural reception.
A couple of hours into the evening, after the Champagne and speeches, the reception slowly wound down. Francis, in a deep discussion on the subject of Francis Bacon with Ekaterina Tuomanova, an expert on contemporary art at the auction house, had not seen the time pass by.
“It looks like I’m keeping you,” Francis said looking at his watch.
“Not at all.”
‘Well I’d better be going, if I can find the hotel.’
‘Which one?’ she asked.
‘The National’
‘Oh. It’s not too far. I can show you the way if you like?’
A quick check informed him Kennedy and Barton had already disappeared, no doubt as Tarasov’s guests at the Metropol.
‘Why not,’ he replied accepting her invitation.
Not feeling up to yet another late vodka fuelled evening, Ekaterina’s proposal was not difficult to accept. As well as being able to show him the way home, she, in addition to being attractive and intelligent, would be pleasant company.
It was one of those pleasantly warm early summer evenings and there was no sense of hurry as they walked in the direction of the Kremlin, then following its massive red walls towards Manezhnaya ploshchad.
GUM – Red Square – Moscow
Ekaterina told him of her home near Kaluga, a couple of hours drive to the south of the capital, and then her student days at Moscow State University where she had graduated in fine arts.
She showed him a photo of her five year old daughter, Alina. After her husband, an army officer, had been killed by a road side bomb near Grozny, she had decided to pursue her career in the world of art, returning to Moscow State University, then V. Surikov Moscow State Academy, before joining Christies at their Moscow branch.
In Red Square Ekaterina pointed out the finer details of St Basils before turning into the vast nineteenth century GUM shopping mall for a late coffee. By the time they walked to the taxi stand outside the Kremlin’s walls it was almost one in the morning before they parted. As the taxi pulled away she waved goodbye and Francis, to his surprise, felt a sudden pang. It would be a long puzzling day before they met again as she promised they would for a concert at the Tchaikovsky Theatre.
Cornucopia Page 35
