*
The Champagne, a Krug Grande Cuvée was served, then with the help of Lili and the recommendations of the charming maître d’ they ordered their diner and settled down exchanging small talk, leaving the more thorny subjects to later.
The food was excellent: a dim sum platter, crispy duck with caviare, scallop sautéed in XO, black pepper Angus striploin, steamed Jasmin rice, accompanied by an excellent Chablis Vaudesir, and followed by a lemon pot desert.
Feeling mellow after the excellent meal they drifted into the subject of INI, in general terms to commence, feeling out each others feelings and their respective plans for the future.
They were on the same wave length concerning City & Colonial. Regarding Fitzwilliams’ situation, Pat was one hundred percent behind his mentor. He was where he was thanks to Michael Fitzwilliams and his loyalty had never wavered.
As to Fitzwilliams he was touched by Kennedy’s candour and regretted he had misjudged him. The very different backgrounds of the two men had determined their respective relationships, Fitzwilliams an aristocratic banker who had inherited his wealth and position; Kennedy a lad who had made his way up from a working class family in Limerick City.
Kennedy had come a very long way, over the years he had been transformed into a sleek banker, now married into a powerful Chinese family, rich in his own right, thanks largely to his friendship with the patrician banker, who had now experienced a hard and bitter fall from power, whose pride had been hurt, though his wealth was still intact.
They were complimentary and together they would be stronger and better able to fight City & Colonial.
As the evening mellowed Fitzwilliams informed them that Sergei Tarasov was last seen at his property in Ireland, where he was said be safe, discretely watched over by George Pyke’s men, at least temporarily. However, on the advice of his lawyers, Fitzwilliams had not been in contact with his Russian partner, given their respective situations, which to say the least were delicate pending complex legal decisions. It was now evident the oligarch had fallen victim to Russian politics, who had in turn had dragged Fitzwilliams into the torment.
Kennedy agreed to try contact Tarasov discretely. It was time they set out their plans so to protect their respective interests and prepare for the battle that lay ahead.
“What’s the news from Tom Barton?” asked Fitzwilliams frowning quizzically.
“I’m hoping to catch up with him shortly in Panama.”
“Panama?” said Fitzwilliams looking to Lili.
She lifted her eyes in amused despair at the thought.
AN OLD ETONIAN
Overnight Michael Fitzwilliams was shut out from the gilded Chipping Norton circle, snubbed, dumped, a none person, not that he had ever ingratiated himself to any of Cameron’s clique; he had his own.
The affluent West Oxfordshire gentry and their style had always been nearer Alice’s thing: his wife had grown up in a world of horses, fox hunting, landed gentry, weekend with her likes, not forgetting country clubs, golf and Range Rovers. With her title and estates, she was however closer in style to the generation of Cameron’s late father and the world of thoroughbreds and horse racing, far removed from the home counties nouveaux-riches back scratching rockstars and TV personalities.
David Cameron was born into the world of privilege, his great-great-grandfather, Alexander Geddes made his fortune in the grain trade in Chicago in the 1880s. David was the younger son of Ian Donald Cameron, a City stockbroker and later chairman of Close International Asset management, an investment fund based in Jersey that managed funds valued at around ten million pounds. Ian Donald Cameron was also director of Blairmore Holdings Inc, registered in Panama City and a shareholder in Blairmore Asset Management, based in Geneva. Blairmore Holdings, set up to ‘optimise’ taxation and named after the Cameron’s family property, Blairmore, was built by Cameron’s great-great-grandfather.
In 1979, Margaret Thatcher after her first month in power, put an end to capital controls, which effectively made it legal to take money out of the country without it being taxed or controlled by the government. David Cameron’s father, Ian Cameron, who died in 2010, was reported to have taken advantage of the changes by using a network of offshore investment funds to avoid taxation, and although there was nothing illegal in doing so, it was an embarrassment for the Tory leader who had loudly proclaimed his desire to clamp down on such methods.
Having a racehorse owning Old Etonian toff, the embodiment of wealth and privilege, as a father was not a good thing for ‘call me Dave’s’ image. A detail his spin doctors had taken great pains to keep his wealthy family background out of the news.
It was surprising that birth, privilege, prep schools, Eton and Oxford continued to play an important political role in the United Kingdom at the start of the third millennium, when its prime minister moved in a rarefied milieu of almost exceptional privilege, surrounded by a coterie of old school pals in a society where wealth with class counted more than ever, separated from the masses by deep social divide and economic inequalities.
Eton College
Its patrician prime minister had little in common with Barack Obama, George Bush or Bill Clinton and even less with Donald Trump.
According to Lord Ashcroft’s biography ‘Call me Dave’, the parents of Cameron’s classmates included eight Honourables, four Sirs, two Majors, two Princesses, two Marchionesses, one Viscount, one Brigadier, one Commodore, one Earl, one Lord, and even the Queen.
It was a far cry from the newly chosen and much derided Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, a man of the people, a modern Bolshevik, who abandoned his studies for a degree in Trade Union Studies at North London Polytechnic, and who evidently resented his country being led by a man who went to boarding school at the age of seven, Eton and Oxford where he had been a member of the Bullingdon Club.
Fitzwilliams, whatever his state of mind, was, whether he liked it or not, one of them. He had not gone to Eton, he was a Harrovian, like seven British prime minsters. Cameron’s school formed nineteen prime minsters: Old Etonians, who formed a class destined to rule, once described as a magic circle. Just eight PMs had attended state schools amongst them John Major and Gordon Brown, not forgetting Margaret Thatcher, who had grown up in a flat above her father’s grocer’s shop on North Parade, near the railway line in Grantham, Lincolnshire. The Iron Lady attended grammar school and a not particularly distinguished Oxford college, a university that was later to snub her by refusing an honorary degree.
It was as if British society had returned to the early twentieth century, when toffs ruled a deferential society and latter day labourite trade unionists formed an opposition that had scant hope of winning power. Gone was the brave new world of Tony Blair, who it now seemed had joined the toffs.
The upwardly mobile society had stalled as industry shrank, as new populations were prepared to work for less, dragging down wages and aspirations. Working people were entertained by footy and TV shows like Top Gear and Strictly Come Dancing, whilst the wealthy privileged classes ruled, and their marionettes: rich well-meaning superannuated rock stars, sports and television personalities, paid lip service to humanitarian services, offering temporary lodging in their extravagant, but empty, second and third homes to refugees after ignoring the plight of those already living in the UK and their own distressed compatriots.
The establishment members were unaffected by the effects of immigration, unemployment, failing health services and poor schooling. Their wealth isolated them from events and changes that impacted the average man. From their comfortable nexus they were incapable of making the decisions necessary to protect their voters, advance the interests of their nation and its future.
The Cameron family had a long history in the City of London as stockbrokers. In the nineteenth century one of them, Sir Ewen Cameron, was with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, where, amongst other things he sold Japanese war bonds for the Rothschilds to finance the war between Russia and Japa
n, which led to the formers humiliating defeat in 1905.
The Cotswolds had long been the weekend escape for the rich and powerful who arrived by helicopter. Witney, the Prime Minister’s constituency, was one of their watering holes where members of the gilded circle could discretely let their hair down in secluded manor houses, farms and the stately homes of their friends far from the common folk.
Fitzwilliams, was nevertheless a snob, a paid-up member of his class. He carefully avoided mimicking those of the wealthy upper classes who had become inverted snobs, who liked to slum it from time to time, rubbing shoulders with footballers, working class idols and media personalities, snorting cocaine and joining binge drinking parties whenever the occasion arose, which was certainly was more exciting than drinking tea with the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Queen, but a world where descent into Edwin Drood like depths was never far away.
The class system had not ceased to exist it had simply become more insidious. Economic inequalities had grown as wealth and power were concentrated in the hands of the few. As for the masses their world had become more uncertain, especially for the working classes as security of real employment faded and wages stagnated.
Certain members upper classes did not however hesitate to identify themselves with the nouveaux-riches by quixotically justifying their wealth as part of a just system based on meritocracy and contributing to the well being of the people. And logically working class idols, mimicked the rich by domiciling themselves in exotic tax havens, hiding their newly found wealth from the taxman.
Government ministers naturally kept a low profile, it was not good to be seen quaffing Champagne with bankers and rich wrinkling rockstars chatting about their villas in Tuscany, Provence, Marrakesh or Jamaica. From their backgrounds of privilege and impeccable connections Tory ministers assiduously avoided any overt association with the London in-crowd, preferring the privileged rural life of the Cotswolds where tight lips and respect of the gentry ensured their privacy.
Michael Fitzwilliams agreed with at least one thing said about politicians: they and scorpions had much in common.
REGULATORS
Foremost in Fitzwilliams mind was the fear that City regulators would be brought in to scrutinize the movement of funds at INI, now under City & Colonial control, made on behalf of Tarasov and friends. The sanctions imposed on certain Russian oligarchs by the EU and US could attract the attention of investigators leading them to scrutinise accounts in search of illegal transfers.
In the meantime evidence of transfers relating to certain of the bank’s clients, suspected of tax avoidance or money laundering via shell companies in the Caribbean and Hong Kong, if discovered by City & Colonial, could be used by Hainsworth to bring pressure to bear on Fitzwilliams buying his silence and pre-empting action by his lawyers to render their takeover illegal.
Fitzwilliams could depend on his loyal inside contacts to keep him informed City & Colonial’s moves, even if it was unethical or even unlawful. Brendan Flaherty, would be the first to know about any investigations into suspected irregularities. He had joined the bank as a young man in Dublin and had worked his way up to the position of risk and compliance officer. He and his family had been a loyal servitors to the Fitzwilliams family for three generations and owed the banker this service.
As to what information Tarasov could provide was entirely conjectural. The Russian, until recently holed up in his Irish home in Kerry, had been judged in absentia by a Moscow court for offences relating to tax evasion, fraud and siphoning money from InterBank to his personal offshore accounts.
He had been sentenced to two years imprisonment, his assets frozen and an international warrant issued for his arrest. At the same time the Moscow court demanded that his assets in Ireland and the UK, estimated at more than one billion pounds sterling, be frozen pending further investigations.
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