Corruption!

by Elizabeth Ducie

  “Are you sure about that?” asked Francine.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if you used the paperwork filled in by Boris, and presumably had no dealings with the tender office yourself, how do you know it was a genuine tender at all? Did you see the original procurement notification?”

  “No, I didn’t. In fact, I’m not even sure there was an official notification. I got the impression from Boris it was all sewn up in advance, under the counter as it were. I guess they would have organised a couple of other dummy bids in case anyone queried it further down the line.” He paused and shook his head. “What a mess. How could I have been so stupid?”

  “That’s what I don’t understand, Anton,” said Mama D. “You’re such a sensible person normally. Why would you get involved in a scheme like this? One that’s quite obviously corrupt and very likely illegal as well?”

  “Boris is blackmailing me, Mama.”

  “But you’ve plenty of money. Would it not have been worth it to pay him off and get rid of him?”

  “Oh, that rarely works,” said Francine, thinking back to a meeting in her office six years ago when she was in a similar situation to Anton. “They always come back for more, one way or another.”

  “Francine’s right, Mama,” said Anton. “Paying them off doesn’t work. But in this case, it wasn’t my money he was after. He threatened to tell the police about the accident if I didn’t help him with the tender.”

  “But after all these years…”

  “I didn’t want to risk it, Mama. And he threatened to tell you and Lydia. I couldn’t bear the thought of her being upset by all this. She already hates Boris. I didn’t want her to start feeling the same way about me too.” The sun had gone down by now and lights were coming on all across the city. Somewhere in the distance, Francine heard a clock. She counted the chimes. Ten o’clock. Anton stood and walked over to the balcony wall, staring out into the gathering gloom. Then he turned and faced the two women. “But I swear to you, I thought it was just some underhand dealings with the government. I’d no idea any of the drugs would end up on the black market. If I’d known that was going to happen, I wouldn’t have agreed to the deal, whatever the consequences.”

  He walked back to his seat and then looked across at Francine.

  “You’d better talk to this Dr Mukooyo of yours. Tell him everything I’ve told you and if it will help, set up a meeting so I can talk to him too.”

  Chapter 23

  As soon as he heard Suzanne had agreed to go out to Ukraine, Walter Mukooyo made contact with Yuri Mikhailovich Abramov, General Manager of Kharkiv Pharmaceuticals or KP as it was known locally. Telling him he was a senior investigator on secondment to the World Health Organisation, he explained he was checking out factories under consideration for inclusion in a new certification scheme, giving them priority in tenders for international aid.

  “You’re already a WHO preferred supplier,” he told him. “We know you’ve been involved in at least one tender for the Russian government and reports we’ve had back from that suggest KP is just the sort of company we need on our pilot scheme.”

  Yuri Mikhailovich had sounded flattered by the praise Walter heaped on him and readily agreed to an audit the following week. Walter contacted Suzanne and suggested she fly out to Kiev at the weekend. He would meet her there and they’d take the short internal flight together. Unlike Russia, there were no visa requirements for Europeans entering Ukraine. As Charlie said, “Ukraine winning the Eurovision Song Contest was one of the best things that could’ve happened from a travel point of view.”

  The London to Kiev flight was just over three hours long and Suzanne felt fresh and relaxed when she walked into the arrivals hall on the Sunday afternoon. Walter Mukooyo was waiting for her. He shook her hand, pumping it up and down vigorously before pulling her into his arms and giving her a bear hug. She couldn’t help smiling to herself as she thought back to the first time she’d met this man, verbally sparring with him over the supply of counterfeit drugs into Africa. How times had changed. Now, here he was on the same side as her.

  “Mrs Suzanne, it’s wonderful to see you again.”

  “You, too, Walter. And congratulations on the new job. Are you enjoying it?”

  He shrugged and grinned at her.

  “Well, it’s good to be out of Kenya at the moment. And I get the chance to see lots of softball and tennis matches.”

  But Suzanne suspected, from what Charlie had told her, Walter was in fact taking the new job very seriously indeed. And this proved to be the case. They’d missed the last flight to Kharkiv, but spent the night in the airport hotel—not worth driving all the way into the city centre when they had to be back there first thing in the morning—and he took her through the background research he’d carried out on KP. She was impressed at how thorough he’d been.

  “Although when we get there on Tuesday morning,” he said, “I’m going to let you take the lead. I understand all the politics and the licensing side of things, but when it comes to the manufacturing, that’s very much your baby.”

  “Yes, and I am looking forward to seeing it, too,” she replied. “I’ve seen a lot of factories in Africa and the Middle East, plus I’ve been into Russia several times. But I’ve not had the chance to come to Ukraine before.”

  “Have they got a large industry?”

  “Compared to the size of the country, yes, they have,” she replied. “It all stems from the days of the Soviet Union. There was planned manufacturing and different areas were singled out for specific types of industry. In Ukraine, or The Ukraine as it was when it was part of the USSR, they had quite a cluster of pharmaceutical and biotechnology plants. When they broke away and became an independent country, they were left with more than fifty operating factories.”

  “And why have some of them been modernised so much better than others?”

  “Well, the loss of the Soviet Union meant their major domestic market, primarily Russia, had overnight become an export one and they had all sorts of hurdles to jump in order to continue supplying them. They decided they were going to look westward for their business as much as to the east. They managed to get involved in a European Union project to help their factories improve their standards. The government got in on the act with funding to set up a regulatory arm and train inspectors. That was all over ten years ago and the industry has been getting ever more successful since then.”

  The following morning, Walter and Suzanne boarded a plane for the one-hour flight to Kharkiv on the eastern border with Russia. As the doors closed and the stewardesses took their places for the safety announcements, Walter reached for his phone to switch it off.

  “Oh shoot!” said Suzanne. “I knew there was something I’d forgotten!”

  “What?”

  “I’ve left my phone charger in the hotel.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and glanced at the screen. “And it’s only got about five per cent charge! I don’t understand that. It was plugged in all night.”

  “Did you switch the lights off at the bed or by the door?”

  “I don’t think I switched them on at all. It was still only dusk when I went to bed. Why?”

  “Because the wall sockets are probably wired into the same switch as the lights.”

  “Oh, what a pain. Still, there’s nothing I can do about it now, is there? I’ll just have to call into the hotel when we get back from Kharkiv and hope it’s still there.” Suzanne glanced at the phone in Walter’s hand. “They’re not even the same type. So I guess your charger’s not going to work!” She settled herself back in her seat as the plane started its journey along the runway. “But, if you don’t mind, I’ll borrow your phone this evening for a few moments so I can touch base with Steve.”

  The heavily industrialised city of nearly one and a half million inhabitants had changed considerably since its establishment as the site of a small fortress in the mid-seventeenth century. Suzanne told Walter it had once been the
capital of the country between the First and Second World Wars, and it was the home of many engineering companies including the famous Antonov aircraft manufacturing plant.

  But it was hard to believe they were flying over a major conurbation, so many parks and other green spaces were there around the outskirts. The airport was to the south-east of the city and as they started their descent, some of the landmarks came into view.

  “Look at that,” said Suzanne, pointing to a massive five-domed church. “It’s magnificent. That must be the St. Annunciation Cathedral.”

  “But that looks more fun,” said Walter, touching her arm and pointing northwards to where a huge Ferris wheel was visible on the horizon. “Gorky Park, I presume.”

  As the plane drew to a halt on the runway, Walter looked out of the window and then grabbed Suzanne’s arm.

  “Would you look at that,” he said, pointing to the terminal building. “It looks like a Greek temple.”

  Built in the neo-classical style, the white building had ornate crenellations along the front. The doorways were shaded by broad colonnades and the building was topped with a tiled tower with a huge golden sculpture incorporating, appropriately enough, a pair of giant wings.

  The Kharkiv Pharmaceuticals driver was waiting for them in the arrivals hall, together with a young girl who introduced herself merely as Olga. She told them she would act as their interpreter during the visit.

  Olga accompanied them to the hotel, situated in the centre of the city. She offered to act as their guide if they wanted to go sightseeing, but they declined. Not that they didn’t want to see something of this old city, but they both agreed they would rather just go for a wander on their own.

  The next morning when they arrived at Kharkiv Pharmaceuticals, which was located on the main highway some twenty minutes’ drive from the centre of the city, Yuri Mikhailovich came to the reception desk himself to meet them and led them back to the office. There was the inevitable coffee, cakes and chocolates, but not, Walter was relieved to see, the vodka or cognac Suzanne had told him she’d been presented with on some of her factory visits. In fact, it was all very professional. As they drank their coffee, Yuri Mikhailovich showed them a short film about the background to the company and the current operations, ably translated by Olga. Then after less than half an hour, he called the production director to his office and introduced her.

  “This is Nadia Petrovna. She’ll show you around the factory and answer all your questions. Please excuse me if I don’t accompany you. I have a busy morning of meetings. However, we’ll meet back here for lunch around three o’clock and I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have for me at that time.”

  Chapter 24

  After taking Suzanne to the airport for her flight to Kiev, Charlie had spent the rest of the day with Annie choosing paint, fabric and stencils for the tiny box room they were about to convert into a nursery. They both took the Monday off work to get on with the decorating. At least, Charlie painted and hung paper, while Annie directed operations from an easy chair in the doorway.

  On the Tuesday morning, Annie left the house before seven o’clock for a breakfast meeting. And, knowing her sister and Walter Mukooyo were visiting the facility in Kharkiv that day, Charlie, still in her PJs, settled down in the corner of the lounge she had appropriated as her office and spent a couple of hours trying to work her way through the tortuous documentation of the Ukrainian pharmaceutical industry. She found her way into the database of the State Service of Ukraine on Medicines and Drugs Control relatively easily and managed to locate the licensing documents related to Kharkiv Pharmaceuticals. They were all in Ukrainian and although her grasp of the language was even worse than her non-existent Russian, with the aid of an online translation site she managed to decipher the main details.

  The company had been set up many years ago but had been given a major refurbishment in the past twenty years. There was a history of inspections by the regulatory authorities, all with very satisfactory results. There were records of government tenders won and details of the retained samples tested and stored for future reference. It all looked remarkably satisfactory. Too good in fact. And Charlie was always suspicious when everything looked too good to be true.

  This was something she’d learned from Suzanne when they first started working together. She’d accompanied her sister on a visit to a factory just outside London. They were hoping to get certification for export to the United States and contracted the Jones Technical Partnership to do a mock inspection. That way, they could uncover any problems before the real investigators from the Food and Drug Administration arrived the following month. Charlie had been very impressed with the results they’d seen in the laboratory for water sampling in the sterile facility. Every test had shown a big, fat zero for contamination. But Suzanne had pursed her lips and shaken her head.

  “If something looks too good to be true,” she said, “then it generally is.” And sure enough, on further questioning, the technician in charge of the sample testing admitted that whenever she got a positive result for contamination, she would retest that sampling point until she got a negative one and would just record that result. “After all,” she’d explained, “our water system is so good any contamination has to be down to sampling error.” She’d been a little put out when Suzanne’s report had been heavily critical of this practice.

  So Charlie was suspicious that everything couldn’t be as perfect as it appeared to be in Kharkiv Pharmaceuticals. But she couldn’t find anything of concern, either to herself or to the Ukrainian regulators. I just hope Suzanne and Walter have more luck than me, she thought.

  In desperation, she turned to the Ukrainian equivalent of Companies House. She didn’t have to hack into that system as the company register was open to the public for review, on the payment of just a small fee. The owners were shown as one family, three generations, stretching back to just after the end of the Second World War. There seemed nothing unusual about them. Grandfather had set the whole thing up; two sons had taken over in the 1980s and now three members of the third generation, two men and a woman, were main shareholders and company directors. The name of the family was Abramov. It meant nothing to her.

  She went back to Google and started searching on the name. They seemed to be an influential family in Ukraine. A relative was in the parliament, a member of the opposition cabinet. Another was a senior cleric in the Orthodox Church. And most of the family seemed to spend much of their time at parties, the theatre or at the airport, either going to or returning from expensive holidays.

  Quite the socialites, thought Charlie. She yawned and glanced at her watch. Just gone nine o’clock. No wonder her stomach was rumbling. It was time to grab some breakfast, before dressing and shopping for tonight’s dinner. They had friends coming over to eat with them. It was Annie’s turn to cook, but she’d left a shopping list behind as she’d headed through the door in a rush this morning.

  Charlie reached over to close the laptop down, but her hand accidentally brushed across the key pad, making the page in front of her roll slightly, and bringing up a montage of photos from Kyiv Weekly, which a sidebar told her was an English-language newspaper full of political and social news. And one of the photos caught her eye. All thoughts of hunger, shopping or a quiet dinner with Annie and their friends immediately disappeared. Her heart thudded. She found it hard to believe what she was looking at.

  The picture showed a smiling group of younger generation Abramovs about to enter a nightclub in Kiev. And right in the middle of the group was a face from the past. A face from the grave, even. The last time she’d heard the name Nico Mladov, it was when Francine told them he’d been dragged out of the river after a supposed gangland killing. But it couldn’t be. The picture was from the previous autumn and Nico Mladov had died more than six years before.

  On closer examination, she realised her mistake. This was a younger man, but the family resemblance was unmistakable. Checking out the caption, she
confirmed this was another member of the family, but a Mladov none the less.

  And after that, it all fell into place quite quickly. Googling Abramov and Mladov together brought up dozens of references and articles confirming there was a very close relationship between the two families. One of the younger Abramov women had actually married into the family. And the business ties were also very tight. And finally, Charlie found what she was looking for: the fly in the perfect ointment of Kharkiv Pharmaceuticals. The problem she’d known she would find if she just carried on looking long enough. The money behind the company came from the Mladov family.

  “Shit,” said Charlie out loud. “Suzanne and Walter are there right now. And they’ve no idea…”

  She grabbed her phone and hit speed dial for Suzanne. But the phone was switched to voice mail. Suzanne never had her phone on while she was in a meeting with clients. And, from experience, Charlie knew she would probably forget to check it at lunchtime too. The chances were the phone would stay off until the end of the day at least. And by then it might just be too late.

  She left a cryptic message on Suzanne’s phone: Company owned by old friends from Mozambique. Get out NOW. Then she paced up and down the tiny room, trying to decide what to do next and feeling so helpless. She didn’t have a mobile number for Walter Mukooyo. She could ring Francine, but she was hundreds of kilometres away in St Petersburg. She couldn’t do anything either. They’d just have to wait and see what happened.

  But, no, that wasn’t acceptable either. Last time Suzanne had been in a situation like this, she’d ended up being held prisoner for several days in a hut in the African jungle. No, there had to be something she could do.