The image of a trap, p.4
The Image of a Trap, page 4
“They’re in the office, ten of them, police officers, with machine guns.” It was Antoine, the personal assistant of Edwin Hu, the regional director of their Regional Asia office in Singapore, her voice shrill. “They have a search warrant…something about bribery. What do we do?”
Ann took a deep breath as her smile faded and her eyes tensed up.
“Is Edwin Hu there?”
“No, he left early,” Antoine said apologetically.
“Okay, stay calm. Invite them into the conference room and offer them coffee. Then call Edwin, tell him to come. I’ll call our lawyer. Wait until he is there. Be cooperative. I’ll call you back in ten with an update.” She speed-dialled their lawyer.
“Lawrence, good morning. Ann Holm from Gio HQ here. I can tell you are driving. Where are you?”
Lawrence Byrn knew Ann well enough by now for not being big on small-talk, so he replied, to the point.
“I’m twenty minutes away. What’s up?
“Our Singapore office is being raided. Can you drive to the office right away and assist us? I’ll send you the warrant.” She filled him in, hastily.
“Sure, I’ll be in touch when I arrive.”
“Thanks, Lawrence. Edwin Hu, the Asia Regional Director, is on his way to the office as well.”
Once she let Antoine know that their lawyer was on his way, she emailed her boss, the Head of Legal, Paul Ekstrom, the Group CEO Albert Gullberg and the communications director Oliver Peerson. Two minutes later, Oliver’s plump figure filled the door frame of her office. His arms flying in all directions, he squealed,
“This is bad. This is a disaster. We’re never going to survive this. Our reputation, our—”
Ann interrupted him midway. “Oliver, you have been communications director for years. You know the crisis management protocol by heart. This is my first – help me here.” She fixed him with a look.
Sobering up from her cool matter of factness, he quickly muttered, “Gather the crisis control steering group.”
“Who’s in it?” Ann was typing an Outlook Meeting invite with bold “Urgent and confidential” in the subject line. “Oliver?”
“I don’t know. With all the recent changes in the organisation, we—”
“…have to make it up on the go,” Ann finished his sentence. “All right, I already have the Group CEO and CFO, my boss, you, who else?”
“They are all in New Jersey for the closing of the factory acquisition and it’s night time there.”
“Right, well, we’ll have to wake them up.”
The day went on with numerous calls with their lawyer, Lawrence, and the Asia regional director Edwin Hu. By the end of the day, the police found in the Singapore office documents with pay-back schemes and confiscated several boxes of documents and laptops. At six o’clock, Ann and Oliver were the last people left in the office building. They were sitting opposite each other in the stillness in her office waiting for the conference call with the ad hoc steering group to update them on the day’s developments. The office building was new and carried the distinct smell of freshly painted walls and furniture. Her eyes rested on the two drawings of their summer holiday one from Theo and one from Sarah that she had pinned up earlier in the week on the magnetic board. Her books were still unpacked in the card boxes in front of a row of brand new book shelves.
Ann had learned Oliver’s tic by now: he would scratch the bald spot on his head, then touch his short, trimmed beard, an almost compulsory gesture he did repeatedly when contemplating difficult matters. His unbuttoned jacket displayed a bulging belly, dressed in a creased, dark-blue shirt. A whiff of stale body odour reached Ann. It had been a long day, she admitted to herself.
“I’ve been handling crises before, you know.” Oliver said suddenly.
Ann looked at him with red-rimmed eyes.
“It’s a few years back. With a board member of Gio,” he looked at her defensively, reacting to her sharpened gaze, “I’m only telling you because I know you will keep it in confidence.”
“Corruption?” she said, tentative.
“No, not that. But it was bad enough. Sexual harassment.”
Ann’s stomach turned in disgust. “Who is he?”
“He stepped down. Relax. We have morale.”
“Good. What happened?” She slouched on her chair.
“The official story was that he stepped down to pursue his passion for life and creativity in a world less corporate and more artistic.” Oliver smirked. “The self-loving idiot indeed painted in his spare time, producing hideous artworks with a total lack of talent, the only purpose of which activity was to attract female attention”.
“What a cliché, but sadly, it works.” She rubbed at an ink spot on the conference table.
“Something about women being attracted by success and power.” Oliver smirked.
“It’s the primal genes of survival, to secure a mate with the best potential to protect one and the off-spring. But still that doesn’t mean “Hey harass me against my will,”” she said, her cheeks reddening.
“You are right. I totally agree.” Oliver rose both hands in defence. “Anyway, to prepare for the official story, I had to pull every string possible to arrange for a journalist to interview him in his atelier, to talk about life and aspirations and art. He was very pleased with the article and particularly the photo that displayed him chin up, eyes turned up to his art with a dreamy look.”
“I remember that photo and the article. He was creepy,” Ann said.
“Shortly after, we could announce his exit from the board of the company. It was a nasty thing, I admit, but it was a brilliant spin: an excellent storyline carefully constructed and patiently executed,” Oliver chuckled. “No one had to excuse oneself! No new retraining in corporate guidelines had to be made. Imagine the difference!”
Ann swallowed hard, “What happened to the women who had brought the accusations?”
“They were offered good positions in the company to stay put. Some took monetary settlements and left.”
“He got away with it,” Ann concluded flatly.
“No, he didn’t, he was forced to step down.”
“And you think that that was good enough for the women who were harassed?”
“I believe so, none of them pressed for going public with it.” He suggested, defensive.
“That’s because going public with sexual harassment attracts contempt. Anyone who dares does it not for her own good but in the hope of preventing the same from happening to someone unknown. It’s a sacrifice.”
“How is that my fault?” Oliver cried out.
Ann shook her head in disbelief at Oliver’s remark that had stayed with her: No one had to excuse oneself! Imagine the difference!
“There will come a time when it will not be shameful to go public for being abused. Imagine the difference!” she said in the end and they fell silent. Bearing an offended look Oliver retreated to his laptop and started typing.
The notion of sacrifice had been present throughout her childhood in communist Bulgaria. Dictators want you to be ready to sacrifice your lower life for their higher wellbeing. She recalled reciting the rhymes: “We will sacrifice our lives for our motherland and our leaders” and “Always prepared”. The proud tales of partisan children’s sacrifice of their young lives for the future that we held. At school, she had been asked to write papers on themes such as: “Will I be ready for a sacrifice?” She had nightmares about the tortures which she was expected to be prepared to endure to protect her county and its leaders.
Held against her upbringing of holding the common welfare above all, the worship of the individual in the free world had blasted her mind when she was first exposed to it. She had embraced it, all of it, the freedom to be an individual, the trust that connected people, the trust in a government to mean you well, indeed working in everyone’s best interest. The lack of fear, of not having to look behind your back, of not having to keep your mouth closed not knowing who was listening, not knowing who will betray you to take your place, had made her giddy. But she had not forgotten. And she would recognise an emerging dictator when she saw one. It started with the alignment of things that are no big deal: like keeping right on the walkway, or holding the railing when you take the stairs, or parking your car in reverse. Things that are too small to get cross about and oppose. People get used to being given orders, used to following orders, changing their behaviour, moving the bar of compliance a little each time. Not long after, everyone conforms to the same behaviour, uses the same words, shares the same thinking and fears not doing so.
“Ann, it’s time to join the call,” Oliver’s tired voice brought her back to the darkened room. Ann pressed the call button and several voices, full of anticipation, emerged from the speaker in the room. She was going through the events of the day chronologically when the voice of Albert Gullberg, Gio’s CEO, boomed from the speaker in the centre of the table, at which they were both staring as if expecting a genie to materialise itself from it.
“Are you saying that it’s something we do? Pay-back schemes and paying illegal commissions to get the orders?”
“Well, did, but we thought it stopped years back.” Ann was struggling to keep her voice strong. She was so tired. It had been such a long day.
“How was I not told?”
“I don’t know. I wrote a memo when we discovered there had been this practice and we introduced an internal policy to ban it shortly after. We did training. We thought it was in the past.”
“How come the police knew?” He was shooting out the questions machine gun style while everyone else stayed quiet. Oliver looked around the room skittish.
“From reading the warrant, I guess the information came from one of our customers who went bankrupt. The estate discovered strange money flows in the books and reported it. Actually, the memo identified this scenario as a risk.”
“Where is the memo logged?”
“It’s not. We don’t have a filing system for this. I have it on our server.”
Anticipating the why in the silence, she ventured, “In-house lawyers’ work and communication is not privileged. Protocol is not to keep a log of sensitive matters.”
“Get me the memo. We’ll have daily updates and meetings for any key decisions.”
She thought that was the end of the call, and she jumped off her seat when the speaker boomed once again. Barely containing his agitation, he spat out, clearly not expecting an answer.
“So, we employ crooks who knowingly circumvented the internal policy? How high up has this been known? Approved?”
Ann had expected her boss, Paul Ekstrom, the head of legal, to comment on this, but he had remained silent on the line, as he had throughout the entire call. He, too, is terrified of losing his job, like everyone else, she thought unkindly. From the many replacements of people in key positions in Gio, since Albert Gullberg’s start as new CEO six months previously, she had already learned that he was wired and ambitious, ready to run over anyone stalling in front of him. She held her cool.
From there on, it went quickly. Without ever being asked, Ann was put in charge of the internal bribery investigation of the worldwide Gio group. It ran in parallel with the police investigation of the Asia regional office which had started it all. Ann put together a small team of three and, for nine months, they had laboured against the clock. What they were doing was kept a secret from almost everyone in Gio.
They often suffered unbearable pressure from the management which was eager to show results, then put it all behind. Added to that misery was the absence of family life and consequent guilt over that, hanging over them like a dark cloud. It was always there, seldom discussed, because it only made life worse. But it woke them up when they desperately needed sleep. And every day, failure and exhaustion lurked in the dark of the windowless room in the basement from which they operated. Yet they had pressed on, they had not failed, and one day it was over.
Ann shifted on the sofa as she let the painful memory slip. Her body ached and she needed her painkillers. She thought of calling out to Adam for them but changed her mind. The newspaper fell on the floor as she gruntingly heaved herself up. She had suppressed the past events, fearing a post traumatic reaction which she could not control. But today, it had not come. She dragged herself to the kitchen and let the tap water run on her finger until the water felt cold. Then she filled her glass and fetched the pill glass from the overhead cabinet. She swallowed “the cocktail” - as the nurses called the combination of ibuprofen and paracetamol - in her palm in one go. The street was empty, the house quiet and she had absolutely nothing to do and nowhere she needed to be.
She had been questioned why she did it. It was it – the investigation - that had made her sick. The pressure, the long hours, the exhaustion. That was what they all said, her therapist Helena, Adam and the few friends that knew. And she had told them how corruption was the way of life in the country where she had grown up, how struggling under its burden, her country lagged behind. How, while many of the other post-communist countries had achieved great economic and financial development, in her country vast organised corruption was eating up any progress and hope for the common people to prosper. Ann hated corruption in her gut. And that was why, when the chance had presented itself, she took on the task of cleaning up Gio and carried it all the way. Some pretended to understand.
Six
“Edwin?” His wife’s weak voice came through the muffled noise of the late football game he was watching on the small TV. “It’s hot.”
He found the remote for the air con and turned it on. He was saving electricity. His bank accounts in China were tracked in the internal bribery investigation of Gio and were blocked. He looked around resentful at the bare walls, the tattered sofa, the cheap rice rug and the old TV. They were living at the mercy of his wife’s parents, in the two rooms of the basement floor of their house in Singapore and it was her, Ann Holm, Gio’s corporate lawyer, that occupied his thoughts.
She had travelled from Gothenburg to Singapore for the meeting after the dawn raid of his regional office. She must have just arrived with the overnight flight in the morning, yet there she stood, all business, wearing a tight sleeveless black dress and black heels. He remembered that he had whistled under his breath thinking that he should flirt with her at the next company party.
Twelve of them from Gio’s Regional and Local Management, Sales and Accounting were invited to the offices of Gio’s law firm to discuss the raid. The large windows of the meeting room showed off a spectacular view of the city below them and, even more, the success and riches of the law firm. There had been a low murmur in the room and the clink of teaspoons in cups. They were all seemingly nervous, if no longer shaken, from the dawn raid of their offices five days ago. Ann had stood there and had promised that the company had their backs, that no man would be left behind, and that they would be properly represented. He had not heard any reservations along the lines of “provided that they had done nothing wrong.” Then Lawrence Byrn, the local lawyer, wearing an expression of self-importance, showing that he knew it was his time to shine, explained to them what the allegations were. They were asked to tell the truth. It was important for the defence to know what the company was dealing with. And they spilled their guts.
Yes, they said, some years back, Ann had personally trained them with regard to the internal policy introducing anti-bribery compliance and prohibiting certain practices and behaviours. But they had waited for instructions from higher up to implement these new processes, they explained. If they were to abandon their way of doing this very profitable business, it would lead to significant turnover loss and their budget would have had to be adjusted. Then, he transferred from Shanghai to Singapore and took over the position of Regional Director for Asia, replacing the previous director, and it went quiet. They brought it up once at a global sales meeting but no one seemed to pay attention. No one pushed it further. Their bonuses were dependent on turnover, so they were happy enough to go on doing business, as usual. Then, sometime after, Ann had inquired about the status of the implementation of the policy, demanding to see progress, so they fed her stories of customers threatening to leave, changing to other suppliers. She had acknowledged that change could be difficult, but had pushed for solutions, for meetings with the customers, and they had relented. The sales team arranged to have a few reports sent to her, stating that they were indeed making progress. They were looking for the easiest way out, not asking too many questions, accepting less-than-plausible explanations from the customers, keeping the wheel turning.
Ann’s face went paler as they went on and she sank deeper in the enormous leather seat. The lawyer was now talking. He was sensing a shift in the mood, but it was too late to stop, so he ploughed on, now pleading that everyone (looking in Ann’s direction when that was said) should have known that it was just smoke. Ann had risen in the end, loudly pushing her chair away. Towering above the dark-wood conference table, her hands gripping the edge of it tightly, her burning eyes had swept the amassed suited men, her jaw square. She did not speak and she did not shake hands with anyone as she left.
Afterwards, he was angry at himself for trusting her words, for leaving their faith in the lawyer’s hands. With time, he ended up believing that she had played them that day. He was certain that if not suspected by her in the beginning of the bribery investigation that had followed, then at some point she must have seen the evidence that the irregularities were all known by the top management in Gothenburg, and that they were just the scapegoats. And she had done nothing to protect them. She broke all the promises.
His wife was very sick, in need of surgery. Gio had indicated that he would get financial aid for her treatment from its social fund, if he applied. And then six months after the dawn raid, he was dismissed from the position of Gio’s Regional Director for Asia because he had failed to bring the bribery scheme to a stop. His salary stopped, they had to leave their penthouse in Shanghai and cancel his wife’s surgery. He was kicked in the gut while lying down. And now, not having any options left, he had to find a way to kick back.
