“Nobody wanted to pop the illusion,” interjected Montgomery. “It’s the Emperor’s New Clothes syndrome.”
Nestor eyed her. “Nobody likes to admit they were suckered. It’s easier on the psyche to keep living the lie.”
“But not easier on the wallet,” said Devine. “It has to come to a head. Although Cowl is not running a Ponzi scheme. I think what he’s doing is actually a lot worse. It goes right to this country’s national security interests.”
Nestor nodded. “I’m sure you read about the Panama Papers and, more recently, the Pandora Papers. It’s no secret to those in the industry that rich people from all over the world have been stashing trillions in opaque trusts that run from generation to generation, in perpetuity, and they don’t pay a dime of tax on any of it, ever. A lot of it is illegal money from cartels, terrorist organizations, deposed dictators who have emptied treasuries, ransomware players. Creditors can’t touch it, and the people whose money it really is can never recover it.”
“I read that South Dakota is sitting on over six hundred billion dollars of that trust money,” said Devine. “It creates a few hundred jobs in the state, but it sucked the lifeblood out of the places where that money originated. And Wyoming has something called the ‘Cowboy Cocktail’ that has even more privacy layers.”
Nestor nodded. “You can be the trust’s grantor and the beneficiary, and the people running the trust have no clue who the real owners are. They just see account numbers. You’ve got do-nothing descendants who haven’t worked a day in their lives and they have their own jets courtesy of these tax-robbing schemes.”
Devine added, “And you have some high-and-mighty politicians screaming about working-class joes pulling three jobs getting a few hundred extra bucks a month in government benefits, because they think it’ll make them lazy.”
Nestor said, “From the scale you mentioned, I could imagine it being Russian oligarchs and Saudi princes, dictators who have raided national treasuries, crime syndicates, drug cartels, your run-of-the-mill billionaires with criminal sides to their businesses, or legit ones who just want to offload money to avoid taxes and acquire more wealth surreptitiously and then pass it down from generation to generation without the taxman getting a dime.”
Devine said, “But there’s more to it than that. This money is not sitting in stock and bond portfolios. From what I saw, they’re buying huge chunks of this country with it.”
Nestor shook her head. “Can you imagine if the Taliban or Iran or North Korea or Russia were getting cash flow from investments in this country to fund their terrorist activities? Kim Jong-un a landlord in New York? An Iranian ayatollah owning hog farms in Kansas? Or Putin having oil fields in Texas? That would be the scandal of the century.”
“How do you think this all started?” asked Devine. “I know that Cowl left the country over two decades ago and was gone for a while.”
“He had burned through all his inheritance by then, and he had some personal scandals he was dealing with. Over twenty years ago, when I’d only been an investigative journalist for a few years, I traced a meeting that Cowl had with some shady people in the Seychelles, but then the trail went cold. Then he dropped off the radar for about a year or so. He might have been in Asia or eastern Europe, at least those were my best guesses. Next, the man waltzes back into New York, buys and rehabs that skyscraper, starts his investment group, hires all sorts of pricey talent, suddenly has a client list that the biggest players on Wall Street would covet, and boom, he’s the talk of the town. He wasn’t even twenty-five years old.”
“And no one really questioned that?” said Montgomery. “That seems crazy.”
Nestor said, “The money folks will forgive a lot if the cash keeps rolling in. Same goes for the government. Cowl’s operations bring millions to the city and state in taxes. He employs lots of people, and they also pay taxes and spend money there. He greases the palms of politicians he needs to. He gives liberally to charities. Always good for a funny one-liner or an ‘expert’ diatribe on a business show. Lives life fast and hard but backs up the talk with results, and he can afford an army of lawyers. Who’s going after a guy like that? Hell, I’m living proof of that.” Nestor looked at Montgomery. “Now, this signaling technique using a bikini is intriguing, and unique.”
“Not the words I would use for it,” said Montgomery, looking embarrassed.