Gilt

By Graham Wilson

A new company float - Gilt Investments - risk free investment. Its structure keeps the valued parts in a new portfolio and leaves the risk behind. Is it real or is it Gold Placed Spin, a new public mask of glitter to hide the guilt behind.
Corporate lawyer, Stephen, knows Gilt Investments will give a great return. His own bonus and share allocation promise a cash bonanza.
It is all set to go. He delivers the Prospectus to the printer to send out to select clients. It goes live in a week.
But as the final hours tick away a journalist rings. A desperately ill woman has contacted her, she claims the past company has poisoned her.
The journalist goes looking for evidence, only to find out a company restructure has separated a murky past from a glittering future.
As she digs deeper she finds other victims, paid a pittance and then hushed up. Some are dead now but many others are alive and sick.
It is a race on three counts, to stop the float clock so the assets don't vanish, to keep the victims alive to testify and to keep her own past buried, lest it derail it all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Graham Wilson
• Release date: Nov 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463492789

Graham Wilson

Graham Wilson lives in Sydney Australia. He has completed and published eleven separate books, and also a range of combined novel box sets. He is working on two new booksPublished books comprise two series,1.The Old Balmain House Series2.. The Crocodile Dreaming SeriesHe has also written a family memoir. Arnhem's Kaleidoscope ChildrenThe first series starts with a novel called Little Lost Girl, based on an old a weatherboard cottage in Sydney where the author lived. Here a photo was discovered of a small girl who lived and died about 100 years ago. The book imagines the story of her life and family, based in the real Balmain, an early inner Sydney suburb, with its locations and historical events providing part of the story background. The second novel in this series, Lizzie's Tale builds on the Old Balmain House setting, It is the story of a working class teenage girl who lives in this same house in the 1950s and 1960s, It tells of how, when she becomes pregnant she is determined not to surrender her baby for adoption, and of her struggle to survive in this unforgiving society. The third novel in this series, Devil's Choice, follows the next generation of the family in Lizzie's Tale. Lizzie's daughter is faced with the awful choice of whether to seek the help of one of her mother's rapists' in trying to save the life of her own daughter who is inflicted with an incurable disease.The Crocodile Dreaming Series comprises five novels based in Outback Australia. The first novel Just Visiting.is the story of an English backpacker, Susan, who visits the Northern Territory and becomes captivated and in great danger from a man who loves crocodiles. The second book in the series, The Diary, follows the consequences of the first book based around the discovery of this man's remains and his diary and Susan, being placed on trial for murder. The third book, The Empty Place, is about Susan's struggle to retain her sanity in jail while her family and friends desperately try to find out what really happened on that fateful day before it is too late. In Lost Girls Susan vanishes and it tells the story of the search for her and four other lost girls whose passports were found in the possession of the man she killed. The final book in the series, Sunlit Shadow Dance is the story of a girl who appears in a remote aboriginal community in North Queensland, without any memory except for a name. It tells how she rebuilds her life from an empty shell and how, as fragments of the past return, with them come dark shadows that threaten to overwhelm her. Graham has also just written a two part Prequel to this Series. It tells the story of the other main character, Mark, from his own point of view and of how he became the calculating killer of this series.The book, Arnhem's Kaleidoscope Children, is the story of the author's own life in the Northern Territory. It tells of his childhood in an aboriginal community in remote Arnhem Land, one of Australia’s last frontiers. It tells of the people, danger and beauty of this place, and of its transformation over the last half century with the coming of aboriginal rights and the discovery or uranium. It also tells of his surviving an attack by a large crocodile and of his work over two decades in the outback of the NT.Books are published as ebooks by Smashwords, Amazon, Kobo, iBooks and other major ebook publishers. Some books are available in print through Amazon Create Space and Ingram SparkGraham is currently writing a new novel, "Risk Free'. It is a story about corporate greed and how a company restructures to avoid responsibility for the things it did and the victims it leaves in its wake.Graham is in the early stages of a memoir about his family's connections with Ireland called Memories Only Remain. He is also compiling information for a book about the early NT cattle industry, its people and its stories.Graham writes for the creative pleasure it brings him. He is particularly gratified each time an unknown person chooses to download and read something he has written and write a review - good or bad, as this gives him an insight into what readers enjoy and helps him make ongoing improvements to his writing.In his non writing life Graham is a veterinarian who work in wildlife conservation and for rural landholders. He lived a large part of his life in the Northern Territory and his books reflect this experience.

Book preview

Chapter 1 – The Float

Stephen leaned back in his plush leather chair and cracked his knuckles, one by one. Then he raised his arms above his head and stretched all the aching muscles in his shoulders and neck. They felt tired but good, with that great satisfaction which comes when a major piece of work is finished. He glanced at this email one last time, re-opened the attachment, not needing to check but yet full of desire to admire his handiwork again: the ornate gold lettering was set in a shadowed background of glimpsed objects of great wealth, seen in a dim mirrored reflection. It was all set into an ornate gilt frame, redolent of the style of old masters paintings he had admired in art museums.

Prospectus for Gilt Investments

Public Offering

Once in a lifetime opportunity

No Risk Investment

Huge Potential for Capital Growth

Annual Return on Capital to exceed 10%

Over the page came the brochure’s detail: all the components of the listing, beginning with a description of the full portfolio of assets held, along with many details of their exceptional value and promise for growth, accompanied by punchy info-graphics, coloured charts of upward trajectory. And then that final disclaimer, made as small as possible without appearing tacky.

‘Nothing in this document may be taken as a Guarantee.

As with all investments purchasers should conduct their own due diligence to ensure their own financial security’

He would have liked to make the font of this part even smaller but did not want to run the risk of seeming to be hiding something; there really was nothing to hide, was there?

No!! A big capital NO!!

Time to get on with it! It was definitely time to send off this document he had just checked one last time, so as to satisfy himself it was legally accurate and met the prudential rules for a public listing.

He clicked the ‘Send’ Button on his email browser. The email vanished, en-route to his secretary, who would now send it off to the printers. It was to go out in gold leaf envelopes to 500 select clients who were being given first option on the float purchase, minimum lot size of 10,000 shares each at $10 per share, netting the listing company an initial return for these sales of at least a cool one fifty mill, not to mention the other fifty percent of shares which were being retained and distributed to company founders. His own bonus from this pool of stock was 20,000 shares. The prospectus suggested a likely upside of the float of 50% plus over two years and it guaranteed a 10% dividend return per year for the first two years. So, assuming it all went to expectation, he stood to pick up about $300 grand in a year’s time, when free to sell. For starters, on Monday week, when the offering officially opened, he would collect his initial bonus of $100 grand, only a fair return for all the long hours he put into getting it all together over the last month.

Stephen opened his web browser, clicked into Google and typed Sports Cars, admiring the stream of images that covered the screen, he zoomed in on a couple then quickly rejected them as not having the right balance of flair and exclusiveness. A BMW caught his eye, shining chrome, silver paint and a black fold down roof. He felt himself salivate at the idea of driving it through Double Bay, with some gorgeous number by his side, her hair flowing in the wind. He looked at the price, the 150 number was a bit above his planned spend to use up the bonus, but then he thought, What the hell, I stand to pick up an extra 300 bonanza in a year. Treat it as a down payment.

On impulse he found the closest BMW agent with one in stock and placed his order, reading out his credit card number for the 10% holding deposit. He hung up and paused to admire the car image on screen one last time before he got back to work.

Just as he was returning his attention to the other things he needed to do, his phone rang. It was his executive assistant, Janet, telling him she had a nosy female reporter from the Sydney Morning Herald on the line, Irina something. He did not recognise the name as belonging to one of their financial journalists he had been working hard to woo, so as to get positive stories about the float. But he thought, What the hell, all publicity is good publicity, particularly if it bumps up demand for the shares and therefore that all important, first day trading result.

So he said to Janet to put Irina through and he would talk to her, looking forward to another chance to polish his soft sell routine before the launch, when he would take the stand for his talking head bit about the great value wrapped up in this float and how it met all the prudential requirements.

A female voice came down the line. She had barely said her name, Irina, followed by a Russian sounding surname, and he was off into his spiel, half expecting to hear back murmuring sounds of appreciation as he made all his key points. Nothing came back down the line so he kept on talking until he had it all covered. After a couple minutes he had touched all the bases. There was no reply. He found himself becoming annoyed at the silence from the other end. He forced himself to stop and ask what she thought. Still nothing came back. It was odd.

He asked, Are you still there?

But of course, I did not ring to ask for a promo piece, I am sure I could have got this from one of your glitzy web images or brochures if interested, but I am not. I actually rang to ask a couple serious questions for an article I am researching about the long and less than illustrious history of the parent company, ARJ Engineering, she said.

What do you mean? he asked.

"I am doing an investigative piece into the parent company, mainly focused in the 1970s and 1980s. In particular I am trying to find out about the chemicals and range of other products they manufactured as well as the safety processes they followed. It has been reported to me this company is doing something very similar to what happened with asbestos, separating the company from its long past history of using hazardous substances, to which it exposed its workers without proper care. I am reliably informed that, in a week, when the float happens, this separation will be complete and all chance of workers receiving compensation for past injuries will be gone.

I wonder if you would care to comment on that. Oh, and by the way this phone conversation is being recorded, just in case you need to know.

Chapter 2 - The Reporter

Irina put down the phone. Her hands were shaking; that despicable lawyer, so full of himself and how cleverly he was doing. Barely hidden beneath the over effusive gush was his chance to make millions for himself and his other corporate mates, all with at least big six figure salaries. It enraged her that he would get this money for doing next to nothing except robbing little people. The business journalist she talked to from her paper’s financial section had clearly been pulled with this smooth selling routine, telling her it looked like a great investment, warning her to tread carefully before writing anything negative, lest they lose future revenue from company advertising. Already a six figure sum had been committed by the company for full page advertising and other special promotions in the week after the launch.

Perhaps she too would have been drawn in to the hype a couple months ago. But that was before she begun to discover just how many shitty things the company had done and how careless it had been with the lives and safety of the small people who had worked for them. Now she was just effing mad at these people, scum of the earth, high rolling corporate scum. Well, as one of her early mentors had said, don’t get mad, get even. Or, as another cruder friend was wont to say, when you find turds in a swimming pool don’t scoop them out, but pile more in. Go out, collect every dog turd you can find in the neighbouring parks and chuck them in too until the water becomes so foul that those swimming in it can’t bear it. Then when they start to jump out you can catch them. She did not really like using such crudity herself, but it did seem to capture the essence of this situation.

She pulled her mind back from her anger and rationally analysed how she would play this. So far her story had three main legs, first the harmful exposure of workers in a factory in the 1970’s to 1980’s to one or more chemical solvents for washing machinery parts that were laced with a deadly contaminant, one called dioxin. In the past dioxin was just a name to her, now she had started to really appreciate how evil it was.

Secondly, a probable corporate cover up of these bad practises in the 1980s, after regulations had come into force which the company had continued to breach. Rather than changing practices to comply with laws banning certain chemicals and making rigorous protective measures mandatory, they sought to paper over the exposure, first using coercive practises to threaten anyone who complained, then systematically getting those people exposed off their books, using a mixture of restructuring and redundancy for trivial payouts, all with a non-disclosure clause. Over time they had cleverly terminated the employment of all those people likely to have been exposed. It was done in ways which made it all very difficult to trace back to source.

The people were got rid of on trivial pretexts, five minutes late for work, smoking out the back. This was mostly done in the time around the ‘banana republic’ recession that the country had to have, a time when job queues were growing rapidly and there were plenty more waiting in line to take their places. As best she could tell, over three to four years, all the people who had previously worked on the factory floor were gone.

There were no mass sackings where people would be likely to have a joint grievance and have kept in touch, just a steady stream of fortnightly or monthly terminations, until no one remained inside the company who really knew what happened. And, of course, when lots of people started to get sick a decade or two later, no one saw the pattern and connected the cases with their common history of exposure. So her best guess was thirty or forty people had died with an overlapping range of diseases and symptoms. This seemed extraordinary to her for a workplace of less than one hundred people, even more so as it seemed that no one else had asked any questions before. So far she had found twelve dead people out of twenty she had traced and she knew of three others, all who were currently seriously ill, in reality many were actually closer to dead than alive and most were likely to barely outlive the demise of their asset-less former company

And thirdly, with the new float there had come this latest round of restructuring, where the original company responsible had all its assets stripped out into a new and fully separate entity. So now, if anyone did make the sickness connection, all that remained was the shell of the past business. It would instantly become insolvent and cease operations if serious claims were brought against it.

As best she could tell it had kept a notional $5 million in remaining assets which it would divest over a decade in charitable donations, until the money was all gone and it was formally shut down. In its place was the new entity, Gilt Proprietary Limited, trading as Gilt Investments, with an expected post float market capitalisation pushing $500 million and a likely position in a couple years’ time of a billion dollar plus company. Of course these donations would generate lots of positive press from grateful charities and effectively drown out any suggestions of the harm it had once done.

Sure the old company, ARJ Engineering, initialled from its founder, was only a small part of the new company, something around 20%. But it had been the driving force in doing the restructure and old ARJ, now in his eighties, held the largest Gilt shareholding. Not to mention that his son, RRJ, was a real corporate high flyer who schmoozed with politicians and media moguls. It was said that he was in line to become the managing director.

Irina knew all this in the way a smart investigative journalist, one who can almost see and taste a story of corruption.

But the challenge was having enough real proof to get the paper to go to print without leaving herself or the paper open to a large defamation suit. Not to mention the risk to future advertising revenue. It could easily vanish if she published her rumoured story. Still she could feel it taking shape. She had one week remaining to nail it before the float was a fully done deal.

She felt pleased she had just fired the first shot across the bows and, unless she was mistaken, the fish had jumped. She must be careful not to gloat or show her hand too fully. She was hoping her threat might create enough nervousness about shareholder reaction to slow things down a little. But it was a high risk strategy. It may have the opposite effect of slamming the company’s secret doors, hiding most key facts, even more tightly shut.

The thing that had given her real heart was non-disclosure agreements she had found held by the widows of two dead victims. For a pittance these victims had surrendered all future rights to release information by either themselves or other family members, the punitive sanctions they imposed were extraordinary and the specific terms of the clauses were far more directive than she dared to believe, ‘to in no way to disclose procedures used in the conduct of work for the company, including any materials used, any types of equipment used including personal and protective items.’ This clause applied to any place on or associated with the factory premises.’

The good thing was that neither partner of the deceased was aware of these agreements, or their terms, until after their husband was dead. So they were in no way bound by these conditions. And, having both watched their husbands die slow and painful deaths, these were two extremely angry women who were more than happy for this information to come out.

Chapter 3 - The Victim

Anna forced herself to turn off the alarm that shrilled into her ear. She would have so longed to ignore it and fall back to sleep.

But she needed the work. The small amount of money it left her each day, after she paid the debt collector, just enough to prevent him selling the treasured possessions of hers he held; an antique ring from her mother, a heavy gold chain from her grandmother, an ornate cross studded with small rubies and some other bits of old jewellery. She could not bear the thought of losing these last remnants of her past, parts of her Ukrainian history.

It seemed as if, all her life, she had been poor: poor after her husband had run off and left her, poor when as a small girl she had arrived from the Ukraine with her Mama and her Nona in raggedy clothes, poor when she was forced into work to support her younger brother at fifteen, after her Nona and Mama has been run down by a speeding driver one day when crossing the road at a pedestrian crossing. Her mother had survived for a few years in a wheelchair, likely dying more from heartbreak with the loss of her mother, her last surviving relative from the war, than due to her from injuries, bad though these were.

So Anna had little choice but to leave school and get to work to keep the rest of her family fed and housed. She had been fearful but was determined that Social Security would not fracture her family even further. So she had kept them together and her younger brother had finished school and got an apprenticeship and a future.

But, for her, from that first day, work had been a struggle, the groping in corridors of those men who knew she dared not complain about, the smell of chemicals that she used to wash the machinery parts and which regularly splashed onto her skin, leaving an ineradicable smell and the frequent bad headaches that persisted for half the night. Perhaps that was why she and her short time husband, before he left with another woman, had never been able to have children; three times she had miscarried, they were small things that looked deformed when they came out and, after that, no more.

Well, it had always been hard. It seemed to have got even harder lately. Often her head spun when she stood up and she had to hold the rail in her shower to steady herself. And, after a few recent years when the headaches had mostly gone, in the last few months they had returned with a vengeance, often forcing her to go to the toilet and take extra pain tablets mid-morning and again after lunch. Often she got home so tired she was barely able to make herself a simple supper before she fell into bed, to dream troubled dreams before she woke to the alarm to do it all again.

But still life had its joys, a small brother, Fedir, who had idolised her as a child and now, as a grown man who towered over her; he had always made her smile. She was so proud when he had got that piece of paper for finishing school, a sort of leaving certificate, and then that wonderful piece of paper that qualified him as an electrician. Then, when Fedir married Talia, younger sister of her work friend, Natasha, and they had three beautiful children and now four grandchildren, these were things of great joy. They made her smile and feel stronger whenever she thought of them.

She had been determined never to take money or other charity from him, to never let Fedir know of her poverty, how hard she had to struggle to maintain the barest necessities. She always found food for the table when he and his family came to visit and then money to buy for gifts for his children and grandchildren. But lately she had only just managed to maintain this with the debt collector’s money and, each month, it got ever harder to pay him just enough to keep her things and not sell them off.

Chapter 4 – The Brother

Fedir Yanukovic tossed and turned in his bed as sleep eluded him. He was worried about his sister, Anna. Eight years older, she had always been the rock in his life, particularly since that day when he was seven and the awful news about his Mama and Nona came. Really he could barely remember them before that day came, only that they had been a happy family of four, living in a small flat in Concord, not too far from where his mother worked in a factory in Homebush.

His mother could not drive, and could not afford a car anyway, so she had found a job she could walk to each day. It was a very basic job, packing electrical appliances into cardboard boxes. But it had given the family just enough money to live. All the while his Nona had stayed home, cooked and minded house along with minding him, until he was old enough to go to school. He had liked that life and believed in its safeness.

He was half way through his second year at school when that day came. He liked his school and teacher and he liked learning about the world and how things worked, particularly machines and electrical things. Sure a few kids had teased him and called him a wog or mocked his name. But that had never really bothered him, he was big and strong for his age and was good at games. Soon he had good friends who looked out for him. And the lunches his Nona gave him, things like meatballs in sauce, were so much better than the sandwiches of others. They had become a thing of note in his life when he shared them with his friends.

So his world had felt like a good place. And then there was his sister, Anna, eight years older, who had seemed so grown up and clever. And she liked him too, she did not mind playing his kiddie games and talked to him like he was as grown up as she was. It was in that year that once a month his Mama and Nona had started leaving him alone at home with Anna for a few hours on a Saturday while they went off shopping, catching a train to the city or at other times going to different places.

This Saturday was special because it was the day before his Nona’s 60th Birthday. His Mama had managed to save some money by working two extra shifts that week. So it had given her enough to take Nona to the city, to David Jones, to buy a new dress. The next day they were to have her birthday party lunch, after church, with a chocolate cake, an amazing luxury.

He and Anna had stayed at home that day, playing games, waiting for the shoppers to return with anticipation and excitement. It was past time when they were due to return when there was a hard knock on the front door.

A big policemen was standing out there, explaining that there had been an accident as his Mama and Nona walked across a pedestrian crossing, the one next to the train station. As it was a quiet Saturday afternoon no one else had seen what happened, people just heard a bang and a screech of brakes. The station attendant had come out just in time to see a driver disappearing down the street. But his Mama and his Nona, wearing her new dress, had both been knocked down. Now they were both in the Intensive Care Unit in nearby Concord Hospital. So he and Anna were taken there to see them.

It was too late for his Nona, she had died in surgery from major internal injuries. His Mama was in a bed, connected to machines. Doctors and nurses, talking in hushed voices, said there was hope she would survive, but probably she would never walk again as her spine was broken. And so it proved when a few months later she was finally able to come home, now in a wheelchair, at first having to be fed.

But what he most remembered was the terror that night. A person from Social Security had come round, asking to speak to Anna, while he stayed in the other room, playing with his toys. Of course he had pushed his ear to the door, to hear what she was saying. The bit of the conversation that had stuck in his mind was the Social Security lady saying. Your brother is too young to stay at home by himself and you have to go to school and cannot mind him properly. So we will take him away and place him in care. Maybe we will do the same for you too, a girl of fifteen is too young to be left to care for herself, let alone for her seven year old brother as well.

Anna asked, if they were put in care would they be able to stay together. The woman sounded dismissive, "Oh well, I am sure we can arrange for you to visit each other now and then, but no, it will not be possible for you to stay in the same place.

Anna had pleaded, saying, Please me give a few days to work something out, we have an aunt in Melbourne. Perhaps we can go with her or she can come and stay. And they are saying it will not be long before my mother can get out of hospital and I can manage until then.

The Social Security woman sounded unconvinced, but she had nothing arranged and it would take a few days until this could be worked out. So she reluctantly agreed they could stay on for a few days until something else was available for them.

He remembered that night how he and Anna had cuddled into bed together, sharing their fear. Anna had promised she would do anything she could to stop them from being taken away to different places, that she would ring their aunt in the morning and ask if she could come up for a few days to help convince the authorities.

The next day she had rung the person she called her aunt, actually a cousin of their father, and asked got her to come to Sydney for two weeks so that they could show Social Security there was an adult she was looking after them. In the meantime Anna left school and got a job at the factory where her Mama worked, replacing her mother. So, by the time her aunt left, Social Security forgot about them and, because they had both