The Fake: Deadly Finances

By Karlheinz Moll

After the killing of a bank employee in Munich is linked to the violent death of a man who worked at the Luxembourg branch of the same global banking group, Alexander Granger of the German Federal Police (BKA) is asked to investigate the mystery involving company accounts at these banks where it seems large sums of money have been flowing in and out for unknown purposes. At the same time another man is killed in Singapore while making a call to Interpol agent Cynthia Yeow in Hong Kong to tell her about financial irregularities on a company account he was reviewing. Alexander and Cynthia join forces after more people are killed, all linked to the same few connected companies, and follow clues that ultimately lead them to the United States. In Montana, a Senator is being pushed out, requiring a special election that kicks off a fierce battle for the vacant seat and an unexpected candidate quickly outruns his competitors. A strange business man in Azerbaijan shows an interest in the Montana Senate race while fiercely protecting his secret global business interests in Europe and Asia from detection. More people will have to die unless Alexander and Cynthia can solve the mystery surrounding The FAKE.

• Language: English
• Publisher: tredition
• Release date: Nov 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9783746962740

Karlheinz Moll

Karlheinz Moll, geboren 1966 in Meckenbeuren, lebt und arbeitet primär in München. Hauptberuflich ist er als Unternehmensberater, Projekt Manager, Fachspezialist und Trainer in der Finanzwelt tätig. Mit seinem Abschluss als MBA für Finanzdienstleistungen der University of Wales blickt er auf 30 Jahre Erfahrung in der Finanzdienstleistungsbranche zurück. Er begann seine Tätigkeit als Autor in 2014 mit der Veröffentlichung von Sachbüchern. Sein erstes Buch ´FATCA – Wenn der Fiskus zweimal klingelt´ befasste sich mit dem amerikanischen Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) und einem Einblick in die U.S. Steuergesetze. Ein Jahr später folgte sein zweites Sachbuch ´Amerika – Land der unbegrenzten Gegensätze´. Während das Buch zu FATCA nur auf Deutsch verfügbar ist, wurde ´Amerika´ in 2016 auch auf Englisch veröffentlicht. 2017 schrieb Karlheinz Moll den ersten Band ´Ego Shooter – The Depth of the Pain´ zu einer Serie von internationalen Thrillern rund um den BKA-Agenten Alexander Granger. Ein Jahr später folgte mit ´The FAKE – Deadly Finances´ der zweite Band. In 2019 wurde ´Downhill – Whatever It Takes´ als dritter Band in der Serie veröffentlicht. Alle Bände der Serie sind auf Englisch erschienen. In 2020 verfasste er mit ´Espresso Morte´ seinen ersten deutschsprachigen Roman und in 2021 folgte mit ´Bitterroot – Trail of Death´ sein erster Western. Der nun vorliegende Roman ´Das Puzzle des Todes´ ist der erste einer Reihe von Krimis, die in der Heimatstadt des Autors angesiedelt sind.

Book preview

Prologue I

One Month ago – Singapore

He had left his office in the financial district a few minutes before and cycled towards the Gardens of the Bay, the futuristic tropical park on Marina South. He locked his bike next to those of hundreds of others who had also flocked to the 54 acres, a mixture of habitat and city park, after office hours to exercise, eat take out or meet with friends.

He sat on a park bench with a good view of the Super Trees´, the vertical gardens reaching up 54 meters into the Singapore sunset. Like many he spent only a little time on the scenery before focusing his attention on the incoming messages and mails on his smart phone. The working day in a private equity firm like the one he was employed by was long and quite often continued into overtime.

For a few days now he had struggled with what to do next. What he had found out worried him. He could go to his superior, the CEO of the small boutique, or his colleague sitting next to him who was the Co-CEO as well as head of risk and compliance. Small but highly profitable firms like this didn´t need much staff despite the huge volumes of business they transacted. He brushed the thought aside once more. If he was wrong and there was nothing, he would look like an idiot or might even lose his job, he thought, while browsing through his list of close contacts on one of his social media accounts. There it was. The name he was looking for.

He sat there a moment in silence, listening to his inner voice, staring into the darkening Singapore sky, as if searching for some guidance from somewhere out there, hoping that he was doing the right thing. Then he pressed the green phone button to dial the number in Hong Kong.

The phone was quickly picked-up and they exchanged pleasantries like old friends, which they were. After a short while he changed the subject to a more serious topic. She could hear in his voice that he had something important to talk about. She had no idea where it was leading when he started to explain how it had all began a few weeks ago but it got quite interesting after a few more minutes and she understood why he had called her after so long.

He explained what he had dug up so far and where he would need her advice and support. He did not notice the people around him. He was concentrating on telling her what he wanted her to know without revealing anything which could either jeopardize his job or set the hares running. If he had looked around he might have taken notice of the person sitting on the park bench next to the one he occupied. This person was alone and observing the surroundings. Most people had moved on now and there was nobody else close-by. The perfect opportunity to act.

The person had assembled something from a black leather bag before getting up and walking by the bench where he was sitting. Nothing special about it. People entered and left the park all the time. The person almost passed his position before turning around to face him.

He was about to come to the point where he needed her help. He had explained what he would like her to do and started to give her a name to look into when he saw the person standing in front of him holding something in their right hand which he could not clearly make out at first. Then he saw what it was. His eyes widened and his expression turned into shock and fear. Before he could open his mouth again a loud crack followed by another broke the silence. Loud enough to be heard by any person close-by but quiet enough not to draw much attention as there was no one near and there was traffic noise which drowned out the reports for those further away.

His head sank down and his body fell off the bench. The person knelt down and felt the pulse of the now dead body. The person saw the smart phone and picked it up. The call was still connected and the voice of a woman could be heard asking Hello…are you still there? before the red button was pressed ending the call. The person made a mental note of the number of the woman in Hong Kong before leaving the park and disappearing into the dark just like any other visitor.

In Hong Kong, she wondered what had just happened. A minute ago she had been listening to one of the most interesting and disturbing stories she had heard in a long time, especially coming from someone in the financial world. She got a bad feeling as soon as the call was interrupted and pressed the re-dial button several times to no avail.

The last words she had heard him saying were `Check out Dragon…´

Prologue II

Six months ago – Baku, Azerbaijan

Aview like this was unparalleled in this country. He stood at the window of his penthouse on the 83 rd floor of the high-rise tower bearing his name. The building was the pride of modern-day Azerbaijan, an oasis made of steel, cement and glass in an otherwise rugged country.

He held a glass of single malt in his hand which had cost more than most of the ordinary local people made a month. But then he was no ordinary man. He could be a very happy man and would be if some disturbing news had not come his way today. Why could time not stop for a while when the world seemed to be perfect? Like yesterday when he was full of joy when he had received much better news than what he had to deal with now.

Yesterday he had learned that his plans in the U.S. had finally gone in the right direction. Some seeds that are planted may take ages till they germinate, if ever. Just like in this case. ´Finally, we are getting somewhere´ he remembered himself muttering less than 24 hours ago. He shook his head in disbelief when he remembered how the first steps had gone, how he had sown the seeds, one at a time. Looking at it now, it had felt to him like he was adopting an orphan and was turning it into his love child. And now this.

This afternoon he had again got some news from his many sources around the globe. This time the news came from Luxembourg. His loyal underling there, whom he had never met and who certainly had no idea that the trail ultimately led back to him, had called someone, who called someone else before he got the message. It was a long memo, not much different to security services intelligence briefings but with the small difference that he was not part of any government. He had never heard of the ´Common Reporting Standard´ or the ´Automatic Exchange of Information` but he understood enough that action had to be taken, and quickly too.

While he took another sip from his glass, he thought about how to deal with the situation. It needed to be addressed with utmost discretion, this he was clear about. But it also needed to be done fast. It took him a few more minutes before it became obvious to him that there was only one person fit for the job. That person was the best in class and the best money could buy.

He took out one of his many phones, untraceable just being one of the many features the expensive tool provided and dialed a number which some of his associates had obtained.

When the phone was answered the conversation was short. It was the first time they had spoken and even though he had heard plenty about her they had never met in person. But who needs meetings in this globalized world? Results were all he expected from the people working for him one way or the other and results were what he had received from previous assignments, sometimes in a way which surprised him.

The necessary details were quickly exchanged which would be followed by some more written instructions through secure channels. He made it clear that the assignment might involve several targets at various locations around the globe and that the contract may take a bit longer than usual.

Last came the price he was willing to pay for rendering these services. There would be retainer for the full length of the contract and a fixed amount for each human target plus expenses, of course. He knew from previous occasions that it would be a waste of time to start negotiating, so, he offered what he thought would be acceptable and it turned out to be the right approach. The offer was accepted without resistance.

Quality always has its price. This goes for assassins too.

Chapter 1

The Present: – Munich, Germany

It looked like another day of overtime for Joachim Gauweiler, compliance officer at Global Wealth Management Bank in Munich, the German branch of the global bank with the same name located in Zurich, Switzerland and known to the public simply as GWMB. For several weeks now he had had to stay in the office longer than he wanted and he had neglected his young family, remaining chained to his office chair in the evenings. He was neither behind with his regular work nor would anyone have accused him of working too slow. The cause was the additional workload ever more frequently dumped on his desk that was not in his job description. `That´s the pay-off for attending one training course too many´ he heard himself saying.

Joachim had been with the bank for the better part of two years. Barely thirty years old he had joined after learning the ropes for a few years with one of the Big-4 consulting companies. His specialty was tax-and-reporting-related regulatory compliance. When he first joined GWMB he was motivated by an escape from the strenuous long days at the consulting company where putting in a 70-to-80-hour week was not unusual for youngsters like him. When his wife-to-be became pregnant he considered it a signal to go for a more mundane job which would have regular working hours, or so the theory went.

Right at the beginning of his tenure with GWMB he had been sent to a seminar on CRS, short for Common Reporting Standard. After the workshop his boss and literally the whole bank considered him the expert on CRS. This in itself would not have been a problem but unfortunately for him it also resulted him becoming some type of internal service and competence center on the subject of CRS.

Another pile of CRS cases was the reason that he once more would be late home for dinner and miss reading a good night story to his little daughter. For quite some time he had given up sorting the files by urgency or anything else and just took them as they came.

The next file he picked triggered a kind of a déja-vu. It related to a company called ´Pegasus Transportation GmbH`. He remembered the name well from the last time he had had to look at it several weeks ago. Obviously not much had happened since then, he figured.

The firm had opened an account a few years back and must had brought considerable liquid assets to the bank at the time. The latter was probably the reason that the account was then opened without the proper complement of information, including a form covering CRS. The former head of the wealth management department had obviously given in to the Dollar signs in his eyes rather than giving in to reason and more importantly, to internal procedures. To make things worse, the client advisor who had opened the account had recently left the bank making it even more difficult to get anywhere particularly to get to the bottom of the issue.

Contact with the client had been attempted several times regarding the missing documentation without any reply. The account had recently been flagged as dormant as no activities had taken place in more than six months and the bank had not been in contact with any representatives of the company, if there still were any, for about the same period of time.

This alone would had been strange but before the account went into silent mode there had been heavy activity. Large amounts of money had been wired in and out, and not all of the transfers seemed to make any sense. Also, equities and bonds were frequently bought, sold and transferred from and to other domestic and foreign banks. This was all under an ‘execution-only’ mandate, so there had been no involvement of the bank in the decision-making process. All-in-all there was plenty of stuff which should have raised red flags.

A savings or commercial bank would have closed the account a long time ago or at least contacted the authorities but not an institution like GWMB where banking secrecy seemed to have been adopted from the Swiss headquarters.

Once again, he checked the notes he had put in the file the last time the case had made it to the top of the pile. There were print-outs from mails he had exchanged with his colleagues in the Luxembourg branch. This was because one of the stake holders of Pegasus Transportation GmbH was another company located in Luxembourg and in the due diligence process he had found out that this company maintained an account with the local GWMB. That was the maximum information he could squeeze out from the compliance staff there.

Joachim took another sip from his still-warm green tea, which he had been drinking by the gallon after he had quit drinking coffee. He had gained a few more extra pounds around the middle which he certainly didn´t need. As exercising was only possible on the weekend and he wanted to reduce his intake of sugar and fat, both of which he had piled liberally into his five to six cups of coffee a day, he´d stopped drinking coffee altogether. When he put the cup back on the table to again focus on the file of the Pegasus company he realized that he would have been alone in the office were it not for the cleaning lady tidying up after everyone had left the office, except for him that is.

He reviewed the reminders and letters which had been sent to the company and looked up the company on a public website. There the company still seemed to exist and there were good reasons for it, he thought. The assets in the account, mostly corporate bonds and exchange traded funds, had a current net worth of almost 8 million Euros. With that much value hanging around, he could only wonder why they acted so strangely, or rather, not at all. Next, he checked the call logs from all the attempted phone calls made to the company. His colleagues in the front office had got some feedback at first in the sense of ´of course we will provide the information and will have it sent to you in no time´, however no one had picked up the phone for over six months. Even though the company was located in nearby Rostock, at least that´s what the company papers said, nobody from the bank had taken opportunity to go there in person and knock on the company´s door.

Joachim made some further notes and decided to call his counterpart in Luxembourg. Banking secrecy or not, he had to find out if the account in Luxembourg was in the same state, perhaps equally dormant. That would be something, he thought, shaking his head. A multi-million Euro account and nobody around who cared.

The cleaning woman continued her tour from one desk to the next, emptying the waste baskets and giving the desks at least the appearance of cleanliness. She was standing at the desk opposite his computer when Joachim briefly took a glance at her. Very pretty face for a cleaning woman, he thought not realizing at first what she was holding in her hand. When he did it was too late.

Two sequential shots hit him in the heart and the head. The woman took the silencer off the gun, shoved the cleaning cart into a corner and headed to the exit door.

Chapter 2

The Present – Munich, Germany

The Nymphenburger Strasse is a street with plenty of high-end living and office space but also home to many coffee shops, restaurants, doctors and lawyers. At this hour of the morning both sides of the road were jammed with commuters driving to work towards the city or in the other direction towards Rotkreuzplatz. The same applied to the packed bike lanes.

Hauptkommissar Mathias Koch liked this part of the city and enjoyed driving down the street to work in the early morning hours before rush hour set in. He lived in the section of Munich called Gern, just minutes away from the Nymphenburger Strasse. He drove to the northern end of the street, passing by the same buildings he did when driving home at night. But it was a different time of the day now and he was not heading home but to a murder scene, double murder to be precise.

He stopped in front of a tall office building with a glass front. Some police cars were still around closing down the perimeter. The two bodies were already on their way to the morgue when Mathias reached the reception on the 7th floor. Not much forensic work was needed to confirm the cause of death. Two bullets in each of the bodies were self-explanatory. Before he was heading to the office of the bank he first collected some information on GWMB, so he would be prepared when talking to the people there. From what he was told by the first responders, nothing was taken or destroyed and it looked like a professional assassination for no obvious reason just yet.

Mathias had printed out some corporate documents of the bank earlier on, providing him with an overview of the management and the corporate structure. He learned that the office in Munich was opened in the 1990s, starting off with a small office in upscale Bogenhausen, serving wealthy Munich citizens. Over time, the bank had grown steadily and revenues increased considerably. The bank moved into its current building some ten years ago. The records he obtained showed that the bank had had it built and paid for it in full. Business must really have been good, Mathias thought browsing through the documents. He was certain that he had heard the name of the bank before but was unable to place it. It would come to him eventually, he was sure about that.

At reception, Mathias was greeted by Polizeihauptmeister Michael Mohr who had coordinated the onsite investigation from the time the police were contacted by the security guard shortly after midnight. What have we got so far? Mathias asked.

Michael took his notes and started to run through the information gathered so far. The security guard started his shift at 8pm. His main task was to sit in the reception watching the security cameras located at all entrance doors. Once each night his schedule also included a walk round all the office floors. At about midnight he had reached the fifth floor, where the compliance department is located and had noted that one desk was still occupied, although the lights were out when he had come up to the floor.

He knew the person sitting at the desk from many other late nights without knowing his name but he had never seen him sleeping. At least, he looked like he was sleeping at first, with his face lying on the table, the guard had said. When he came closer to the desk he realized that something terrible must have happened. A pool of blood was visible on the desk around the head and another one on the floor. He had almost thrown up and immediately went to the bathroom where he got another surprise. A woman lay on the floor, apparently dead too. She was one of the cleaning women.

Anything on those security cameras? Mathias interrupted.

Too early for that. The records are currently being checked by forensics. Give it another hour or so and we should know more.

What about the cleaning company or was there only this woman?

Also in the works. There were 3 women, arriving separately and also leaving separately after each of them was done with their work. Michael Mohr explained.

Except that one of them was done before she could do much cleaning. Mathias said laconically.

Michael overheard the comment and continued reading from his notes.

Three women entered the building after 8pm and three women left the building around 10pm. From the perspective of the security guard, everything was business as usual. When interviewed, he admitted that he did not pay much attention to them when they came in, heading straight to the elevators one by one.

When we pressed him during the interview he could not swear that there weren´t four women entering the building. The security camera records will probably reveal more about that. Michael said before moving to a few more updates regarding the killing.

Both people were shot at short range with two bullets from a pistol. It seemed obvious that the cleaning woman was shot first and that the killer was disguised as a cleaning woman when approaching the second victim but that too was still under investigation.

Most of the employees headed back home or did not even show up for work when they learned through calls and E-Mails what had happened. News spread as soon as the first ones learned what had apparently happened. The police wanted to talk to most of them eventually but it was not considered urgent. At this stage there was no reason to believe that the employees had anything to do with the murder, although it was way too early to rule it out.

Frank Brandl was one of the few who stayed. He was also a compliance officer and he sat opposite the late Joachim Gauweiler. He was now sitting in one of the meeting rooms on the same floor. Mathias had decided to start interviewing him first before talking to one of the managing directors.

Mathias started with a few routine questions to calm Brandl, who was obviously in slight shock. His voice trembled when he answered the first bunch of questions about who he was and what his job in the company was. Mathias could feel that Frank was loosening up after a while. The method almost always worked, Mathias thought. He continued with a few more questions about Joachim Gauweiler, his responsibilities, his private life and whether Frank could think of any reason why someone wanted him dead and who it might be. Frank had no answer to either of the latter two questions. Mathias realized that he would not get any more useful information from this witness.

That´s about all we wanted to know at this point. It might be that we will come back for further questions. Thank you for your input. Mathias said shaking hands with Brandl.

Frank got up and went to the door, shaking his lowered head.

Strange things happen he murmured. I´ve been working for the company for almost 30 years and never had any colleagues to mourn, not even from traffic accidents or sickness. Now there are two people murdered in just a few months. Plus the cleaning woman.

What you mean ´two´? Mathias asked surprised.

Oh nothing. he said, realizing he was talking to himself too loudly.

Nothing what? You just said something about two people murdered. Let´s have it…this is a murder investigation, if you haven´t noticed.

I am sorry, I didn´t meant to…well, it´s just that a few months ago a colleague from Luxembourg also died. I forget his name, but could look it up…he was killed too.

Now he had Mathias´s attention. Mathias´s gut feeling told him straight away that this was no coincidence. So he kept on asking. Frank told him that a few months ago a colleague from the Luxembourg branch was killed. When pressed, Frank had to admit that he knew very little about the incident, just enough to say that it did happen outside the office. He believed that the victim was choked or strangled. Mathias did not show it but he made