Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice (7 page)

I found out later that George had previously worked as Maxwell’s private secretary, but unlike the others in that position, he had quit before he was fired. As he was a close childhood friend and Oxford roommate of Maxwell’s son Kevin, another place was found for George. Whatever humiliations Maxwell inflicted on his staff, he had a strange and well-developed sense of family loyalty, which he had extended to George.

But as soon as I met George, I was suspicious. Was he going to report back to the boss everything I said?

After our introduction, George and I settled at our desks, and a few minutes later he asked, “Bill, have you seen Eugene anywhere?” Eugene Katz was one of Maxwell’s financial-bag carriers who sat nearby.

“No,” I said offhandedly. “I heard that Maxwell sent him to do some due diligence on a company in the US.”

George sneered incredulously. “Due diligence on a company! That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Eugene knows nothing about companies. You might as well send your local publican
¹
to do this
due diligence
,” he said, inflecting the last two words for effect.

Over the course of our first day together, George proceeded to destroy the possibility of my feeling deferential toward anyone in the organization. He had such a keen eye for absurdity and hypocrisy—and such a razor-sharp wit—that I had a hard time not laughing anytime one of Maxwell’s top lieutenants was mentioned in conversation.

That was how I learned that George was not spying on me.

From George’s running commentary, it became obvious that Maxwell managed his company more like a corner shop than a major multinational corporation. Everything about it reeked of nepotism, dysfunction, and bad decision making. Yet, I still felt that I’d landed the best job in the world. I’d achieved my goal of being an investor in Eastern Europe. Maxwell was the only person making investments in the region, and if anyone in Eastern Europe wanted to raise capital, they had to come to us. Since I was the one who vetted all the deals, I was effectively the gatekeeper for every Western financial transaction in that part of the world—all at the tender age of twenty-seven.

By the fall of 1991 I had reviewed more than three hundred deals, I had traveled to nearly every country of the former Soviet Bloc, and I was responsible for making three significant investments for our fund. I was exactly where I wanted to be.

But then, after returning from lunch on November 5, I switched on my computer and was greeted with a red Reuters headline: “Maxwell
Missing at Sea.” I chuckled and swiveled in my chair. “Hey, George—how did you do that?” George was always organizing pranks, and I figured this was one of them.

Without looking up from his work he said, “What on earth are you talking about, Bill?”

“This thing on my Reuters screen. It’s really convincing.”

“What’s on your Reuters screen?” He rolled his chair to my desk and we stared at it together. “I . . .” he said slowly. That’s when I realized that it wasn’t a joke at all.

Our small office had glass interior walls and I could see Eugene, white as a ghost, running toward the elevators. Then a few senior executives rushed past, struck with similar looks of panic. Robert Maxwell
was
indeed missing at sea. This was horrible news. Maxwell may have been a bastard, but he was also the undisputed patriarch of the organization, and now, for better or worse, he was gone.

Nobody in the office knew anything about what had happened, so George and I stayed glued to Reuters (this was before the Internet, and Reuters was all we had for breaking news). Six hours after the first headline appeared, we learned that Maxwell’s enormous body had been lifted out of the Atlantic Ocean off the Canary Islands by a Spanish naval search-and-rescue helicopter. He was sixty-eight years old. To this day, nobody knows whether it was an accident, suicide, or murder.

The day after Maxwell died, the share price of MCC plummeted. This was to be expected, but it was made worse because Maxwell had used shares of his companies as collateral to borrow money to support the share price of MCC. These loans were now being called in by the banks, and nobody knew what could be repaid and what couldn’t. The most visible effect of this uncertainty was the endless procession of well-dressed, nervous bankers who lined up to meet with Eugene, desperate to get their loans repaid.

While we were all shocked by Maxwell’s death, we couldn’t help worrying about our own futures. Would our jobs be safe? Would we get our year-end bonuses? Would the company even survive?

A little more than a week after Maxwell’s death, my boss called me into his office and said, “Bill, we’re going to pay bonuses a little early this year. You’ve done a fine job and we’re going to give you fifty thousand pounds.”

I was stunned. This was more money than I had seen in my entire life, and twice what I was expecting. “Wow. Thank you.”

He then handed me a check—not a machine-typed check issued by the payroll department, but a handwritten one. “It’s very important that you go down to the bank and ask for express clearing of this to your account straightaway. As soon as you’re done, I’d like you to come back here and let me know how it went.”

I left the office, walked quickly to Barclays on High Holborn, and nervously presented the check to the teller, requesting that it be cleared to my account immediately.

“Please take a seat, sir,” the teller said before disappearing. I turned and sat on an old brown sofa. I tapped my feet nervously, reading a savings-account brochure. Five minutes passed. I picked up another leaflet on mutual funds, but couldn’t focus. I started thinking about the Thai vacation I was going to book for the Christmas holidays when this was all over. Thirty minutes passed. Something wasn’t right. Why was it taking so long? Finally, after an hour, the teller returned with a bald, middle-aged man in a brown suit.

“Mr. Browder, I’m the manager.” He shuffled slightly and looked at his toes before eyeing me warily. “I’m sorry, but there aren’t sufficient funds in the account to clear this check.”

I couldn’t believe it. How could MCC—a multibillion-pound company—not have enough money to cover a £50,000 check? I grabbed the uncashed check and quickly made my way back to the office to tell my boss the news. His bonus was going to be orders of magnitude larger than mine, and to say that he was unhappy is putting it mildly.

I went home that evening crestfallen. In spite of the dramatic developments at work, it was my turn to host a weekly expat poker game. My nerves were so frayed that I could easily have done without
it, but by the time the day was over, six of my friends were already on their way to my cottage. In the age before cell phones, it would have been impossible to track each of them down to cancel.

I went home and one by one my friends showed up—mostly bankers and consultants, plus a new guy, a reporter from the
Wall Street Journal.
When they were all there, we opened some beers and started to play dealer’s choice. After a few rounds, my friend Dan, an Australian at Merrill Lynch, was already down £500, which was a big loss in our game. Several of us thought he would give up and go home, but he put on a brave face. “No worries, mates,” he said cockily. “I’m going to make a comeback. Besides, bonus time is coming up, so who cares about losing five hundred quid.”

The combination of a few beers, the boastful talk, and Dan’s impending payday made it impossible for me to keep my mouth shut. I looked around and said, “Guys—you wouldn’t believe what happened to me today.”

I started to tell the story, but before continuing, I said, “You guys have got to promise to keep this to yourselves.” Heads nodded around the table, and I went through the day’s drama. My banking friends were transfixed. Bonuses are the only thing that investment bankers care about, and the idea of getting a check and then not being able to cash it is an investment banker’s worst nightmare.

The game finished shortly after midnight—Dan never did make his money back—and everyone went home. Even though I had finished the game £250 down, I was satisfied, knowing that I had told the best story of the night.

I continued to go to work that week as if everything were fine, but things were seriously unraveling at Maxwell. Then, two days after poker night as I walked to the Hampstead Tube stop, I picked up the
Wall Street Journal
. Just above the fold was the headline “The Bouncing Czech.” The byline: Tony Horwitz, the reporter I’d played poker with.

I bought the paper and opened it up. There, in black and white, was the exact story I’d told around my kitchen table.

That son of a bitch.

I got on the Tube and reread the piece, mortified by what I had done. I thought this reporter was going to keep this to himself, but he had completely screwed me. No matter what kind of crisis the company was going through, there was no way I could talk my way out of this monumental fuckup.

When I got to work I stared straight ahead, avoiding the eyes of my co-workers. I was desperate to come up with a plausible explanation for my actions, but I couldn’t. George arrived a few minutes later, completely oblivious to my indiscretion. Before I had a chance to explain to him that I would probably be getting fired that day, I glanced through our office’s glass partition and noticed a strange group of men assembling in the reception area. They were so out of place that I pointed them out to George. He rolled his chair over to my desk and we watched them together—and for a moment I forgot about the
Wall Street Journal
article.

Unlike the parade of dark-suited bankers from before, these men wore ill-fitting blazers and raincoats and looked completely uncomfortable. They huddled briefly before fanning out across our floor. A young man, not more than twenty-five years old, walked into our room. “ ’Morning, gents,” he said in a thick cockney accent. “You probably don’t know why we’re here. My name is PC
²
Jones. And this”—he waved his arm in a grand gesture—“is now a crime scene.”

For a brief moment I was relieved that this wasn’t about my
Wall Street Journal
stupidity. But that feeling was short-lived as I started to appreciate the gravity of the situation.

PC Jones took our details and, as George and I watched, started placing white evidence tape over our desks, computer screens, and briefcases. He then asked us to leave.

“When can we come back?” I asked nervously.

“I’m afraid I don’t know that, sir. All I know is you have to go. Now.”

“Can I take my briefcase?”

“No. That’s part of the investigation.”

George and I looked at each other, grabbed our coats, and quickly left the building. As soon as we got outside, we were met by a swarm of reporters at the building’s entrance.

“Were you part of the fraud?” one shouted, thrusting his microphone into my face.

“Where’s the pensioners’ money?” another demanded, a camera rolling over his shoulder.

“What did you do for Maxwell?” a third one yelled.

I could barely think as we pushed our way free of the reporters. Several of them trailed us for a half a block before giving up. We didn’t know what to do, so we walked briskly toward Lincoln’s Inn Fields and ducked into Sir John Soane’s Museum. As soon as we were safe, George started to laugh. He thought that the whole thing was a big joke. I, on the other hand, was in shock. How could I have been so stupid not to listen to everyone’s advice about Maxwell?

When I got home that afternoon, I turned on the news and the lead story on every channel was the £460 million hole that had been discovered in MCC’s pension fund. Maxwell had looted the firm’s pension fund in an attempt to prop up the company’s sagging share price, and now thirty-two thousand pensioners had lost their life savings. On the BBC I saw the melee at the entrance of our building and even caught a glimpse of myself fighting through the crowd. Later that night, the BBC reported that Maxwell’s was the biggest fraud in British history.

The next morning I couldn’t decide: should I go to work or not? After deliberating for an hour, I decided to go. I left my peaceful cottage, got on the Tube, and once again fought my way through the scrum of reporters at the front entrance of Maxwell House. When I got to the eighth floor, I was greeted in the reception area by a new group of strangers. This time, they were the bankruptcy administrators. One stopped me before I could go into my office and said, “Go to the auditorium. There’s about to be an important announcement.”

I followed his instructions and found an empty seat next to George. About half an hour later, a middle-aged man carrying a clipboard appeared. His sleeves were rolled up, he had no tie, and his hair was mussed, as if he had nervously been running his fingers through it over and over. He took the podium and started reading from a prepared statement.

“Good morning, everyone. I’m David Solent from Arthur Andersen. Last night, Maxwell Communications Corporation and all of its subsidiaries were put into administration. The court has appointed Arthur Andersen as bankruptcy administrators to wind up the company. Following standard procedures, our first course of action is to announce redundancies.” He then began to read names, in alphabetical order, of all the people who were being fired. Here and there, secretaries started weeping. One man stood and shouted obscenities. This man tried to get close to the stage, but was stopped by a pair of security guards and escorted away. Then George’s name was called, along with that of Robert Maxwell’s son Kevin, and just about everybody else I knew at the company.

Amazingly, my name
wasn’t
called. Of all the things I had been warned about before taking the job, the one thing that was sure to happen—my being fired—didn’t happen. I soon learned that the administrators had kept me on because they had no idea what to do with the investments in Eastern Europe. They needed someone around to help them sort it out.

I grabbed onto this little victory, thinking that it would make it easier for me to find a new job when everything was over. Unfortunately, I could not have been more wrong. I was no golden boy anymore. Having Maxwell on my résumé was as toxic as it could get, and I soon discovered that nobody in London would touch me.