"Well, did you talk to this mongrel? Ashidan asked, "How much money did he give you, so that you didn't prosecute him?"
"Don't be rude, Ashidan."
"This district head is a real weirdo, "the youth continued, "He is the only local official who spends every day in the office. Do you know what he engages in in there?"
"Well?"
"He locks himself with his young male secretary since his wife comes from a much better family than he does, and she doesn't allow these little tricks at home."
The next day after his return to the capital, Bemish found himself at a party thrown by the district prefect to celebrate the plum blossoming or some other divine occasion.
The party was grand. All of the high society arrived.
The officials discussed the inflation and the importance of the preservation of the customs. The people from the stars discussed the inflation and the importance of the preservation of the customs.
In a corner, the foreign entrepreneurs shared more particular impressions from the local business surroundings with each other.
"So, this abbot comes to me and offers to bless the bank against a misfortune and he asks for two hundred thousand dinars for the ceremony. I refuse and the next night a fire starts in the office. The next day this vermin comes to me again, expresses its condolences, and asks for two hundred thousand again. When I complained to the police, they gave me the advice — don' buck and cough up the money — the abbot is connected to Horn's gang."
"By the way, speaking about banks — do you know that only the companies, with accounts in Shavash controlled banks, received the budget financing this month? They say that Shavash had a ten percent kickback.
And so on. And so forth.
Bemish met the Federation of Nineteen envoy, an elderly Malaysian, and the envoy led Bemish into a corner immediately and started telling him true stories from local officials' lives.
There were about dozen envoys present. Bemish was suddenly surprised by the number. He thought that only fifteen… not even fifteen — ten years ago — the envoys' number would be way smaller. The Earth colonies were leaving the Federation of Nineteen one after another, peacefully or with swords drawn.
Bemish was also introduced to the Gera envoy. The envoy was talking to two people that looked familiar to Bemish.
"Mr. Lawrence Edwards," the envoy introduced one of them.
"Mr. Jonathan Rusby," he introduced the other one.
Bemish didn't bat an eyelid.
Half the Galaxy police have been looking for Mr. Lawrence Edwards. Mr. Edwards had owned one of the Galaxy's largest and most respectable businesses. An airport technician's son, he made a five billion dinar fortune by the age of thirty. He used land allotments he acquired for construction purposes, as collateral to obtain the bank loans, and the banks trusted him completely. Unfortunately, Mr. Edwards had more and more difficulties in the last several years and he created a network of companies buying these land allotments from each other and using them later as collateral for bank loans. At the fifth act's end, Edwards escaped. When disappointed banks arrested the land allotments and unfinished skyscrapers, they found out their real price was very different from the price paid by the affiliated companies, and it didn't even cover one twentieth of Mr. Edwards loans.
As for Mr. Rusby, he had also been a financial legend and the manager of a successful offshore fund investing citizens' savings in risk free government securities. Unfortunately, the interest promised by Mr. Rusby exceeded the possible government securities trading profits by 3 % and, henceforth, Mr. Rusby, while promising the complete safety, invested his clients' money using much more profitable but much less secure financial instruments. The clients, lured by high risk free profits, crowded at his office, the modest retirees and dishwashers who would have never invested in his fund if they had known the fund's structure, brought their money to him. Rusby, with his incredible nose for trading, often gleaned up huge pickings buying a bankrupted company's shares at 5 % of the face value that would later rise to 90 % and he had a great time meanwhile with the margin between his take-in and his payments to the clients.
It was not economical but rather political quandaries that destroyed him — a new tax law on Aegeia, where his head office was, and a couple of the adroit auditors. Rusby's assets were arrested, his wife divorced him scandalously, the fund immediately bankrupted and Rusby escaped to Gera, where he kept insisting that, all this time, he fulfilled his obligations towards the clients and paid them exactly as he promised.
By the way, the federal committee didn't argue that.
It just claimed that if the Rusby investments' real risk level had been known, he would have had to pay the investors five-fold.
"Eh, Mr. Bemish," Rusby said with a friendly smile, "I heard that you were also taking part in the Assalah auction?"
"Also?" Bemish winced. "Wow! Would Shavash really let this man, wanted by the Galaxy police, participate in an auction."
Next to a lighted pond with gold fish, a small man stood — Shavash.
"Thanks for the headman," Bemish said, "what salary should I pay him?"
"Nothing — he is your slave."
Bemish choked.
"I thought there is no slavery on Weia.
"Call it the way you want. This man owes me two hundred thousand isheviks and he signed a contract that he would work this debt off any way I choose. I will transfer the contract to you and send it tomorrow with the courier."
Bemish was silent.
"By the way," Shavash asked suddenly, "they say, all the Assalah documentation was transferred to you. What's your opinion?"
"What do you mean?"
"I meant just what I said. You just familiarized yourself with the most detailed documentation, you are a financier. What do you say?"
Bemish hesitated.
I'd say that I realized how they make money on Weia. They make money not on private profits but on state expenses. They fed off Assalah in two ways. The first way was the inflated contracts and the second way was the written-off equipment. For instance, the company Alarcon was in charge of the land works. The same man was both the Assalah director and the Alarcon founder. He owned 20 % of the shares. There is the geological study's conclusion, that Assalah stands on an excellent basalt foundation with a forest situated above it. There are, also, seven million isheviks paid to Alarcon for draining swamps that have never existed. There is construction equipment paid for with the budget money at triple fold prices. And the same equipment was sold to Alarcon in two weeks and 97 % of the resource was claimed to be exhausted. How can you exhaust 97 % of the resource of a step excavator in ten working days? I bet, it was still standing unpacked at a warehouse, new and shiny! Any action was a financial pump that pumped state budget money from the company a manager was in charge of, to the company the manager owned.
Shavash listened to the Earthman with eyes half closed.
"You said that the director owned 20 % of the Alarcon shares. Who owned the other 80 %?"
"I assume that you owned it, Shavash."
A deferential waiter stopped next to them and Shavash took a crystal glass on a thin stem from the silver tray.
"However, I didn't understand certain things," Bemish continued, "what is an "ishevik bill of credit"?"
Shavash spread his hands.
"We were forced to do this. When the ministry doesn't have money, it has sometimes to issue short-term bills of credit maturing in three months. You need to pay the contractors somehow."
"In other words, you, Mr. Shavash, issue your own money."
"Not exactly," the vice-ministry pointed out indifferently, "Money costs as much as it costs. While, when you obtain "ishevik bills of credit", you go to a bank to exchange them for money. The bank can pay you thirty percent of the face value or it can pay you hundred percent. It depends on how good friends you, I and bank are."
"I believe," Bemish enquired, "it's meaningless to ask you if you approve of cutting the ineffective industry subsidies down."
"Theoretically speaking, I approve of it," Shavash said tiredly. "You don't read local media. I am an enthusiastic supporter of the budget deficit curbing. This Assalah thing swallowed two billion isheviks while the real expenses were not even two million."
The official's voice didn't carry either cynicism or sarcasm in it. Bemish kept silent — he didn't know how to snub a man who issued pseudo money as the first finance vice-minister, received it on the Assalah's account as a Board of Director's member, and ferried it to his personal account as real money.