SECRETS Book II: Over the Precipice
by John Francis Kinsella
Free ebook download: SECRETS Book II: Over the Precipice by John Francis Kinsella, legally licensed and available in PDF format.
Michael D’Arcy investigates the trafficking of rare timber by unscrupulous Chinese businessmen whose criminal dealings were inflicting irreparable damage on the rainforests of Southeast Asia
Michael D’Arcy, after the daring escape from his prison in China, is back in Europe relaxing on the beach in the Southwest of France, recovering from his dramatic adventure - investigating the trafficking of rare timber by unscrupulous Chinese businessmen whose criminal dealings were inflicting irreparable damage on the rainforests of Southeast Asia and the islands of the Pacific Rim.
Together with Lucy Wang, daughter of a Chinese tycoon, Michael had discovered a vast system of rosewood timber trafficking involving billions of dollars. The profits enabled Henry Wang to invest outside of China via a system of transfer pricing, through screen companies in Caribbean tax havens, where the profits skimmed off were invested in property and business acquisitions in Europe.
China’s insatiable appetite for raw materials—for the construction of homes, in the greatest real estate boom in human history, had reached bursting point. Chinese entrepreneurs had become prodigiously rich, accumulating staggering debts, creating a gigantic bubble, now on the point of implosion.
Michael is called by Sir Patrick Kennedy, head of the INI Banking Corporation, and invited to join him on his superyacht anchored off the coast of Monte Carlo. There he finds himself co-opted onto Kennedy’s team of trusted advisers and sent to Central America to prepare a confidential report on the political and economic viability of setting up a pharmaceutical plant, designed to produce a mysterious drug - Galenus, part of Kennedy’s long-term plan to build a life science centre at the heart of Ciudad Salvator Mundi, his city in the Colombian Andes, a fortress built to survive the coming Apocalypse.
In Central America, Michael is confronted with a world parallel to that he had discovered in Southeast Asia, and sets out to cross the Darien Gap, where he meets desperate migrants confronting the dangers of jungle trails, human trafficking and narcos. His task takes place against a geopolitical background marked by a battle for power and influence as China and Russia expand their interests into the Americas, by Russia's war against Ukraine, and by China's challenge to the West for global hegemony.
Preface to this popular thriller book:
A tremor of fear ran through Henry Wang when he learnt that yet another billionaire had gone missing.
Henry, who I had introduced to certain business opportunities in France, was head of the prosperous Shanghai-based Delta Group, and was deeply concerned for the future of his business as China veered towards a more uncertain future and Xi Jinping’s objectives became darker.
Repression and surveillance stalked Chinese business circles as Xi demolished the system of collective leadership that had been put in place following Mao’s death, designed to prevent power falling into the hands of one man, whilst Beijing adopted a threatening expansionist posture abroad.
This time the target was a well-known figure in the banking world, whose sudden disappearance plunged not only his investment firm, one of the country’s leading financial management companies, into turmoil, but also sent the whole banking, real estate and technology sectors into panic with shares plummeting on the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock markets.
Henry Wang’s problems began when I was arrested after having stumbled on a vast network of businesses built around the smuggling of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of precious wood illegally logged by Chinese controlled companies in the rainforests of the Pacific Rim Islands.
Illegal logging was defined by the United Nations as a transnational crime involving the trafficking of timber stolen from primary forests in equatorial countries, which involved the cutting, transport, falsification of documents, corruption, and the use of the international financial system to transfer and launder the proceeds of trade in rare and endangered hardwood tree species.
I’d landed up in a Chinese detention centre accused of economic espionage, a charge that had serious implications for Henry Wang, whose business empire was one of the principal suppliers of parquet flooring and other accessories to the real estate construction industry, and to make matters worse it could implicate his daughter Lucy
It was pure coincidence that the Fitzwilliams Foundation was located at Queen Anne’s Gate, a two-minute walk from the Broadway Building, the former home of the British SIS, high above St James’s Park London Underground station, 15 minutes from my place in Dolphin Square.
It was less of a coincidence that the head of the Fitzwilliams Foundation, John DeFrancis, was a member of White’s in St James Street, a watering hole favoured by the Service’s senior staff, not that the Foundation, to my knowledge at least, had anything to do with that sort of business, though I’m sure there were whispered discussions of subjects of mutual interest in the quieter corners of his club.
With the COP26 approaching the Fitzwilliams Foundation, had been asked to present a paper on China’s encroaching activities on the Pacific Rim and its impact in that part of the globe, that’s to say Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Southeast Asia in general—timber, minerals, like copper, iron ore and coal.
Given my training, qualifications, and my Irish family relations, I had been engaged by the foundation to undertake a field research project related to deforestation in Indonesia and New Guinea for a presentation at the C furtive OP26 in Glasgow.
What I hadn’t realised was the nature of the Foundation’s business and how, what I ended up doing was very close to the kind of intelligence gathering that would be of interest to Vauxhall Cross.
The COP26 presentation didn’t happen, although I did learn how primary rainforests were being plundered for their valuable hardwoods, and how the land was being cleared for the development of palm oil plantations by unscrupulous Chinese businesses, which, with the connivance of corrupt officials, were plundering the ancestral homelands of unworldly indigenous peoples.
From the island of New Guinea, the trail led to China and Shanghai, where together Lucy Wang we had played apprentice spies as China was rocked by the collapse of its property boom as the Covid pandemic ravaged the country’s economy.
The pandemic coincided with Xi Jinping crackdown on successful business leaders, a potential threat to Lucy’s father, head of the Delta Group, a large Chinese business conglomerate, who like many others of their class feared a return to the bad times, and sought to diversify their business interests offshore, which in Henry Wang’s case meant Europe.
Henry’s worse fears were confirmed when the head of China Renaissance, Bao Fan, a major figure in the tech industry, disappeared. The investment banking firm had been active in an advisory capacity to many of Henry Wang’s business associates and anything that linked Henry’s Delta Group to an investigation by the financial authorities was bad news, very bad news.
Shares in China Renaissance plunged 30% on news of the disappearance of Bao Fan, who had been a leading figure in the country’s tech industry and played a key role in many of China’s tech start-ups.
The banker’s disappearance came as Xi Jinping’s increased pressure on tech leaders as part of his so-called anti-corruption campaign, under the guise of redistributing wealth, but in reality reinforcing his authoritarian regime, not that it needed reinforcing.
Bao was one of a long line of Chinese billionaires who have suddenly disappeared or died. Amongst them was Jack Ma, the founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, who had disappeared after a speech in which he derided state-owned banks as having a ‘pawnshop mentality’. Three months later, after reappearing, a very chastened man, he disappeared into hiding overseas, not a good reference for China and the idea that ‘China is a country under the rule of law’, where ‘the Chinese government protects the legitimate rights of its citizens in accordance with the law’.
Self-styled whistleblower and exile Desmond Shum said in New York that Bao had been targeted for his insider knowledge linking political and business leaders.
Bao’s arrest was confirmed when the bank issued a statement, ‘The board has become aware that Mr Bao is currently cooperating with an investigation being conducted by certain authorities in the People’s Republic of China.’
China Renaissance’s main business included investment advisory services, underwriting and investment management services in China’s domestic market and overseas markets.
