Читать книгу Bankrupt.Me-Not. Book of Problems - - Страница 9

PROBLEM 12

Given: a friend of mine who was first summoned to appear before an investigator could not have imagined in his wildest dreams that he would face criminal prosecution. He was quite sure that all his actions were extremely sound and commercially legitimate. He would joke with his lawyer while waiting in the corridor and even tried to make a cheerful compliment to the investigator.

The whole affair seemed cut-and-dried: the businessman had used his line of credit to raise money for buying a regular shipment of tomatoes from Turkey, drew up a contract to that effect and began waiting for the goods to be delivered. But on their way back a dozen juggernauts with fresh tomatoes were held up at the border checkpoint because of the political conflict between Russia and Turkey. All transit was suddenly blocked, as Russia imposed a ban on Turkish vegetables, including tomatoes, yet the bank flatly refused to recognize it as force majeure.

Question: but what does criminal prosecution have to do with all this? It turned out that a bank employee had decided to clamp down on the borrower by submitting a statement to the police about an illegally obtained loan. This effectively incriminated the businessman as someone who had tried to embezzle the money from the bank.

Investigators did not care a thing about the businessman’s motives for buying the tomatoes because they had a statement from the bank on their desk and needed to showcase an improved crime detection rate no matter what. The banker intentionally went with extortion because he was trying to earn brownie points at work – the borrowed money had not been returned, and it was not his job to rummage through the routine evidence. He reckoned that after some shakedown, the businessman would find the money to pay back the loan one way or another, frantically trying to avoid criminal prosecution. Even sudden political disputes between countries can cause a business to collapse.