Читать книгу The Day John Fitzgerald Kennedy Past - Welby Thomas Cox Jr. - Страница 17

P.T. Chou was an Americanized Asian, educated at New York University with a Masters in Economics. Thirty-three years of age, unmarried and living in a Hong Kong high rise. The apartment was lavishly decorated in a high-tech motif with pen and ink drawings, signed by Asian artist. An ebony baby-grand piano sat near the windows to his balcony which opened on the bay. When he opened the doors in the evening while playing Chopin, the sheer drapes danced along the edge of the shiny black instrument, casting a spell over the candle-lit room.

Chou was of special interest to the Oversight Conference Partners who reviewed potential clients for the large firm of Bright, Goldman & Associates. The firm's quarterly financial report highlighted a definitive loss of billing and revenue. The goals for the year were not going to be met, and this meant an infusion of loans from the partners to meet the large monthly 'nut' to cover the expenses for one of the world’s largest law firms.

Bright, Goldman & Associates would survive. They had experienced down-turns in business in the past. But this cycle was longer and deeper. Money was short and you would think, with crime on the rise, the litigation department would be busy.

One of the major issues facing the firm was that it was top heavy with 'old school' partners who rarely practiced law, and their clients had gone into semi-retirement as well. Moreover the firm had never been known for representing violent criminals...only the white collar brand. These lawyers spent more time at the club stroking the ball, then in front of a federal judge, stroking his mind. They had grown accustomed to automatic billings to these well-heeled corporate clients and therefore ill-equipped for the changes in the economy and the loss of a major tobacco company client.

Barney Bright, the firm’s founder and surviving partner could recall the days of storied relations with blue blood families and corporate leaders more interested in financial portfolios. Bright was fully aware that the client's legal require­ments were perfected by a dedicated core of eager and bright young lawyers with starting salaries from thirty-five to fifty thousand in those days a more than decent income.

There was never an issue of the client being faithful...Barney Bright had perfected a secret formula for the tobacco industry secrets and this formula guaranteed by the legal protection under 'client/lawyer' rights to privacy. So whenever the government came calling on Brown-Williamson in the Louisville plant, they simply were directed to the office of an "of counsel" firm Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs who made them comfortable in the plush conference rooms, serving Columbian coffee, tea and pastry from, Plains, a world famous bakery.

The government specialist were permitted to read but not copy all the records except for those related to research and studies on the effect of various additives which were addictive and had been proven to be a major contributor to the cause of cancer. This cover-up was worth a fortune to both the client and the firm.

But as they say all good things do come to an end...and it happened in Louisville when a young part-time university student doing legal research for the junior partners discovered what he came looking for. His mother had died from the effects of a long term addiction to tobacco. This young man had a deep educational background in medicine and knew specifically what to look for. After several months of proving his trust-worthiness he began to get more and more of the research which proved the company and the lawyers knew that the product was a killer and did not bother to warn the public. The young man, a teacher at Louisville's Manual High School was able to copy the documents and deliver them to the FBI and the world-wide case of the United States vs. Brown-Williamson uncovered a smell that would taint the relationship and credibility of the so called attorney/client privilege.

Now the firm was targeting litigation in criminal law and had hired a litigation "hot shot" from a firm in New York to spike the corpus of one of the elite law firms in the world.

T. Rowe Flagler, from the Flagler family in Palm Beach, Florida was a hard driving, brash, no holds barred litigator who seldom wore his coat or had his tie in place. He was a prolific smoker which was against the company policy but his secretaries followed him to cover the trail of butts, ashes and odor...as well as bodies going down. He tolerated no excuses and a guilty verdict often meant the losing lawyer found another home.

Flagler had been brought on to head the legal team in the defense of a small tobacco firm.

The partners in the Louisville Law Firm of Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs may not have developed the original scam under the cover of Attorney/ Client privilege but they were the first to be caught, and that only occurred because a valued and trusted researcher carefully Xeroxed the files to verify that both the lawyers and the tobacco company knew that the additives to the product caused cancer.

The company washed its dirty laundry through the disingenuous manipulation of records on the tobacco giant’s research. So when the feds came calling with the court ordered subpoena to open the files, they were ushered into the oak paneled conference room, assigned five executive assistants who delivered mounds of neatly kept records while secretaries served Columbian coffee, English tea and, an array of pastry from the world famous bakery which was owned and operated by the Mayor of the City of St. Matthews on the east-side of Louisville.

When the feds had not completed the audit and chose to remain through lunch, Kunz The Dutchman catered a scrumptious lunch enjoyed by all who ate the huge ground round burgers and fresh out of the deep fried French fries with a side of slaw. Kunz's Restaurant on 4th Street was only three blocks from the law firm and Fred Kunz the venerable ambassador, handled each and every customer and order as though it was family and Louisvillians flocked to his beautifully decorated restaurant for cocktails and meals for all manner of occasions.

So the feds, fat and happy, departed the lavish offices in the Marion E. Taylor Building content that all was in compliance. The lawyers dodging another bullet for the tobacco company who did not object nor did they notice the seven figure statement for services from the law firm.

“The truth is, it gets down to whose ass you kiss, either prior to the trial or at the sentencing." I said to Hamilton. "A defendant who knows he is innocent of the charges and stand his grounds had better be represented by a criminal lawyer who not only knows the law but is well acquainted with the procedural aspects as well."

"Certainly, the indictment, the jury selection and the opening statement of the prosecutor begins and potentially ends the case of the defendant before they even present the case for the defense. Hamilton said.

"And make no mistake, in most cases the judge is not unbiased and they will let you know, as in a hand of bridge that he knows what cards you are holding and what will be the trumps...and he will show no heart." 1 said.

"Obviously if you had plead guilty as the public defender recommended, saving your family 100 grand, the prosecution and the judge would have accepted the plea in return for thirty months and restitution of less than 10% of the amount at issue," Hamilton said.

"And, I suspect no more than two years for probation." I said, "But the fact that I stood my ground, did not admit guilt, did not apologize, and basically gave the court the finger to the dismay of my lawyer who turned out to be the biggest suck-up, piece of shit I could have ever hired," I said.

"The Supreme Court ruled against the tobacco company, set into motion a series of events which bordered along the lines of the division between old gangster Mafia families and the more recently enlisted members whose personal habits utilizing the product known as China White pushed the envelope for a change of philosophy to permit the distribution of cocaine and weed." Hamilton waved to no one in particular.

"The law firms either had to change, suffering the loss of clients seeking a cozy relationship and the risk of exposure and the potential charge of corruption and loss of license." He said and then along comes the new breed of cat, recent grads from law school, fully aware and comfortable with the use of the product, and says hey, I have this client in the shipping business who deals in a high volume of cash and requires a middle-man to hold the cash until the product is delivered and accepted at the bonded warehouse." Hamilton said.

"So, the trade-off was hiding tobacco research for cash from an unknown product." I said.

"Yes, on the product side representing the shipping company, in this case Onassis who delivers the products from sugar; coffee; wheat; rice; tobacco, and fruit to ports in Florida, New Orleans, California, Maryland, New York and Canada to name a few," Hamilton said.

"Who is the client?" I asked

"P.T. Chou is the agent for the shipping company and they are represented by the law firm of Bright, Goldman & Associates who receive a telex from the shipper when the product has been offloaded by the union Stevedores into the bonded warehouse at the Port Of New Orleans. The buyer is notified and given legal notice that the product has been delivered with payment due upon the receipt via wire transfer to the escrow of the law firm with coordinates. When the firm receives the notice from the bank that the fed wire has been received, the law firm-sends a wire transfer to the bonded warehouse paying for the fee for storage. Hamilton explained to me.

"Now into the mix comes this legal hotshot named Flagler which Bright, Goldman & Associates hire away from the New York’s Attorney General, bright guy who has a boots on the ground, napalm and air cover attitude toward any legal issue. As the new leader of the Criminal Division and the generation of new clients, Flagler has a contact with a powerful agent for major shipping companies. Flagler must convince P.T. Chou that his firm can provide the legal expertise and the political muscle to keep the feds off the shippers back." Hamilton explained.

"I see the picture," I said. "Billions of dollars are coming into the law firm’s legal escrow account which is covered by the law as applied by Attorney/Client privilege. The fee for handling this business is one-half percent which amount to $ 5 million." Hamilton said.

"That is $5 million...per day...or with holidays a closure of business representing maybe ten days or a total of two-hundred-fifty-nine million US Dollars paid up front with overnight interest on the deposited cash." I said.

"Not a bad day’s work." Hamilton said.

“This methodology was a cost of doing business for Onassis, while providing safety and banking clearance for laundering billions of dollars, netting fees along the line at each point in the transit of the China White.”

P.T. Chou and Flagler did not know, nor would they have the need to know whose identity was being hidden by the code name,” Skipper.” For Chou’s part, his team delivered the product timely in Hong Kong under the cover of night and loaded the Skipper’s vessel with long balloon tubes into the concealed plastic tubes to keep the cocaine dry. On the other end of the trip when the ship arrived at the Port of New Orleans, the cocaine was removed from the safe-keeping pipes and delivered to Chou’s team for further delivery to networks who had wire transferred money for the product to the escrow account of Bright, Goldman & Associates.

At the other end of the transaction, Flagler’s associates checked the communications to verify that the products were delivered to the right party and the correct time and then the bank completed the wire transfers to Chou, through the Skipper’s attorneys and the firm kept the balance.”Hamilton said.

“These significant fees paying for homes, luxury automobiles, high end universities or prep-schools on the eastern seaboard, vacations to Hawaii and to European destinations and into Asia.” I said.

“Of course they did not know they were peas under the pod in a shell game of the illegal transit of the China White with the Skipper pushing them here and there, exposing Chou to a life behind bars if one of the crew got upset and decided to snitch on the operation and the scheme to hide the cocaine within the mechanicals of the ship. Their lives as nebulous as the human waste flushed from the bilge of the ship.