Ordinarily, I would have used LexisNexis to do a background check on a company, after my usual trawl of Companies House. Usually, the website would help throw up information on a company’s directors, their dates of birth and sometimes even their home addresses. Except in this instance, as is often the case with companies who have something to hide, I can’t, as they are registered in the British Virgin Islands.
Again, I might otherwise have made use of the electoral roll search, which had been known to provide invaluable data when people had forgotten to tick the ‘no third-party disclosure’ box when buying a new fridge or something equally seemingly innocuous. But in this instance, without a director’s name to go on …
I am beginning to wonder if this is the universe’s way of telling me to give up when I remember a trick Si showed me in my early days with the newspaper, as we researched a shady local business together. If you had a mobile phone number, you could do a reverse search on the electoral roll and see if the number matched a person who was registered.
Jumping up, I pull the wad of the phone bill from the drawer where I have left it, and start to scan through the numbers.
I had pored over the list when I first opened the letter without noticing anything useful, but this time, something jumps out at me: there are two numbers that come up again and again. My whole body humming with anticipation, I type the first one into the search. But the result is unequivocal: Unknown number.
I try again, but no matter how many times I repeat the search, the result is the same. Whomever the number belongs to is not registered to the electoral roll.
Taking a swig of water, I try the second number, typing more slowly this time. My finger hovers above the enter button for a second, and when I press it I close my eyes, bracing myself for further disappointment.
When I open my eyes again, I blink. There on the screen is a name: James McCann. The signatory from the company’s records.
Without pausing, I type into Google. It takes several clicks to find the correct James McCann, Partner at McCann Legal and Partners, a law firm just off Queen Square in London.
Excitement rippling over me, I keep going, copying and pasting the name of the business, and trawling through endless web pages.
For a legal firm, there is very little on file about what it does. Finally, though, a picture catches my eye. Unlike the other stock headshots, this one is of McCann in a party setting, in the archive section of a newspaper. The image is of three people standing side by side, each holding a glass of champagne.
The caption under the faces reads: Philanthropists Irena Vasiliev and Clive Witherall with lawyer James McCann.
Typing the words Irena Vasiliev into Google, the list of articles is endless. Irena Vasiliev wanted by Interpol for a number of crimes related to money laundering and financial terrorism, and for assisting a dictator.
The next, extracted from a piece entitled London: The Money-Laundering Capital of the World, read:
Vasiliev, a 46-year-old Russian who enjoys the protection of her government and is also wanted for supporting violent regimes in Africa, specialises in helping extraction and energy industries, oil and gas industries launder their money. One inside source said, ‘British banks are so full of corrupt money that to take it out could cause another financial crash.’
Lighting another cigarette, I flick back to my emails. Hovering for a moment over the out-of-office button, instead I pressed the hide button and continue to scroll through the results, unaware of the day outside fading to night.