January Window (27 page)

I
typed a few of these abbreviations into Google on my desktop PC. Monaco STCM was actually Monaco Short Term Capital Management, an investment company wholly owned by the Sumy Capital Bank of Geneva, which was in turn owned by Victor Sokolnikov; and SSAG looked like it was probably Shostka Solutions AG, which – according to the newspapers – was the Sokolnikov-owned construction company that had the contract to build the new Thames Gateway Bridge. According to what I found on Google, SSAG shares had shot up following the news that planning permission for the bridge had finally been granted. And from the texts I’d read it looked as if Zarco had used most of his bung for a bit of offshore insider-trading – to buy into his employer’s company before the news that all planning objections to the bridge had been lifted could be made public. Since the announcement, the shares had risen by almost thirty per cent, which meant that if the ‘half a quid’ mentioned in the texts represented half a million pounds – bar ‘50k’, presumably fifty thousand pounds – then four hundred and fifty thousand invested would have turned into almost six hundred grand. Which is a hell of a return. And thoroughly illegal.