The Man and the banker buddy are plotting to leverage their new CatCryptTrophe crypto-asset-management enterprise into a feeder fund for a British Virgin Islands special-purpose vehicle.
This SPV would process said assets into a Cayman Islands master fund with close links to London, where much of the world’s ‘unexplained wealth’ is laundered and invested.
Which is why the banker buddy spent most of last week crafting a sales pitch for The Man, couched in suitably bankerish language that he’s already run past ChatGPT, which responded thus:
‘This is a plausible and realistic scenario, especially in the context of a well-connected operation with lax oversight, offshore opacity, and the gravitational pull of London as the global center for questionable asset parking.’
It begins with CatCryptTrophe positioned as a clean ‘digital wealth transformation’ exchange that purchases the assets—Bitcoin, Etherium, stablecoins, tokens, etc—for well-connected high-end local clients.
Thence to a Cayman quant crypto hedge fund with close ties to shady London finance boutiques, Canary Wharf trading desks, and FCA-registered front companies.
All this to obscure the money trail and convert incoming assets into less traceable commodities such as prime real estate with anonymous
ownership and high value retention.
Why London?
• A long-standing blind eye turned to aformentioned ‘unexplained wealth’.
• Global finance and legal infrastructure, plus networks of conniving international law partnerships, ‘entrepreneurial finance’ providers
and accountancy firms.
• Good cover—money rinsed through the ‘London Laundromat’ is to all
intents and purposes ‘squeaky clean’, as the Brits would say.
So there you have it, concludes the banker buddy. What are your thoughts?
The Man blinks. Well, he says, this is all a bit above my head, so I’m going to need time to mull it over and take soundings amongst potential clients. Let’s meet again next week…
It’s a week later, and The Man has been busy networking. It looks like we might have a winner on our hands, he tells the banker buddy. Thanks to our previous success in asset relocation, and Bitcoin’s stellar recent performance, I have a list of potential VIP investors.
But this time round we’ll make sure that none of them find themselves on the sharp end of a corruption investigation, which is what scuppered CatAstrophe. On the other hand, if it hadn’t been for that we wouldn’t be where we are today, so all’s well that ends well…
Meanwhile, Diogenes has been doing a bit of mulling on his own behalf, and he’s not happy. Since he agreed to take the fall for CatAstrophe he’s been having second thoughts, and exile to Caracas is no longer an appealing proposition.
While it’s true that he quite enjoyed his previous clandestine visits to Venezuela, and made some useful contacts, things have changed, and
not for the better.
In the first place, many of those contacts are themselves now on the run and fearing for their lives thanks to nefarious underworld activities. Which means that his own life might well be in danger if he goes back.
Secondly, he’s beginning to suspect that The Man always planned that his exile would be permanent, and that if he did disappear without trace it would be a case of all’s well that ends badly…
So what to do?