Millennium Trilogy Read Online Free PDF

International Development Authority and thought it was all some damn do-gooder project like the one in Tanzania. In the spring of 1994 a commission was appointed to investigate. At that time there were concerns about several projects, but one of the first to be investigated was Minos.”
    “And Wennerström couldn’t show what the funds had been used for.”
    “Far from it. He produced an excellent report which showed that around fifty-four million kronor was invested in Minos. But it turned out that there were too many huge administrative problems in what was left of Poland for a modern packaging industry to be able to function. In practice their factory was shut out by the competition from a similar German project. The Germans were doing their best to buy up the entire Eastern Bloc.”
    “You said that he had been given sixty million kronor.”
    “Exactly. The money served as an interest-free loan. The idea, of course, was that the companies would pay back part of the money over a number of years. But Minos had gone under and Wennerström could not be blamed for it. Here the state guarantees kicked in, and Wennerström was indemnified. All he needed to do was payback the money that was lost when Minos went under, and he could also show that he had lost a corresponding amount of his own money.”
    “Let me see if I understand this correctly. The government supplied billions in tax money, and diplomats to open doors. Industries got the money and used it to invest in joint ventures from which they later reaped vast profits. In other words, business as usual.”
    “You’re a cynic. The loans were supposed to be paid back to the state.”
    “You said that they were interest-free. So that means the taxpayers got nothing at all for putting up the cash. Wennerström got sixty million, and invested fifty-four million of it. What happened to the other six million?”
    “When it became clear that the AIA project was going to be investigated, Wennerström sent a cheque for six million to AIA for the difference. So the matter was settled, legally at least.”
    “It sounds as though Wennerström frittered away a little money for AIA. But compared with the half billion that disappeared from Skanska or the CEO of ABB’s golden parachute of more than a billion kronor—which really upset people—this doesn’t seem to be much to write about,” Blomkvist said. “Today’s readers are pretty tired of stories about incompetent speculators,even if it’s with public funds. Is there more to the story?”
    “It gets better.”
    “How do you know all this about Wennerström’s deals in Poland?”
    “I worked at Handelsbanken in the nineties. Guess who wrote the reports for the bank’s representative in AIA?”
    “Aha. Tell me more.”
    “Well, AIA got their report from Wennerström. Documents were drawn up. The balance of the money had been paid back. That six million coming back was very clever.”
    “Get to the point.”
    “But, my dear Blomkvist, that
is
the point. AIA was satisfied with Wennerström’s report. It was an investment that went to hell, but there was no criticism of the way it had been managed. We looked at invoices and transfers and all the documents. Everything was meticulously accounted for. I believed it. My boss believed it. AIA believed it, and the government had nothing to say.”
    “Where’s the hook?”
    “This is where the story gets ticklish,” Lindberg said, looking surprisingly sober. “And since you’re a journalist, this is off the record.”
    “Come off it. You can’t sit there telling me all this stuff and then say I can’t use it.”
    “I certainly can. What I’ve told you so far is in the public record. You can look up the report if you want. The rest of the story—what I haven’t told you—you can write about, but you’ll have to treat me as an anonymous source.”
    “OK, but ‘off the record’ in current terminology means that I’ve been told something in confidence