Chapter 70: Financial Revelations

Leblanc pulled several folders and packets out of the large envelope and looked at the two women who were still somewhat in shock.

“First, Mme Tamara David did execute a will; I have it here, and you, Dr Alexandre, are her beneficiary; you or your descendants. Having the will makes matters considerably easier when we will need to deal with tax and investment ownership issues. There’s also a letter here for you.”

He handed her a sealed envelope.

“As you can see, it’s unopened, so it must be a private message. You should read it when you’re alone. The will is simple; it conveys all of the holdings of the David family to you. They are currently managed in a trust which your grandparents had us establish; your mother drew her income from proceeds of that trust and my firm acts as the trustee. Here is a copy of the trust’s holdings as of its last audit ... ah, it’s five years ago now; no new acquisitions have been made subsequent to that and there haven’t been any liquidations either, but mergers of some of the businesses undoubtably have occurred. The information here should still be somewhat current but any valuations would need to be reassessed.”

Leblanc passed her another envelope packet.

“The trust holdings consist of investments in businesses in various locales in the Caribbean region and also include investments in various financial securities which the trust acquired using the proceeds of the business investments. Next, here’s a list of the financial institutions where the trust has maintained accounts, mainly as certificates of deposit, and this list is current as of last December; it’s updated annually since the trust’s fiscal year runs from January to December.”

He handed her another packet.

Nadine interrupted. “How is all of this paid for? I mean...”

Leblanc raised his hand. “As the trust’s managers, as the second page of that contract reads, we assess an annual management fee. Because of the amount of the trust’s assets, our fee is quite small. Its amount is 0.85 percent of the valuation of its assets with an adjustment made for the income or profits of the businesses owned by the trust. I assure you that this is a very fair fee and my firm is honored to have been chosen to be the trustee. I hope that you will continue this relationship.”

Nadine nodded; she was still stunned by this news. She realized that the value of the contents of the safe-deposit box was a trivial amount compared to this trust.

“I did read that section, but it didn’t make a lot of sense to me because I had no idea that Manman had assets in a trust,” Nadine replied. “Is there anything more? This has been an overwhelming revelation for me; I need time to assimilate this news.”

“Understood. No, that is all that I have. Of course, now that we have your contact information, we shall send you updated information about the trust’s holdings and current valuations. As both a U.S. and Haitian citizen, there are inheritance issues you’ll need to face so I recommend you retain a tax solicitor in the States if you don’t already use one. We would be pleased if you continued to retain Cabinet Toussaint, Leblanc and Baptiste to represent you here in Haiti. We have arrangements which will allow us to represent you in the various countries where your trust’s holdings are located, too. That’s all I have, now, Dr and Mlle Alexandre. And Mlle Alexandre, please do consider us to represent you for your commercial activities here in Haiti. I have both of your addresses, both postal and electronic, so we’ll be forwarding your updates regularly now and I will send a representation proposal to you, Mlle Alexandre.”

“Wait, but you don’t know my needs yet...” Tamara began.

“Au contraire,” Leblanc responded, smiling. “My contacts in the Haitian ministries have kept me informed about your meetings with them during the past week. As I mentioned, our intelligence sources in this firm are quite good. If there are no further questions, it’s been an honor and pleasure to meet you both and I hope to continue this relationship.”

They all stood and shook hands, then Nadine and Tamara departed.

“What a hell of an impressive guy,” Tamara observed as they rejoined their security team in the lobby.

“True. And I’m staggered by this news. I can’t wait to see what Manman’s letter holds. Let’s go to the hotel now instead of going out to Henri’s and Julianna’s place; we’ll go out there a few hours later.”

In their hotel room, Tamara set up her laptop for a video call to her dad while Nadine opened her mother’s letter. She read it, crying softly, as Tamara connected with Wilson.

“Hey, wasn’t expecting your call till this evening,” he told her.

“We’ve got unbelievable news, Dad,” Tamara told him. “The lawyer here had a letter to Mom from her mother. And there’s much, much more too. Ah, Mom’s looking at me now. Mom, Dad’s on the screen now; you okay with Granmanman’s letter?”

“Hi honey,” Nadine told Wilson. “Nice to have you with me, even virtually,” she chuckled. “I could use a virtual hug right now.”

“I’ll give you a real one, Mom, looks like you need it,” Tamara said and they hugged.

“Okay, honey, let’s go in reverse order to today’s revelations,” Nadine began. “I’ll start with the law firm. The firm’s partner we met gave me a letter from Manman—among a lot of other things. I just opened the letter and it confirms everything that Tamara had told me about my Benin priest father and Manman’s time in Africa and her caring for her sick parents. She wrote all about that and there’s more details too; things that our Tamara didn’t know or recall from her memories.

“You remember that Tamara had said that Manman’s family had some wealth?”

Wilson nodded.

“That was a gross understatement, it turns out. In Manman’s letter, she apologizes for keeping that information secret, and her reason was just as our Tamara told me; it was to allow her to fit into the community she served—I told you all that. But here’s something new. Manman wrote about a very strong premonition that she had, that something very bad would soon happen to her and that she knew that she wouldn’t survive it. She wrote that she was beginning to plan for getting me the information I needed to continue her work when she was gone. Her letter says that everything would be completed right around the time I was to graduate with my degree—which was only about a month or so later, based on the letter’s date. So she was anticipating a problem and was planning for it, but apparently Vanessa moved much faster than Manman expected.”

“What did she need to prepare for?” Wilson asked.

“Here’s the stunner. It seems that the David family was quite wealthy, and not just by Haitian standards. The attorney we saw gave me some information about the family’s trust; I have that here,” she lifted the packet to show him, “and we haven’t opened it yet. The attorney said that the trust owned businesses in several countries in the Caribbean area plus a lot of stock investments. Let me do the great reveal and we’ll see what’s here.”

She opened the envelope and slid out a sheaf of papers. She saw that the top several pages contained a listing of names, addresses, followed by two numbers.

“Okay, there are five pages here, it’s a long table,” she interpreted. “There’s a name—company or business name and its address ... and what are those numbers?... mezanmi ... Haitian gourdes and U.S. dollars! Oh, the date here is from five years ... that’s right; he said that this was an old list and needed to be updated, but it essentially hasn’t changed all that much. Let me look through the list ... oh, spirits, here are two banks! A bank in the Cayman Islands and one in Jamaica!”

“You own two banks?” Wilson said in disbelief.

“Apparently the trust does. The list says it’s privately owned so even if ... wait, Tamara found something.”

“Yeah. I was looking through the rest of the papers in that packet. The Cayman bank, here’s the docs on that. It’s a privately held corporation and this is a certificate for a 75 percent corporate ownership. So the trust owns three-quarters of the bank’s value. The ownership of the one in Jamaica is 55 percent, same deal.”

“Jesus,” Wilson breathed, “and how many other companies are on that list?”

Nadine looked at the sheets. “Ah, about twenty-five on a page and five pages. Some seem to be pretty small, like part ownership in several jewelry store chains around the Caribbean...”

“Damn, that’s a big Caribbean industry in itself,” Wilson mused. “Anything else stand out?”

“Let me count ... six. Resorts. Two in the Bahamas, one in Jamaica, one in the Caymans, one all the way over in Saint Martin in the Anguillas, and one on Roatán Island, Honduras.”

Tamara was flipping papers. “Majority ownership in all of them. I see about eight hotel chains; two of them have large holdings but not majority ones, here. The other six are at least 60 percent ownership. Jeez, Mom, this is a whole empire. It makes what I’ve put together look tiny.”

Nadine had been looking at the table on her five pages. “Most of these others here seem small; in U.S. dollars from five years ago, about eighty entries have less than a $100,000 valuation—that’s small in comparison to the big ones. Oh, this looks interesting. There are three yacht charter companies on the list. Looks like a lot of the trust’s holdings are tourist related. Wilson, we need a law firm with serious chops back home to advise us. I like the guy we saw here today; he’s really sharp and has good contacts. And my special sense of him is that he’s completely honest.”

“Mom, there’s that other packet,” Tamara reminded her.

“Goodness, that’s right ... more to look at. This last batch was properties. He said that the other packet, which was valued as of December, has the trust’s securities and funds.”

She opened the envelope. The top sheets again contained a listing.

“Honey, the trust has a whole lot of stocks—ah, let’s see, common stock, preferred stock—what’s the difference?”

Wilson shrugged. “Don’t know...”

Tamara interjected, “I do. I spoke to Werner about stock ownership and then to my attorneys when we were setting up the corporate structures. Holders of preferred shares have priority over getting the proceeds from a company’s income—they’re paid dividends before those who own the common shares. But with preferred stock, you have no voting rights while owners of common stock do. And usually the preferred stock dividends are larger than for the common stocks.”

“Ah, that’s good to know, I suppose,” Wilson mused.

“There are a lot of corporate bonds listed here,” Nadine said. “Again, I haven’t paid much attention to what the difference is between bonds and stocks.”

“That one I know,” Wilson said. “Bonds are like loans and pay a constant interest rate so they’re a stable income source. Stocks’ values change with market conditions and the only income they produce is usually by dividends, which is the shareholder’s piece of the company’s profits, or income is generated when the shares are sold to make a profit. So if a stock’s price is lower than when you bought it, you’d lose money. Oh, there are different kinds of bonds, too. What are they called on that list?”

Tamara answered, “They all have names of companies.”

“Okay, those are corporate bonds. No government ones?”

“Not in these bond certificates here. Mom, any government names on the listing?” Tamara asked.

“Don’t see any.”

“Ah, I wonder...” Wilson asked. “There used to be a thing called ‘bearer bonds,’ but those haven’t been around for maybe forty years and most of them have no value anymore. Any of those bond certificates have coupons to clip off—oh, and are they the originals?”

Tamara shuffled the pages. “Um, no, no coupons, they’re all photocopies, and the dates aren’t before 2000. I wonder where the originals are ... oh, here’s a separate bond list. The originals are kept in the law firm’s vault, it says. How do you know all that about bonds, Dad?”

“My Uncle Dan used to clip his bearer bond coupons when he lived with me and told me then that those kind of bonds, which weren’t issued in any person’s name so whoever had the certificate owned the bond, were being discontinued because of money-laundering problems. He told me that soon they’d be illegal. I’m not sure that was true, but bearer bonds don’t exist anymore.”

“There’s more here,” Nadine told them. “A bunch of bank statement summaries dated last December. The first batch is from the two banks that the trust owns, Cayman and Jamaica. There are CDs showing ... can this be real? Almost 15 million U.S. dollars! More statements, two banks in the Bahamas and these are money market accounts. There’s just shy of a million there. Two Haitian banks with money market and checking and these have, let me add it, about 275 million Haitian gourdes. That’s, um, a gourde is now around 135 HTG to the dollar...”

Tamara was calculating. “Two point zero-four million dollars, Mom.”

Wilson leaned back and sighed. “Sweetie, you might be one of the richest woman in the world, you know.”

“I really doubt that, honey. It’s a huge amount, but lots is tied up in non-liquid investment. Still, I wonder what the annual revenue stream actually amounts to. All those investments produce income. Where does that go?”

“Here’s the answer, Mom. Here’s the trust’s annual financial statement. It was at the back of the stack of bonds. The annual operating income—gross revenue isn’t used, this says, because of the diversity of the kinds of corporations held by the trust and their varied services, shown here is $101,572,458. That’s exclusive of unrealized capital gains, it says. The expenses of the entities held by the trust total $30,471,227. That means the trust is currently earning about $70 million a year before taxes, Mom! The tax info is very complex ‘cause of the multiple countries involved but it looks like it comes out to around 30 percent. That leaves about $50 million in net revenue. It looks like the trustees have been reinvesting that money in the businesses and in security purchases.”

“That’s a good custodial idea,” Wilson commented. “Given that it’s in Haiti, I’m glad that there was no skimming.”

“The partner was very straight with us,” Nadine said. “And he was clean. That’s why the firm has such a good rep.”

“Tell Dad about the safe-deposit box, Mom,” Tamara said.

Nadine startled. “Oh my! That’s right. Listen to this.”

Wilson leaned forward expectantly.

“What new surprise do you have for me now, darling?” Wilson asked. “There isn’t much that can beat what you’ve told me already.”

“You’re right, that would be hard to beat. But this was close,” Nadine affirmed. “We went there first. Had a bit of a situation when we arrived; the officials were wary of mere women wanting to access a safe-deposit box. But when that got settled, we opened the box. My family, my grandparents I assume, or their parents, didn’t trust banks much, it seems, because they had stashed a lot of U.S. money in there—but get this; the money was from maybe a hundred years ago. There was currency from 1928, but not regular currency. Gold certificates, maybe ten of them, and each was a $5,000 note.”

“The U.S. isn’t on the gold standard any more, so...” Wilson began.

“Still legal tender, Dad. But the point is, the $5K gold note from 1928 is unique, the only one known is at the Smithsonian and it’s serial number one. We didn’t touch the stack of notes ‘cause they looked like they’d never been handled. The one on top had the number six. A lot of zeros and then six. I looked on line and found that none of these notes are known to be in private hands and the site says that they are profoundly rare. I took a photo. You’ll need to get advice about what to do about this find and even come here to retrieve them.”

“You guys are right; this is another amazing experience,” Wilson told them. “Wonder how they got such high-denomination bills.”

“Um, Dad, maybe this way. That Cayman bank, from the papers we have here, was established in 1927. I’ll bet the David family was involved in its chartering and possibly those notes were involved in moving money interbank during its early years. They used those large bills to move money between banks, as the websites I looked at explained. I also read that a number of very astute investors moved a lot of money out of the States just before the 1929 market crash; they were worried about how the market had been rising crazily. So probably they got the large 1928 bills and brought them out to the Cayman bank. Or the Jamaica one; that one was chartered in 1925.”

“Sure. That makes sense.”

“There’s more,” Nadine commented. “Along with the currency, there were six bags of coins. These were twenty-dollar ... what are they called?” she asked Tamara.

“Double eagles. Gold coins. We saw the ones that spilled out of a split bag and they had different designs. The dates of some of the spilled ones were between 1881 and 1931 and the coins all looked pretty new.”

“Tamara looked them up, Wilson. She found that the average price at auction for those kind of coins is around $2,000 each but some can fetch much more—what is it, Tamara? The date?”

“Yep. Also where they were made; they have marks that show that. Some versions appear to be very rare so those get big bucks when they’re sold.”