Trail of Greed: Fighting Fraud and Corruption... A Dangerous Game by John Dysart Page A

the four short steps at the side of the stage and took their places behind the table, each behind their own name plate. If they had got it right Mr Alan Purdy was sitting in the middle. I looked at him with interest. This was the man I had come to see. This was the guy that Pierre suspected was ripping him off.
    He was about six feet tall and I guessed his age at around fifty-two or fifty-three. His face was starting to round out, the cheek bones no longer prominent and the beginnings of a jowl around his chin. The eyes under the slightly bushy eyebrows were blue and gave off the impression of a certain degree of intelligence. This impression was strengthened by a large forehead. He was smartly dressed in a three-piece suit, a blue and white striped shirt and a bright emerald green tie. A matching handkerchief had been thrust casually into his top pocket.
    He was overweight – not yet dramatically, but on the way. But it was the mouth that bothered me. Set above a weak, slightly receding chin, his mouth was narrow, held in place by soft thickish lips. The overall first impression was of physical strength and relative good looks – a combination that, if not imbued by humility, tends to develop a liking for power. But that was only a first impression. I hoped that during the conference he would show more of the kind of man he was.
    The master of ceremonies walked on to the stage, microphone in hand, beaming at everyone and proceeded to announce the beginning of the conference. Everyone quietened down. The younger crowd dutifully switched off their telephones; the older contingent folded away their newspapers.
    This was probably the culmination of a couple of months of earnest work by the man with the microphone and he was basking in the attention. I won’t describe him because he didn’t really have very much to him that made him stand out. He was just one of these guys that do this sort of thing and as far as I was concerned he could have his moment of glory.
    He told us how delighted he was with such a large attendance for the fourth annual conference on “Investing for You” (with a nice commission for him, I thought to myself), and proceeded to introduce the speakers. Each name was greeted with polite applause, a little bit more for Mr Alan Purdy, Chairman and Managing Director of Ailsa Investment Management, but not from me. I’m sparing with my applause – certainly when no one has done or said anything yet. Why should you applaud someone just for turning up? If what the speaker has to say is worth it, I’ll willingly applaud – at the end.
    There were to be three presenters who would each speak for about half an hour and there would be twenty minutes of question time after each presentation, announced the MC. Mr Purdy, who was clearly the star of the show, would be speaking last – after a coffee break.
    I was not in the least bit interested in the presentations on “Succession Planning” or “Tax-effective Investing”. I would let them drift by. Mr Purdy’s presentation was entitled “Winning with the Big Boys”, sub-titled “How the man in the street can gain as much as the large corporate investors”. Why he couldn’t have thought up a title which was self-explanatory and didn’t need a sub-title to explain what it meant I don’t know. Probably there was some deep marketing philosophy behind the idea.
    The elder contingent listened with attention to the discussion on Succession Planning, which was not surprising. The question session lasted about fifteen minutes and various people could be seen taking notes. After all, if they could pass on as much of their wealth to their children and grandchildren without the taxman grabbing half of it, why not?
    Needless to say, each discourse had been accompanied by a bloody Power Point presentation. The “Succession” man treated us to a plethora of family trees with arrows flying all over the place. There was even one which simulated a situation of two