October 29, 1993
Two weeks into the reign, Zhorik had gotten the process fired up: the corridors were packed, the warehouse was loading up, the till was ringing.
«Vatrobank» was up and running and growing, having picked up the affectionate nickname «Vatrushka» along the way. Vadim’s nickname had shifted from bug-eyed to putschist.
The unruly shareholders of «Russian Horizon» had vanished. Before they disappeared, Zhorik had spent a week watching the rabble-rousers through the window, identified the hyperactive ones, and invited them to the Terem for a chat.
In the meeting with the ringleaders, Zhorik repeated the old song about the Americans, too scared to raise the Russian economy from the ruins on account of the October putsch. He hammered home that the funds had been returned honestly, per the contract’s force-majeure clause, on account of which ten-dollar shares had been valued at nine cents at the Central Bank rate. The Russian government, and only the government, was to blame for the funds getting frozen as dead weight, seeing as they’d been spent buying out a factory the Americans no longer wanted.
No need to despair. A buyer had been found. By year’s end the factory would change hands and depositors would be paid off, but they shouldn’t count on dividends. The buyer was paying rock bottom!
Zhorik advised them to look at the contracts the activists were holding. There, in type that was not small but perfectly standard point size, it stated that dividends are paid according to the results of the year’s work. If Rutskoy and Khasbulatov had not started the ruckus, the results would have been splendid. But the parliament was blown to pieces and the prospects turned to dust…
The activists stirred and resolved that they agreed to get back what they had honestly invested. A whole heap of honest firms had appeared, taking the deposits of working people despite putsches and other nastiness of the Russian political class. Take that same MMM, right across the road.
Zhorik fell into thought… pulled out a calculator, punched some buttons… proposed a not-entirely-legal solution. The Yankees had bolted, leaving the outfit bare-assed out in the cold. Once the factory sold, roughly December, and once the money hit the account, roughly February, we could resume operations to pay dividends – that is, rent a new space and put fresh new hires behind the till. That meant spending on rent and salaries. So Zhorik would take out a loan at Vatrobank against the shares as collateral and hand the money over to noble people who cared about depositors’ welfare. Enough to cover reopening the office. If we didn’t take the loan now, problems would crop up later. All that was left was finding the noble people who’d guarantee the office would reopen in half a year – come spring.
The activists backed Zhorik. We’re all noble here! Take the loan, hand it over! We’ll make sure it’s all done fair and square. And by the way, what factory is this? Where are the documents? What’s the book value?
Zhorik shut down the flood of questions simply: information about the factory was a trade secret. If we didn’t want problems, we needed to keep our mouths shut, or else the factory wouldn’t sell. So let the activists elect a commission of three respected citizens who’d be admitted to the secret negotiations. The activists fell into thought: which of them were the most respected?
Zhorik had really stumped them. While the activists scratched their heads, Zhora explained the proposed scheme: we’d have to commit a crime of office – backdate the loan paperwork. That is, make it look as if a certain number of citizens had returned their shares on September thirtieth, before the fund ceased operations, and the loan had been issued against those shares at that time. He summed it up:
– For that I need your shares. I can’t take out a loan on nothing. There’s only one way: you hand over your shares to me and I take the loan against them. The friendly bank has no objection. Decide, gentlemen!
The gentlemen decided that fortune favors the bold, and asked about the size of September’s dividends. Zhorik shook his head:
– Impossible. By all the paperwork, if the shares are handed back in, dividends for the current month aren’t paid out. The current month would count as September, because on paper the fund closed on October first. So no dividends at all – you’ll get two hundred dollars for a gold share, a hundred for silver, and fifty for bronze. Decide. It’s a chance to get at least something.
The depositors agreed and arranged to meet again in two days.
On October twenty-fifth Zhorik handed out five thousand six hundred dollars to twelve gold shareholders against signature. Then he got the initiative group’s solemn word of honor that the money wouldn’t be spent and would go toward paying for an office to settle up with the rest in the future. He also gave them a month’s deadline to elect the three respected figures who’d oversee the process. Lastly, he announced he was flying off for negotiations with the Americans. A tedious process, would drag on a month or two, see you all in the spring.
Throughout the negotiations Zhorik played the part of a wretched clerk, worn out, indifferent, meeting the depositors’ hopes solely out of a pang of conscience. He never mentioned the mobile phone or Durandal. He showed up to meetings with the depositors in a threadbare little coat, on foot from the direction of Novokuznetskaya metro station.
Zhora summed up the outcome of the negotiations briefly:
– Life’s no fun without a sucker. Steer boldly. No protesters until summer. The movement’s been decapitated. They’ll take the thousands they got and sink them into MMM at interest, forget about the rest. All they care about is grabbing whatever else they can for free.
Five minutes remained before the meeting. I asked Zhorik what he thought about the old ladies who’d entrusted us with their savings. I’d seen with my own eyes a dozen and a half pensioners freezing among the demonstrators. Bundled up in threadbare little coats, mumbling about justice…
Zhorik laughed:
– Student, what’s with you? In the summer, when we were hammering vouchers, decent old ladies were out at their dachas working the beds. And where would they even get the money? The protesting grannies were sent out by their grandkids. The grandkids have no time for protests, but the grannies are glad for the outing. Nothing to do in winter. It’s all fine, don’t give it another thought!
