persuaded Maitland’s superiors to abandon their doubts. He was offering shares in the most prestigious companies – seemingly a testament to Maxwell’s personal wealth hoarded in Liechtenstein. On 7 September Crédit Suisse accordingly granted a £50 million loan for six months. The loan was not to Maxwell Communication Corporation, the publicly quoted company, but to the biggest of Maxwell’s private companies, the Robert Maxwell Group (RMG). Simultaneously, Kevin ordered the appropriate share certificates to be hand-delivered to Maitland’s bank. But there was good reason for the bank to be suspicious of these. On each share certificate, the registered owner was shown as Bishopsgate Investment Management (BIM).
BIM was a private company established by Maxwell to manage the nine pension funds of his 23,400 employees pooled in the Common Investment Fund (CIF) and worth about £727 million. In theory, BIM was the trustee of CIF, which included the Mirror Group Pension Trust (MGPT), but because MGPT’s sixteen directors at the beginning of 1991 included Robert, Kevin and Ian Maxwell (and four trade union representatives), who were also directors of BIM, the self-governance of BIM never existed. Under the regime imposed by Robert and Kevin Maxwell, who were respectively chairman and finance director of BIM, the purchase and sale of BIM’s investments and, equally important, the registration of its share certificates and the location of their physical custody were determined by them rather than by Trevor Cook, the company’s manager (who was also a director).
On the Maxwells’ directions, Cook would either loan BIM’s cash to the Robert Maxwell Group or deposit the money in the account of Bishopsgate Investment Trust (BIT), which the Maxwells could draw at their convenience. BIT had been specially created by Maxwell to act as a private nominee owner of shares without any legal relationship to the pension funds, blurring the actual ownership in the eyes of outsiders. As directors of BIM, BIT and RMG, the Maxwells could effectively constitute themselves a board of directors and transfer the ownership of shares from the pension funds to their private company, using them as collateral for private loans without the knowledge of anyone else. That easy access to loans depended on the size of the pensions’ Common Investment Fund.
Ever since the CIF had been created, Maxwell had sought to persuade, cajole and even threaten his employees not to opt out of their employer’s pension funds. A special twenty-one-minute video, fronted by Maxwell himself seated on a large black leather chair, promised them that the pension schemes would ‘provide good benefits, are financially sound and well run’. To his relief, few had dared to withdraw their money. He could continue to use their millions as his own. No company’s affairs received greater attention from Maxwell than BIM’s.
Maitland ought to have appreciated that BIM managed the pension funds of Maxwell’s empire, but she felt no need to make special inquiries. With each share certificate was a transfer form signed by Kevin and others, including Ian, his thirty-four-year-old brother, showing that ownership of the shares had been transferred to RMG. Maitland did not query why the pension funds should agree to that transfer. Indeed, when on one occasion she saw that a share certificate sent by Kevin was still owned by BIM, she returned it for RMG’s name to be inserted on the transfer form. So, by 8 November 1990, £70 million of pension fund shares had been used to raise money for Maxwell personally. On that same day, Kevin asked Maitland for another private loan. She seemed unsurprised when he offered as collateral a share certificate for 500,000 Berlitz shares. It was, he said, ‘owned by the private side’. Again, Maitland and her superiors had reason to be suspicious.
To repay MCC’s debts in December 1989, 44 per cent of Berlitz had been sold to the public for $131 million. No one had ever suggested that the Maxwells themselves had bought any of those Berlitz shares as a private investment. Nor was their name listed among Berlitz’s registered shareholders. But Maitland would insist that no hint of suspicion ever passed through her mind when Kevin said, ‘These Berlitz shares are privately owned.’ The paperwork for transferring the Berlitz certificate to Maitland had been completed by one of Maxwell’s treasury officials. The Berlitz shares, owned by MCC, the public company, were being used by the Maxwells for their private purposes. By any reckoning, it was highly improper.
Robert Maxwell of course understood the impropriety. Later that week, he signed documents promising not to use the Berlitz share certificates brought back by Ghislaine in any manner without Macmillan’s explicit agreement. His indecipherable scribble would adorn many such documents over the next year. In each case, after he had signed, he would more or less forget the deception. Dishonesty did not trouble him. Throughout his life, he had ignored the norms of morality. Indeed his fortune had been constructed, lost and rebuilt by deliberate transgressions, outwitting and outrunning his opponents regardless of any infringement of the laws. According to the ethics he had learnt as a child, watching smugglers in his Ruthenian border town, the goal was survival and profit, and the consequences to the losers were irrelevant. For Maxwell, the Berlitz transaction had been a minor sideshow at the beginning of another hectic week, working in a moral vacuum within a surreal world.
The atmosphere in the citadel of his empire, the £2 million penthouse apartment on the tenth floor of Maxwell House, was suffocatingly imperious. Polished, double doors led across marble floors into a high-ceilinged hall supported by brown marble Doric columns and lit by glass chandeliers. Beyond, the spectacle of a huge living area decked out with expensive mock-Renaissance tapestry-covered furniture and with carpets patterned in a vast ‘M’ design cautioned any visitor who might be contemplating criticism or challenge. Access to the apartment, in common with all the buildings on the Holborn site, could be gained only by coded plastic cards. Even between neighbouring offices movement was monitored by video cameras. Rigorous security was imposed to protect Robert Maxwell’s secrecy and cushion his paranoia.
The twenty-two-stone proprietor, clothed in bright-blue shirts and dazzling ties, intimidated visitors by his gestures as much as his words, his gargantuan performance humbling those physically and financially less well endowed. The theatricality, the egocentricity and the vanity of the man were unsurpassed. Servile staff offered refreshments, earnest secretaries announced incoming calls from the world’s leaders, and bankers, lawyers and accountants did everything they could to please their client, while his deep, gravelly voice issued curt instructions, allowing no questions. Those who attempted to understand his psychology invariably failed, because both his motives and his reasoning were unique. Utterly consumed by his own self-portrayal as a great man, he was certain of his invincibility, sure that his abilities would overcome the natural consequences of any decision he took. ‘Bob believed he was bigger than the City,’ lamented Johnny Bevan, one of his many brokers. To Maxwell’s gratification, enough of his visitors accepted his self-appraisal. Even his most bitter enemies used the sobriquet ‘Cap’n Bob’ – thereby recognizing, as he saw it, his supreme importance.
On the floor below, the communications centre of his universe, other compliant men and women toiled in the service of the Publisher, otherwise known as the Chairman or RM. Visitors knew that, as in a medieval court, the official job descriptions of these employees often bore little similarity to their actual task. And, again as in a medieval court, dozens of those visitors and employees waited patiently for the opportunity of an audience. From outside, invitations arrived hourly. Most were rejected with the standard computer-template reply that the Chairman regretted that his diary was full for two years. The world’s newspapers, television and radio were constantly monitored for every mention of the man, the precise words faithfully reported in regular faxes. Constantly updated handbooks listed the telephone numbers of every employee, business contact and powerbroker across the world – town home, country house and office – and the speed-dial numbers of those included on a special list. The Publisher delighted in calling employees at the most inopportune moments, demanding not only their attention but their immediate presence. Television screens displayed the trade of MCC shares in seven stock exchanges across Europe and Canada – and were the object of his intense scrutiny. The image was intended to match the substance: not a second could be wasted as the workoholic billionaire controlled his worldwide enterprise.
The empire was run on similar lines to those of Nicolae Ceausescu and Todor Zhivkov, the autocratic communist presidents
