Barman? Chocolate Martini
The year is 2008. The setting: a glittering New York Gala Dinner. The currency isn't cash - it's power, ego, and greed. Pick up Julian’s true-to-life story during his initial few weeks at Standard Chartered Bank, where he walked into a world of “smoke and mirrors” served with a constant flow of Chocolate Martinis. Beneath the veneer of philanthropy, the ballroom was controlled by manipulative characters, puppeteers who were rotten to the core. Dive into the next installment of this exposé into high-stakes finance, where a new hire navigates a night of brazen secrets and political turmoil, where endless partying continued carefree while Wall Street burned.
“Timothy Geithner, U.S. Treasury Secretary. Various high-ranking officials in Standard Chartered Bank. Charlotte Di Vita MBE, founder of 21st Century Leaders charity, and even a Lord. Actors Joseph Fiennes and Minnie Driver. Bob Marcellus, a currency trader client of mine and a client of the bank. To the unknowing eye, the 2008 ‘Seeing is Believing Gala Dinner’ brought together the great and the good, the higher echelons of the business and finance world, punctuated with celebrities, wanting to make a positive difference. It was smoke and mirrors, served with an unhealthy dose of Chocolate Martinis. And there was one character watching over the room who kept to the shadows. A puppeteer, controlling the room with invisible strings. We see one of the very senior high-ranking officials at Standard Chartered Bank. Arrogant, disloyal, manipulative. Affairs littered his life. Tax havens for deviously redirected funds were strategically located the world over. Rotten to the core, he was the mastermind behind the deals. It was all down to him, manipulating the Board to get it done. All roads ended with him.”
New York, 2008. Greed, money, and power destroy people. They get infected in a way that’s like addiction. Needing more and more at any cost, their skin crawls with it. During the unforgettable night that unfolded in front of Julian, at the Seeing is Believing Gala Dinner in 2008, it was clear that power was the true currency, mutating the crowd around him into horrible reptilian characters that would eventually do anything to save their own skin.
This was the year that Julian officially joined Standard Chartered Bank. After initially piquing the interest of one of the most senior people in the Bank, it was down to one of the bank’s top team to interview and approve Julian’s hire.
Despite being part of the onboarding team, he blew off the meeting over and over. “What job do you want?” was eventually the prompt that opened up the Standard Chartered Bank world to Julian. And it was clear that big things were expected from the former RAF pilot.
Initially, taking up the challenge of writing the Bank’s Policy on Water, later going on to become Global Head of Transaction Banking FX, given Julian’s route into the bank and endorsements from the Chairman and CEO, fellow employees gave him a wide berth, assuming he was privy to decisions that were being made out of their earshot. The reality was, Julian was just working hard and doing his bit.
Very few others worked above the man who hired Julian, except perhaps one, “a stooge, weak in character with dirty fingernails,” and the Gala was Julian’s opportunity to spend time with this guy, as well as the officials who wanted to get to know him, given his recent arrival.
There was one familiar face, however, Charlotte Di Vita MBE. A connection from Global Cool, Charlotte was the go-to for bringing in celebrities. A long-standing fixer for Standard Chartered, she was responsible for any of their galas, whether in Doha, London, or, in this case, New York.
Leaving his newborn daughter, Tienette, who was born mere days before the gala, even Julian’s journey from Singapore (where he was located at the time) to New York was out of the ordinary. Still to this day, the longest regularly scheduled non-stop flight in the world, this 18-hour trip, took Julian from Changi airport to within 80 miles or so of the North Pole before landing in Newark, New Jersey. Stepping off that flight, not knowing what’s up and down, Julian left the airport and headed straight to New York’s Upper Side.
Arriving at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on Columbus, halfway between the Upper West Side and Upper East Side of New York, its sleek, seemingly mirrored exterior was a clear sign you were entering a different world, a glittering facade hiding no end of illicit deeds and hushed conversations.
Up the sweeping staircase to the ballroom, and you were absolutely not in Kansas anymore. Outside, views of Central Park and the tell-tale highs and lows of the twinkling New York skyline stretched out below as dusk settled in the city. Inside, the ballroom was crawling with money and the egos of those throwing it around. The domed, mirrored ceilings offered up a view of the scene unfolding below, distorting each guest to almost reflect the true selves of those gathered in the room. Disfigured characters in reality, hidden behind the polish and shine that only comes from real wealth. Corners concealed their secrets.
One of Standard Chartered’s higher-ups, a guy huddled with the Bank hierarchy, was rigging the CEO of Goldman Sachs's bidding machine, secretly loading it up with resting bids, forcing him to buy countless items in the fundraising auction that he had no interest in.
The bar was pouring Chocolate Martinis, New York’s go-to drink at the time. Equal parts vodka, chocolate liqueur, and Irish cream liqueur, poured over ice, shaken and strained into chilled martini glasses, each sip left a sickly sweet aftertaste; the perfect tipple for those in the room cashing million-dollar paycheques.
The evening was devoid of a moral compass, and the crew of senior members of the Bank were at the centre of it. Seemingly untouchable. The deep irony of their partying with no rules and no limits, while Wall Street burned and political relationships fell deeper into turmoil, was lost on the entourage. Or maybe it wasn’t. Round after round, the martinis kept flowing, only coming to a halt when guests could no longer stand.
“But I had flown over half the way around the world to genuinely be part of something great – a forward-looking bank that worked hard to do good and develop new cutting-edge technologies. Water seemed such a great point to start at! At this point, I knew nothing really about the intentions beneath the surface. As it turned out, I was unwittingly joining a team of the dark arts, totally at 180 with my core.”
Diary Entry
A Touch of Destiny
2008 | New York
On the night of the Gala, Julian brought the senior guy - the one who hired him - a gift. A book no less. A copy of Fred Pearce’s, When the Rivers Run Dry.
A groundbreaking book, written by veteran science correspondent Fred Pearce, When the Rivers Run Dry documents Fred’s travels to more than thirty countries to examine the current state of crucial water sources. Weaving together the complicated scientific, economic, and historical dimensions of the world water crisis, he provides a portrait of this growing danger and its ramifications for us all.
A gift, this book ended up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, a parable for the powerful vs the powerless. A prediction of how the Bank’s operations, which had disregarded the law and forsaken so much humanity, would come to an end. Nowhere left to run. It’s rivers running dry.
By delivering this ‘gift’ to him, Julian inadvertently took up the role of messenger, one he would continue to play to this very day: “This book was a warning signal to him,” said Julian. “A genuine passing off of knowledge, from a book and insight that had positively impacted me and my work, it was also - unknowingly - a tangible, real-world metaphor for the decisions and actions, driven by powerful interests and short-term economic gains, and how they disproportionately harm the world's most vulnerable populations. I don't know why, but the universe chose me as the messenger for that information. And, in turn, what's happened in terms of finding the evidence of these sanctions evasions? I'm a messenger in the whole process, which is now focused on cleaning up corruption right at the heart of the US government.
