And here is fantastic news from Sergey: a television program is being prepared about our financial association, famous personalities are involved, who oh, a miracle! they are literally located behind our wall, the creative troops landed in the next office! Among the creators are an experienced film director Sergeyeva, a popular St. Petersburg composer and singer Igor Azarov and, attention, an actress, singer and TV presenter the incomparable Anna Samokhina! Thats cool!
Where is the wind blowing from? Here it is necessary to make a really lyrical digression. Our vice-president Oleg Borisovich has two brothers Mikhail and Evgeny. Bright personalities Evgeny, a top manager of Holding-Invest, a master of sports of international class, tall and powerful, practically did not appear in our department. There were legends about him from the mouth of his older brother:
Evgeny at the wedding in a police cap and a traffic policemans baton blocked traffic in St. Petersburg for the wedding motorcade of Oleg and his bride. Or:
Evgeny hit a bailiff in a hotel in Moscow so hard that he drove several meters across the floor.
The eldest, Mikhail Borisovich, immediately inspired the sympathy of others with his friendliness and creative abilities. A gambler by nature, he wrote poetry and, thanks to his irrepressible positive aura, was on close terms with people of creative professions. Lyudmila Gurchenko sang in our office, I listened with interest to his stories about Irina Ponarovskaya, the guys from the Adams Apple TV show often came. In general, it has always been a pleasure for me to deal with him creative or business. By the way, he traded me a magnificent Hungarian sheepskin coat for four hundred dollars. I am not a slave to things, but I have never seen such things again, and in the subway passengers at that difficult time looked at me like an alien. Mikhail Borisovich was very dynamic, easily rebuilt from one type of business to another, but the scale of his activities for objective reasons was not comparable to ours.
One day, at the moment of another delay in the urgent study of a letter of credit from a western bank, dear Mikhail came to me «to talk.» After a couple of minutes of polite communication, I pointed to a thick folder of documents lying on the table and asked quietly:
How much do you think this folder costs? Mikhail Borisovich visually appreciated the black cardboard with metal corners and assumed, inflating the price out of respect for me:
One hundred thousand dollars!
Five million, I also rounded up the amount a little. Turning a little pale, Mikhail said:
I never thought that Oleg was doing such things.
This was the best characteristic of the significance of our work. On the other hand, a high degree of secrecy was maintained between the brothers how wonderful, gentlemen counterintelligence officers! After this incident, he did not come to us again, but we happily greeted each other in the corridor.
Employees of other departments stopped coming to us at all apparently, such a command came from above. I was disconnected from other matters, and my habitat is my own room and the head of the department, a reception room with two secretaries, and the offices of the president and his deputy. It was in the reception room that I met Anna Samokhina she came with some question to the assistant, and I was just finishing a conversation with her. As polite people, we greeted each other, our eyes met for a second, and I went out into the corridor. But Sergey was often behind the wall apparently, he was attracted by the magic power of art and its representatives, he even invited the director to come to us, cordially offering the services of himself and our car this is more interesting than boring numbers and pieces of paper. It is curious that Anna Samokhina quickly figured out the situation in our business community and rather flatteringly nicknamed the brothers Oleg, Evgeny and Mikhail «the Kennedy brothers» obviously, not only because of the quantitative coincidence.
As a result, somewhere around the New Year of 1993, a restaurant was rented, where, according to the script, a gala evening and a presentation of the Holding were held. The presenters at this musical festival were Anna Samokhina and Igor Azarov, whose song «Full Moon power» became the name of this action. The whole color of our company was present at the shooting, including the head of our department Viktor Vasilyevich and his wife. The President and his two vice-presidents pronounced health resorts in pauses between musical numbers, but we can say the opposite, that is, the songs sounded in pauses between health resorts. Sergei and I were not invited, and for him it was a serious blow to his reputation, especially after advertising his own image to the creators of this film. But on the evening of the thirtieth of December, sitting at a party among friends over a glass of cognac, we were able to see our bosses on the TV screen «Russia» and hear about our company, like many citizens of our vast country. Guitar songs were also played this evening «How great that we are all gathered here today» and the all-season «Sunny Afternoon» by The Kinks after all, we are the lucky ones from Department Foreign Trade! We were overwhelmed with pride we are a part of this holiday and our holding, and each of us received not only moral satisfaction, but also champagne with a small bag of money as a New Years gift from Santa Claus.
Chapter nine. John Hunters Lessons
I remember, somewhere in the mid-seventies, I read with great interest the book «The Hunter» by the Scottish writer John Hunter. The writer was able to vividly describe his adventures in Africa in the late XIX early XX century in the exotic role of a hunter of large animals lions, buffaloes, rhinos, elephants and leopards. Later, our well-aimed and courageous shooter became a safari guide for rich people looking for thrills in the wild and hunting big animals. If his client could not shoot or missed, then Hunter could not be mistaken, because this mistake could well cost the lives of himself and his companions. He was and will forever remain the record holder for the number of predators killed, and in whose courage, firmness of character, physical condition and common sense there is no doubt. Although not every reader likes such a craft, but Mr. Hunter expressed a universal truth for any activity, which he established on the basis of his experience.
In any activity, he writes, there are three stages. At the first stage, a person does not know how to do anything, but learns some kind of craft and achieves the first successes. At the second stage, having gained some experience, he often already considers himself an expert who has learned all the secrets of his profession. But this is a delusion, and it is at this stage that he makes serious, and sometimes fatal mistakes. At the third stage, when a person has experienced the second stage, there is a sense of reality, an objective assessment of their skills and possible obstacles, and at this stage the specialist is most effective. Hunter himself almost died at the second stage, overestimating his abilities and getting lost in the center of Africa, and only a miracle saved him after two days of wandering in the endless impenetrable forests, he stumbled upon a power line support, and a day later he went to a small town.
I hugged a metal pole and fell to my knees I cried because I realized that I was saved now, he wrote.
In the activities of the oil department, everything happened according to the classic Hunter scheme. Two large transactions, which were written about earlier, ended successfully. Our intentions and decisions were balanced we, the seller and the buyer, two companies, the parties to the contract, insured each other against failures. Planning for further sales began in 1994, and then, instead of the previous cohesive work of the Holding and a thorough inspection of buyers, something absurd began. Each of the managers, believing in his competence, began to sell petroleum products himself, without having sufficient knowledge for that. This concerned both the quality of the goods, and the knowledge of INCOTERMS the basic concepts and conditions of international trade, and the reliability of potential counterparties. There was a kind of competition, who will sell more and more expensive. The network of intermediaries selling the same as our department was expanding. And the sale of serious volumes and the transaction itself is an intimate matter, here the number of participants can spoil a sweet wedding night: this is not only my opinion, but, obviously, there were others. It is possible that someones pride was infringed here he can, but why not me? And off it went
The first bell rang back in December 1993. While I was working on fuel oil, Viktor Vasilyevich personally sold two thousand tons of diesel fuel to a St. Petersburg buyer. As it turned out, neither he nor the buyer had a deep knowledge of the specifics, and as a result of the contract, summer diesel fuel was shipped, which was prohibited from receiving at this time of year in St. Petersburg. Realizing this too late, the buyer diverted the entire train to Chechnya, where, according to him, he «disappeared», and was called to negotiations, and in fact to disassembly, to the Holding. Khazir Daudovich, after listening to all this, retorted:
In Chechnya, my fuel cannot be lost, and sentenced the buyer a brave young officer of one of the special services to compensation for losses.
We will have to sell the apartment the debtor declared in his heart. To finish with this story, I will briefly tell you how events unfolded further. Having suffered, the officer wrote a statement to the prosecutors office about extortion, and thereby made the second wrong step. The prosecutors office tried in vain to reach the defendant, who was rarely on the spot and often abroad. Having felt the situation, the businessman realized the mistake, withdrew the application and then worked with our company on special conditions repelled debts.
In the last days of December, Gorchakov calls me from the refinery and nervously asks where to apply for a license? I mean, to which country Latvia, Belarus or somewhere else. I had no answer, the question was not discussed and hung in the air, at the management level (of course, with our participation), was not discussed and was not resolved.
And where are Khazir and Oleg?!
I dont know
And I shouldnt have known. Actually, it was not uncommon for our leaders to mysteriously disappear when they were really needed just like this time. I remember there was a conversation with Oleg Borisovich about the purchase price of diesel fuel for Latvia, the idea of the price from Konechim was about one hundred and sixty dollars per ton, but reliable. This option was rejected, and nothing new was invented. After the New Year holidays, an instruction was received from the bosses prepare a contract for diesel fuel for Belarus, we will give the details of the suppliers company later. And look for buyers in the same place.
The main principle was violated here first step is the buyer, and then the destination country. Having issued a license for the sale of a mythical merchant in Belarus and giving up Latvia, where everything was transparent and reliable, we ourselves, figuratively speaking, threw a noose around our neck. I must admit that I could not find buyers from the Slavic brothers, no matter how hard I tried. It is difficult to find a black cat in a dark room, that is, the demand for diesel fuel, especially when it is not there Belarus has its own two oil refineries in Mozyr and Novopolotsk. As a result, at the command from above, the details of the shipment were changed more than once, as I learned later from some intermediary, and the delivery itself was made without prepayment under unclear guarantees, the fuel was drained at oil depots in Gomel and Rechitsa. This problematic contract also became mine. I tried to sell diesel fuel on the spot to another consumer, but our contractors rudely stopped these attempts and threatened me on the phone, something about the integrity of my head. I immediately called Khazir Daudovich and explained the situation face to face. Ten minutes later, my rude interlocutor from Gomel apologized profoundly and expressed the opinion that I misunderstood him. In general, someone created a problem, and now I have to figure it out: this was within the competence of my salary. But the main disadvantage is that the style of work has been changed, money has been withdrawn from circulation, and precious time and mutual understanding are being lost.
The day after tomorrow I was already in Gomel. As expected, the buyer company consisted of local young guys, and absolutely did not correspond to the level of purchase. Their office consisted of a large room of thirty square meters, a couple of computers, a large TV, and a rented Volga-3102 car with a driver, thats all the assets. Yes, two young girls in short dresses also came, they asked for money, which means liabilities. An intermediary also came, but I did not contact him because of mutual rejection. I asked the director when he would pay, but he said that they had no money now. To clarify, we went to the Gomel oil depot, to which these businessmen stuck, to the boss. We walked around the offices, I asked around the clerks there, and it became clear that the oil depot had almost paid off with these guys. Having improved the moment, I tete-a-tete in the bosss office offered to pay us directly, but what he wisely replied:
You will leave, but I will live here.
As a result, an addendum was born to the contract on the terms of payment, where Belarusians paid us the debt with interest for the delay. With this I returned to St. Petersburg. The counter was turned on.
During my business trip, my colleagues didnt waste any time. Sergey put on a mysterious look and said that he and Oleg Borisovich had made a mighty contract for diesel fuel in the amount of ten thousand tons with delivery to Moldova. It was incorrect for me to ask questions, but gradually it turned out that everything was cool, the price was between 191 and 192 dollars, payment upon delivery to the Chadyr-Lunga station, and there is a guarantor for payment.
Id like to see this guarantor, I thought.
I dont know how Khazir Daudovich turned on the green light for this deal, I think he doubted, but he didnt want to quarrel with Oleg Borisovich, because everything could have turned out well This mythical profit overshadowed someones mind, and someone probably made a subtle calculation on this, but from which side of the transaction and to what extent? It also turned out that the refinery could not ship the goods without paying for transit through Ukraine, problems with the bank began, but they were still shipped. The result is this: we did not receive the promised money, the goods disappeared, and the intermediary disappeared along with the buyer. I dont know how they dealt with it at the top, but we ended up owing a large sum to the supplier plant, which made further shipments difficult our business stopped. The recent triumphants have been defeated. About five years later, a smart and personable, handsome middle-aged man named Movladi, a relative of the president, came to my office. In careful conversations (no one introduced us to each other, but I heard about his high reputation), we recalled the past, and I made it clear that I knew about the deal with Moldova and the Chadyr-Lunga station was like a sharp thorn in my memory. He, in turn, shared with me: