Downloaded from YTS.BZ
[soft, intriguing music playing]
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.BZ
[man] I'm trying to look like a professional here.
-Got it. Nice and neat. Clean. -[man] Yes, thank you.
[woman] What do you do for work?
[man] Well, I am…
Well, before…
How can I say this?
I used to work in finance.
I acquired companies from the stock market.
[woman] Hmm.
[man] But over the last 30 years, I've been, uh…
I've been on the run.
-In hiding. -[woman] In hiding?
[man] Yes, Interpol and everything.
[intriguing music intensifies]
[Karin af Klintberg] He's been in hiding for 30 years,
the man alleged to be behind one of Sweden's largest financial crimes,
in what came to be known
as the Trustor affair.
[reporter 1] The man behind the suspected fraud
is a 33-year-old from Stockholm.
The main perpetrator in the Trustor affair is Joachim Posener.
[reporter 2] Joachim Posener,
the man suspected of being the brains behind the operation.
[reporter 3] Joachim Posener is wanted by Interpol.
[Karin] Rumour has it that he got away with 100 million,
had plastic surgery
and has been living in hiding in all corners of the world.
THAT'S WHERE THE FRAUD'S HIDING
[reporter 4] Police have a new lead regarding his whereabouts.
There was talk about Moscow, Tel Aviv,
Rio de Janeiro, Barbados, Iraq,
and a myriad of other countries.
EXPRESSEN FOUND SUSPECT'S HOME IN ISRAEL
[Karin] A reward was offered for information
that could lead to an arrest.
The police received tips of all kinds.
THE WANTED JOACHIM POSENER
Some said that he had a ponytail,
very large feet,
spoke with a Scanian accent,
drank Pepsi,
and that he was hiding in the Big Brother house.
But Joachim Posener was never found.
The story goes that in 1997,
he and four other people managed to buy the investment company Trustor,
using Trustor's own money.
[reporter 1] This is unprecedented in the history of the Swedish stock exchange.
[reporter 2] Somehow, hundreds of millions of Trustor's funds
have been traced to bank accounts all across the world.
[reporter 3] One of the biggest financial frauds in Swedish history.
[Karin] But how did the whole affair come to be?
Who did what,
and how did life turn out for those who were involved?
INSIDE THE TRUSTOR SCANDAL
A FILM BY KARIN AF KLINTBERG
[on radio] ♪ Now listen up Here's the story ♪
♪ About a little guy that lives in a blue world… ♪
[man] I had no idea what a damn mess this company takeover would be
when I first got involved.
♪ Inside and outside… ♪
[Karin] This "damn mess" has been under investigation for years.
Yet what actually happened still remains unclear,
with everyone involved having their own side of the story.
["Blue (Da Ba Dee)" by Eiffel 65 continues on radio]
To bring some clarity,
I reached out to those who were involved in one way or another.
One of them is the consultant Thomas Jisander,
the guy parking his Ferrari.
[Thomas] You might think I should've known from the start
what was actually going to happen with this affair.
CONSULTANT, TRUSTOR
But I didn't.
[Karin] I also met the vice president,
who is still affected to this day.
[Richard] Something broke in my brain. I've barely slept since 1997.
DEPUTY CEO, TRUSTOR, 1997
[Karin] As well as the investigative reporter.
[Gunnar] I felt in my gut that something wasn't right.
[Karin] And the police officer that hunted down Joachim Posener.
[Jochum] It haunts me that we didn't catch the main suspect
behind the Trustor affair.
Shit.
[Karin] And lastly, the seasoned financier
who tried to clean up the mess.
[Björn] It's one thing to be tough in business,
but when it comes to criminals, I have no qualms.
[Karin] And then there's Joachim Posener,
who neither the police nor Interpol managed to find in those 30 years.
His side of the story has never been told,
whether it was worth the price of leaving his family and children behind
to live in hiding.
After an extensive search,
I managed to obtain the email address
of the missing Joachim Posener.
SORRY TO NAG…
THIRD TIME LUCKY…
And when I expressed that I was only looking for the truth…
DIFFICULT TO DETERMINE WHO'S TELLING THE TRUTH
…he finally replied.
INBOX
[message alert tone]
[tense music playing]
[Joachim] I got your email and read it.
And… okay.
I'll agree to schedule a meeting with you
somewhere in Europe.
[Karin] What are the terms?
[Joachim] I still want the option to back out.
[Karin] How will I know it's you when I see you?
[Joachim] You'll recognise this voice.
And even though it's been 30 years,
I don't look that different.
[tense music continues]
BRUSSELS
[Karin] The first meeting was in a public place,
where Joachim Posener could watch us from a distance.
The agreement was that we were only allowed to film him from behind.
No one knows what he looks like these days.
[music softens]
Hello, I'm Joachim.
[Karin] There are very few official photos of Joachim Posener.
Which makes sense for someone who doesn't want to be found.
While on the run, he has given a single TV interview.
But since he was actively wanted by police at the time,
he didn't want to show his face.
And he lied his way through the entire interview.
People claim you're the mastermind behind the Trustor affair. Were you?
[Joachim] No, absolutely not.
I had nothing to do with any of this.
I entered the picture in August.
Before that, I…
[Karin] You've never really explained what happened.
Why have you decided to come forward now?
[Joachim] We're past the statute of limitations.
There's no reason to stay silent any more.
[Karin] Will you tell the truth in our interview? Will you tell the truth?
[Joachim] I definitely won't lie.
-[Karin] About anything? -[Joachim] No.
But you'll have to ask the right questions.
[pulsating music playing]
[Karin] The people involved
had their own reasons for being part of the deal.
[Thomas] To me, it was about making money,
and feeling like I was a success.
Money gives you a kind of freedom,
and it's a confirmation of whether you're successful or not.
Ever since I was a kid,
I've been fascinated by big yachts and nice cars.
Excuse me!
Eighty? Eight-zero, right?
What is the model?
I dreamt of becoming very rich,
to charter a yacht after a successful deal,
sit on top of an Acta deck with a drink in hand
and feel like I did a really good job.
I wanted to make money,
and feel like I deserved that childhood dream.
[Richard] My dream was to get into the finance world.
I was obsessed with it.
I used to sell business systems.
Wherever I worked, I was usually the best salesman.
But what I really wanted was to be the boss.
Which was a crazy goal,
because it turns out that I'm not a very good boss.
Back in the day, when you had a yacht,
it had to be at least 100 to 115 feet.
That was the limit for it to be considered as a yacht.
How long is this one?
Twenty-seven?
These days, standards are a bit higher.
Now, I wouldn't call it a yacht if it's not at least 165 feet.
Otherwise, you definitely can't call it a yacht.
No one remembers a coward.
[Karin] Joachim Posener had other motives for the deal.
After our first meeting with Joachim Posener,
we were allowed to continue meeting in various locations across Europe.
[Joachim clears throat]
[Joachim] So.
You managed to get me here.
[Karin] I was not allowed to film his face. At least not at first.
He has one rule,
no questions about his family.
It's a rule I'll come to bend eventually.
[Joachim] I still control every little detail of my life.
It becomes a… habit
when you live life on the run.
If you want to avoid being found, you've got to be bland,
uninteresting and invisible.
You've got to disappear and blend into the crowd.
You can't attract anyone's attention.
While on the run from the police, I lived a bit like a secret agent.
I sacrificed my family and my life for freedom.
Not for the money.
[Karin] Have you visited Sweden in the last 30 years?
[Joachim] Not even once.
[Karin] Why didn't you return home?
[Joachim] I couldn't bring myself to serve a maximum sentence in prison again.
I barely got through the last sentence I served.
[Karin] "The last sentence" refers to the prison sentence
that Joachim Posener served before the Trustor affair.
In the late 1980s, at the height of the financial boom,
22-year-old Posener had already begun trading stocks and options,
and selling creative tax solutions.
At first, things went well.
Business was booming and he was making millions.
[upbeat electronic music playing]
[Joachim] I wanted respect in the financial world,
even though I didn't belong.
I was young and wanted to be part of the financial elite.
I wanted everything fast.
I took shortcuts. I didn't have time for the scenic route.
I hadn't even finished law school.
My greatest fear was to live this life unnoticed.
And not… leave my mark on the world.
[music fades]
It led to me working extremely hard,
pushing for bigger and better things,
so I could leave a trace of my existence in this world.
[Karin] Joachim Posener founded investment company Thul with a colleague.
It had offices on fancy streets in Stockholm and Copenhagen.
The only problem was that they didn't have any money to do business with.
[Joachim] In 1991, during the financial crisis,
loans were impossible to get.
But I was able to find a way to use rigged options.
It doesn't have to exist. It just needs to look like it does.
[phone dials out]
I had invented a way
to create as many assets as I wanted, on paper.
That led us to acquiring four publicly listed companies in Denmark.
But that also meant
that we had acquired them under not-so-legal circumstances.
I had bought a house
and had just had a daughter.
OUR DAUGHTER JANUARY 13TH
And life was great.
-Then there was a knock at the door. -[doorbell rings]
And it was the police.
[news theme playing]
[reporter] From this house, two Swedes tried to drain millions from the city.
The masterminds were sentenced to 6 and 4.5 years
for financial fraud.
NORRTÄLJE PRISON
[Karin] Joachim Posener was permanently expelled from Denmark
and sentenced to six years in prison in Sweden
for aggravated fraud and tax evasion.
[Joachim] It was such a shock to receive such a severe sentence
in a high security prison.
I was 29 when I got locked up.
It was…
THEIR COUP LANDED THEM 500 MILLION
…completely devastating.
MARRIED OWNER OF A VILLA
I lost my house, my wife, my child, custody.
WEALTH: 1,032,000
Everything was gone.
It was a nightmare.
Going from an upper middle class life and driving a BMW to work,
to being surrounded by walls covered in blood and vomit.
The Norrtälje prison.
It was one of Sweden's toughest, most high-security prisons.
I didn't belong there.
It's for people that are too dangerous to be around others.
I wasn't in the finance world any more.
You're afraid constantly.
Look at the wrong guy the wrong way at the wrong time,
and you get beaten up.
They're used to fighting. I'm not.
[alarm buzzing]
The experience taught me one thing, though.
I never wanted to go through that again.
[Karin] Yet it was in prison,
first in Norrtälje, then in an open facility,
that Joachim Posener began planning his next move.
Which would come to be the Trustor Affair.
[Joachim] Within a week, I was thinking about how to do it again.
But even better.
My mission was to get revenge
and eventually become legit.
[foreboding music playing]
[music stops]
I had made acquiring companies without funding
my speciality.
And that was the plan this time as well.
I needed to prove to myself that it could work.
That I could acquire a company with its own money
without breaking any laws.
[dramatic music playing]
So I started looking for a publicly listed company
where I could acquire a majority stake and take control.
It needed to have strong cash reserves
and, ideally, undervalued assets.
Whenever I was out on day-release,
I would fill bags with financial magazines and annual reports.
I would walk past the guard and smuggle them right into the prison.
I had made a list of potential companies.
One of them was Trustor,
but it could've been any company, really.
[music fades]
Since I was in prison, I needed accomplices.
I couldn't buy listed companies any more.
I was banned from the finance world. I was burned.
[phone ringing]
That's when my cousin reached out to me.
[phone ringing faintly]
[wistful music playing]
JOACHIM - COUSIN THOMAS
[Thomas] Joachim Posener is my cousin.
His mother and my mother were sisters.
So we've basically known each other for our entire lives.
It was around October or November 1996.
Joachim Posener contacted me from prison. He wanted me to visit him.
[Joachim] Thomas reached out to me and said he wanted to pay me a visit.
So I said yes.
He started telling me about his Thul deal and what had happened.
[Joachim] Suddenly, he said,
"If you've got something brewing that I can be a part of, I want to do it."
"Like you did in Denmark."
[Thomas] Joachim asked me to take part in the deals he wanted to make.
[Joachim] Thomas nagged his way into being included, but he knew nothing.
CIVIL ENGINEER
He worked with ISO 9000 certification.
QUALITY ADVISOR - ISO 9000
Yeah, but I mean, I was educated enough to understand the concept,
even though I hadn't worked in that field before.
[Joachim] I needed someone to attend meetings in my place,
and he said he was willing to do as he was told.
This was my baby, my project.
It was important to me that I was sole captain of the ship.
But I had failed to anticipate
that Thomas would become blinded by the money
and start acting stupid.
["Blue (Da Ba Dee)" playing faintly]
Look who's here! Welcome!
This is my home. This is the living room.
And… there's my little conference table and the dining room.
A big American-style sofa.
And here…
is where I keep my bubbly.
Which I drink whenever I'm thirsty.
And that happens quite often.
So yeah, it's a refrigerator, actually.
And then, uh, I have a lovely view over Monaco.
Think I'm gonna pour myself a drink.
God, it's so bright.
That tastes good.
Here's a mini barbecue and a small fridge. A caviar fridge.
Right, let's move on.
I've got a few coffee machines, ice makers and stuff.
And this is the bedroom. It's Versace.
I only want the best, so that's what I get.
2,100 square feet in a prime location.
Yup. Feels quite good.
Gets the job done.
[intriguing music playing]
[Karin] The cousins grew up in good middle class neighbourhoods.
Jisander in Askim in Gothenburg…
IN FRONT OF THE VILLA
…and Posener in Lidingö in Stockholm.
JOACHIM IS GOING ICE-SKATING
[Joachim] I wasn't a cool kid.
But I had a strong feeling that nothing was impossible.
[Karin] When was the first time you took an unlawful loan?
[Joachim] I was part of a financial club in college.
I think I was 17 or 18.
And I needed to pay for something, and they had cash.
So I took it.
I intended to pay it back,
but they found out it was missing before I could.
It must've been… I don't remember. 10,000 krona.
[Karin] Do you think that was a sign of things to come?
[Joachim] I think it has more to do with how I look on laws and regulations.
I try to follow the laws as best I can,
but when they don't suit me, I see them as guidelines.
[Karin] When he is temporarily allowed to leave prison,
Posener takes liberties.
He attends business meetings across Europe,
even though he isn't allowed to leave the country.
After four years, he is released, but on parole.
[Thomas] He got out in February 1997.
RELEASED!
He needed a place to stay.
I had an apartment I wasn't using, so I let him use it.
[Karin] Posener is under supervision
and banned from commercial activities.
But that doesn't matter if you're invisible.
[Joachim] After a while, I realised we needed more accomplices
to help us get there and to open some doors.
And that's when Thomas suggested his friend Peter Mattsson.
[tense music playing]
[indistinct chatter and laughter]
Peter Mattsson was from a wealthy family in Gothenburg.
To me, Peter Mattsson's biggest asset was that he knew a British Lord.
A Lord who fit my plan perfectly.
[man] Peter Mattsson came to me with this proposition and said,
"There are these people who want you to front them
buying Trustor."
[Karin] Lord Moyne is from the successful
brewery family Guinness.
He is indeed a British Lord.
But for a Lord, he is a bit strange.
He wears worn out loafers
and Rastafari bracelets.
He practices yoga.
He lives with his wife, Sue, during the week,
and with his mistress, Shoe, on weekends.
Business was not his cup of tea.
But the Lord needed money.
And he would get it,
so long as he fronted the acquisition of Trustor.
[Joachim] He was my hired figurehead.
With a British Lord on board,
I knew that every single door was now open for us.
The world of finance was eating out of his hand.
[Karin] No one suspected anything was amiss.
The Lord was presented as a business genius
who wanted to invest in the Nordics.
As proof of his wealth,
the trio showcased a British magazine
which claimed he was one of England's 500 richest people.
But they never told anyone that this was a factual error.
[Joachim] I had my frontman and I had my two assistants,
but a publicly listed company needs a CEO.
I didn't really care who, as long as he was cooperative
and knew that I'd be the one calling the shots.
And Peter said, "You know what? I know a guy, he's great."
Lindsay Smallbone.
[intriguing music playing]
[Karin] Lindsay Smallbone was from New Zealand but lived in London.
He moved in high society circles alongside Lord Moyne.
He lived an extravagant life and had accumulated debts,
so the Trustor job offer came at an opportune time.
And so Team Moyne was ready.
[Joachim] From prison, the best people I could recruit
were the party boys, Jisander and Mattsson.
And those…
[sighs] …well, amateurs,
Lord Moyne and Lindsay Smallbone.
It was kind of an amateur move,
but back then, you couldn't look people up online, on Google.
That didn't exist.
I chose wrong,
it turned out.
I should've chosen anyone but Lindsay Smallbone.
He was the one who ruined everything.
To me, they were just frontmen.
And to afford them, and the other costs from the acquisition,
I borrowed money from the underworld.
Hardened criminals that I'd met in prison in Norrtälje.
Because I couldn't borrow from anyone else.
[sinister music playing]
I offered them a return of 20 million
if they'd lend me one million.
And you don't play games with these people.
They would kill you.
So failure was not an option.
[Karin] In the spring of 1997,
another person was brought onto the team.
In quite an informal interview process,
Richard Djursén was recruited at the gym.
I met Thomas Jisander in front of a mirror at the gym.
[rousing synth pop playing]
[Thomas] I was doing bicep curls.
[Richard] We were there talking to ourselves in the mirror.
[Thomas] Another dude was talking to himself in the mirror.
He was looking at his biceps. "Look at these guns," he said.
[Richard] After a while, we decided to talk to each other instead.
And we became friends.
Thomas said he had something in the works
and that I could be a part of it.
I was dying to change jobs.
I wanted to get into finance.
And this allowed me to make that career move.
[music ends]
Since I was a kid, I dreamed about buying a house.
My own house.
So what's always driven me is the will to build a house.
I didn't want money, I just wanted a house.
And I've worked very hard to achieve that.
You can tell I have an inferiority complex by the size of my house.
I was raised by a single mother who cleaned hotel rooms.
She worked hard, but we never had any money.
So when I met other kids who got bikes and mopeds and…
You know, I never got anything.
It wasn't because my mother was stingy, she simply couldn't afford it.
And later on, I was placed in a foster home.
The napkins won't match perfectly this time,
but it'll do the job.
At Trustor, my role was to serve as vice president…
CERTIFICATE DEPUTY CEO
…and head of office
at the office in Stockholm.
In the spring, I knew nothing of Joachim Posener.
I later found out he had been involved in financial fraud,
but I wasn't aware of that back then.
[Joachim clears throat]
All of my frontmen knew everything.
Who I was, that I was Joachim Posener.
They knew that I was the one buying Trustor.
If you think everyone in the group knew everything…
You're wrong. We didn't.
[Joachim] Djursén and Jisander both knew there was no money.
At the time, none of us knew
the company was being acquired using its own money.
[Joachim] They knew I bought the company using its own money.
Once again, everyone knew everything.
But it all leads back to me.
Because I'm the one who did it.
[Karin] You now want to show your face.
Can you tell us why now?
I realised it's time to be fully honest.
I own what I've done.
I'll show my face now,
but then I'll disappear again.
[suspenseful music playing]
The plan was perfect.
But some things are just out of your control.
[tense, pulsating music playing]
[Karin] Joachim Posener stays in the background
as the negotiations with Trustor begin in the spring of 1997.
I got very good at managing my assistants remotely,
like running a
little puppet show.
I called Thomas and told him what to say,
and he did great.
He was obedient, a quick learner, and easy to control.
Thomas's job was to be my assistant.
[Thomas] I wasn't just a mouthpiece.
Lots of small decisions had to be made on the fly.
[Joachim] I got calls daily from my gangster friends,
demanding I pay them back immediately,
so I needed to close this deal as soon as possible.
[enigmatic music playing]
[Karin] But how will Posener
convince Trustor's founder and owner, Per-Olov Norberg, to sell?
Trustor was an investment firm
that didn't produce anything itself,
but bought and sold other companies.
And at the time,
its portfolio held several valuable assets.
COMPANY 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
[Joachim] The owner, Norberg, had undervalued these assets.
He was willing to sell, on one condition.
That he could buy back some assets later
at a more favourable price.
Of course, I would give him what he wanted,
if he gave me what I wanted.
He would have the option to buy back Trustor's assets.
And with that sale, I would bring cash into the company.
I didn't have any money.
[wistful music playing]
[Karin] Joachim Posener only needed to buy 17% of the shares
to take control of Trustor.
These were high-voting A shares,
and by acquiring them, he would gain a majority in the company
and have access to its cash reserves.
I needed a short-term loan.
The price tag for the Trustor shares was a quarter of a billion krona.
If I could borrow that amount for a single day,
I could pay for the shares,
take control of the cash reserves,
and then immediately pay back the loan.
It was simple. 24 hours was all I needed.
[Thomas] Joachim asked me to find a financier.
I managed to bring in a billionaire who was willing to provide a loan.
That's essentially bridge financing,
and it's perfectly legal.
[Joachim] The loan was secured, but a legal obstacle emerged.
A majority shareholder or board member of a listed company
cannot purchase the company's own assets.
I resolved this
by getting Norberg to resign before the deal.
That gave me an unexpected advantage.
I suddenly had a five-day extension on the payment,
and didn't need the loan from Thomas's billionaire.
[Thomas] After all this, Joachim told me the financier I'd found
was no longer needed.
He had come up with another solution.
[Karin] Posener had put together a massive "buy now, pay later" deal.
But that created two major problems.
The purchase price of 241 million left a hole in Trustor's cash flow
that sooner or later would need to be covered.
And buying a company using its own money
is illegal.
Everything was ready. All that was missing was Lord Moyne's signature.
That's when I realised I had a big decision to make.
I wasn't able to find a way to make the acquisition legal.
I knew that, but did it anyway.
It was a gamble.
[Karin] This is where we differ. I wouldn't have made that choice.
I thought it would work.
[tense, pulsating music playing]
JUNE 12, 1997
[helicopter whirring]
[Joachim] I wasn't in the room when the deal with Norberg was signed.
But I had meticulously planned out the meeting… beforehand.
Everyone knew what their job was, and did it.
[Thomas] The deal was signed at Erik Penser Corporate Finance.
They had gathered Per-Olov Norberg as the seller,
Lord Moyne as the buyer,
I was there as a consultant,
Peter Mattsson was there,
and Erik Penser himself, along with three of his staff members.
[Joachim] I sat in my room
waiting for a call to say that it was done.
I didn't have the slightest suspicion there was anything wrong with the deal.
It was sanctioned at every level.
And finally, the call came.
[phone rings]
It was Thomas.
"It's done, Jocke!"
[wistful music playing]
[Thomas] When the agreement was signed,
it was a fantastic moment for everyone.
It was a massive accomplishment.
We actually pulled it off.
Done deal.
Yes, well…
Champagne o'clock!
[Joachim] Finally, after four years, the deal had come together.
And then it was just, "Wow, I'm back."
[cork pops]
There we go.
[pulsating electronic music playing]
[Karin] Team Moyne had full access to Trustor's cash reserves.
But they weren't finished yet.
They still needed to arrange the payments for the loan.
And they had five days to do it.
Posener sent the group to a bank in London
to open several new accounts.
This is the place.
[camera clicks]
The same day they walked in there,
Richard Djursén walked into a bank in Stockholm.
[Richard] I was 35 years old
and got to be part of a 620 million transaction.
I thought I'd finally made it in the finance industry.
That's where I wanted to be.
[Karin] Djursén transferred Trustor's money from Sweden
to Trustor's newly opened account in England.
There, the money passed through Thomas Jisander's account,
before being sent on to Lord Moyne,
who paid the former owner.
So it looked as though the payment was coming from the Lord.
[Joachim] What made it illegal
was when I told Thomas
to send money from Trustor's account
to his own account,
and then on to Lord Moyne,
and then that Norberg was paid with the company's own money.
[Thomas clears throat]
I wasn't that involved in that.
Joachim claimed to have financing in place.
I was instructed to open an agent account at Barclays Bank,
in order to receive money from the financier in question.
Who that was, I didn't know.
[Karin] But you knew there was no money?
-How would have I known? -[Karin] You must've talked.
The money came from the financier.
That was how I saw it.
I forwarded it to Lord Moyne, who paid Per-Olov Norberg.
Very straightforward deal.
End of story.
The deal was done. Trustor was mine.
[enigmatic string music playing]
I was sitting on a plane, and I was looking around.
Everything was good in my life. I owned Trustor.
And I thought, "Nobody knows it…
but I'm the richest and most powerful person on this plane."
[string music continues]
[Joachim] Trustor's cash reserves were filled to the brim, nearly a billion.
If I'd wanted to take the money and run,
that would have been the moment to do it.
But I had other ambitions.
I wanted to build a corporate empire.
[Karin] Posener decided London would be the site
for this corporate empire.
He'd figured out that as long as he was living abroad,
he could avoid the probation service's supervision.
To get established,
Team Moyne enlisted the help of a local operator.
[man] At lunchtime,
I have a gin and dry martini.
A little bit of gin…
Evening, whisky.
That's been my habit for about 50 years.
Just a spot.
Skol!
[Karin] The first task was to find an office.
"We need the best office
it is possible to have in London."
"A helicopter pad, if possible."
I'm thinking, "Who are these people?"
Endless money.
[Joachim] This was it.
It was… the place to be in London at that time.
My office was that one,
all the way at the top, with its own terrace.
We fought over it.
Everyone wanted it, but I won.
There was always, to me, a little bit of an aura of mystery.
There was one, uh, room in particular,
I remember had to have treble walls.
[Joachim] From there, I'd listen to the meeting going on next door,
directing Thomas over the phone,
so he would say whatever I wanted him to say.
I asked Michael Wynne-Parker
to help furnish the office.
It had to be luxurious. It had to be "investment banking."
It had to be… top.
And money was no object, so I set off.
["Still a Part of Me" by The Minits playing]
♪ Yeah, oh… ♪
[Joachim] For me, it was important that things looked right.
I knew that would open new doors and create opportunities.
And then we discovered Napoleon's desk
in Harrods.
[Thomas] It was expensive as hell.
Apparently, it came from the Palace of Versailles.
It was a really nice desk. I wonder what happened to it.
Poor Napoleon.
[Karin] Everyone on Team Moyne took fees for their work.
That was not illegal in itself,
but the amounts were unusually high.
They channelled large sums through accounts in Gibraltar,
Lichtenstein and Switzerland,
and to girlfriends and other family members.
Before the summer half-year report,
Team Moyne had to show that no money was missing.
The solution was a one-day loan.
Window dressing from a bank in Luxembourg.
From the outside,
it all seemed to be going very well.
♪ Still a part of me ♪
♪ I can't break free ♪
♪ Still a part of me ♪
♪ I can't break free… ♪
[Karin] After the deal, they lived lavishly in London.
Very lavishly.
Joachim Posener was staying at a hotel.
Thomas Jisander and Peter Mattsson furnished a shared apartment.
♪ You're still a part of me… ♪
[Thomas] It was a fantastic penthouse with a wraparound terrace,
with views over London and Hyde Park,
with huge reception rooms and golden faucets.
My bedroom was entirely Versace.
I was fully into the Versace thing.
Versace bedspreads, Versace pillows, Versace dressing gowns… Everything.
Fantastic apartment.
[Joachim] We split up for the summer and took a break until the fall.
Then we'd get to work.
I told Thomas to keep a low profile.
[whooping]
[man] Whoa!
[whooping]
[laughing and cheering]
Celebrating should be fun, not boring.
And how do you have the most fun? By doing whatever you want.
We're now walking on Pampelonne Beach.
27 years later.
It's still a little exciting to "walk the plank" again.
It's kind of fun.
Nerve-wracking, but exciting at the same time.
We're now approaching the very beach where we partied after the fantastic deal.
The bar was here.
From somewhere over there to here.
We did a great job. I was well paid for my efforts.
Money well-earned, I'd say.
The bar was huge.
We had to celebrate that.
[whooping]
Only proper way to do that is with a yacht.
Peter, wake up! Time to pop the cork.
We boarded that boat in late June, if I remember right.
We had it for nearly two months.
The boat was equipped with a helicopter pad.
It wasn't meant for flying 200 yards from the boat to the beach.
But that's why it was so fun to do it.
We kept thinking we had to raise the bar. "What are we going to do this time?"
So I started dressing up to keep things interesting.
I put on
a bra, high heels, and those big Elton John glasses,
and danced all over the boat while blasting Star Wars music.
This is the spot we flew in from.
To there. Maybe 500 yards?
Up in the air.
The only place we could land was on the roof of the bar.
The bar at Voile Rouge was made out of concrete.
Four pillars and a very sturdy roof.
That's where we landed with the helicopter.
But we didn't consider how strong the rotor blades were.
[imitates whirring rotor blades]
We landed on the roof and were gonna make a fantastic entrance.
But…
It blew everything away.
People were sitting there eating lunch. Everyone started running.
[laughs]
Everything was flying around. People, food in their faces, bolognese…
[imitates choking]
…salmon, shrimp, you name it.
All of it was all over everyone's faces.
It looked like a war zone. I thought, "What the hell do we do?"
I came out of the helicopter riding high but those people were going to kill us.
To make up for the damage,
I decided to order champagne.
I ordered everything they had.
"What do you mean, all of it?"
"All of it!"
["In My Mind" by Antiloop playing]
[Joachim] The money was burning a hole in his pocket.
It was crazy.
["In My Mind" continues playing]
[Thomas] It must have been one of the best summers
for everyone who was on that beach at Voile Rouge in July 1997.
We got through 408 bottles of Cristal.
♪ In my mind, in my mind ♪
♪ In my mind… ♪
-[music ends] -[makes fizzing sound]
[Karin] Meanwhile in Sweden, at the much quieter Stockholm office,
vice president Richard Djursén was trying to hold things together.
I worked through the summer. I was given a lot of strange tasks.
They could be anything and everything.
A lot of it was rather boring, though.
I changed the locks on doors. I bought a new fax machine.
Plane tickets arrived for people that had nothing to do with Trustor.
TO DO
I ran personal errands for them.
UNPAID BILLS
Thomas had an apartment in Vasastan, not far from there.
I went there to collect his mail and pay his bills.
With his money.
It's starting to rain.
I need to get these out of the rain
because of all the pollen in the air right now.
But it's more of a hygiene issue. I think it makes sense.
Good exercise, too.
Running back and forth.
You don't have to do this in Marbella.
Okay, I think that's it. It's really coming down now.
Oh my God.
That summer, I got a call from Richard Djursén.
He was hysterical.
"Jocke, Jocke, you have to do something. It's going to be a disaster."
He said that Thomas had ended up in Paris Match magazine
with his champagne parties.
So I called him.
But there was no stopping Thomas.
[Karin] You couldn't accuse them of being boring on the French Riviera.
Thomas Jisander was given the nickname "Mr. No Limit."
Peter Mattsson and Thomas Jisander each bought a Ferrari on a whim.
[Thomas] One blue, a Ferrari F355,
and an identical red one.
They were around one million francs.
We paid in cash, got in the cars and drove off.
[engine revs loudly]
I never saw that car again.
I had that Ferrari for 15 minutes.
I don't know where it ended up. I left it somewhere.
So much happened that summer.
We had one car left.
So we decided to drive down together to the Versace store in Saint-Tropez.
I was horrified when they told me.
It was the exact opposite of what you should do
if you've just bought a company with its own money.
You don't want to draw attention.
We had this unspoken competition going the whole time.
"The one who has most toys when he dies wins."
More or less.
I would never in my wildest imagination
have thought that anyone could be so reckless.
I'd underestimated Thomas.
[Thomas] In 1997, that summer, the Versace store was here.
We rolled up from over here.
That's where I stopped.
[imitates screeching brakes]
I dropped Peter off, and as he's getting out, he says,
"There won't be a single thing left in the store by the time you come in."
He walked straight into the store. We'd had a few drinks.
"There'll be nothing left for you at all."
He bought everything in every size.
That set me off.
"How do I top this?"
So I told them that I wanted the rest.
"There's nothing left, sir."
"I'll take the checkout counter,
the cash register, the changing room doors,
the drapes, curtains and the light fixtures."
"Unscrew everything, the whole store."
Electrical wires were hanging everywhere.
It was completely gutted, like a grenade had been thrown into the place.
Then the owner came out with a screwdriver.
There was a Medusa here,
cut in half, so you could open the door like this.
It was beautiful.
So he unscrewed the handles.
That was it. Nothing left.
Ransacked.
[Karin] How much did you spend in total, the summer of 1997?
Oy.
I don't know. I can do a rough estimate.
The boat cost three, four million a week, plus fuel and that sort of thing.
Um…
We had it for eight weeks, so…
uh… 50 million, maybe?
Something like that. 40?
-[Karin] Was it worth it? -Yes, it was.
[Karin] How much were you paid in total from Trustor?
I don't know the exact figure. I'm so old now, I can't remember.
[man sighs]
If these guys hadn't been gallivanting around the French Riviera like fools,
they probably would've got away with it.
[Karin] This is financial veteran Björn Björnsson.
He's been called the Terminator of the business world,
the industry's own sheriff.
I think they all wanted this.
Money, money, money.
But here's the problem…
Money talks.
That might make you look the other way.
[Karin] Björn Björnsson ended up taking on more roles than anyone expected.
His first role was as a board member of Trustor
when the actual purchase was made.
When Lord Moyne stood as owner of the A shares in Trustor,
I assumed they'd been paid for.
But that wasn't the case.
You can't take 241 million without it being noticed.
Sooner or later, you get caught.
There had to be more to the plan.
A master plan.
[Joachim] My long-term plan was to build up
and own a corporate empire.
I was going to accomplish that with a classic pyramid owner structure.
One company that owns another company that owns a third.
If the first company was Trustor at one billion,
and the second company was worth five billion,
then the third could be worth ten billion.
After acquiring Trustor,
I used its money to make my next acquisition.
THE SPORTS DIVISION WILSON
First, I tried Wilson, the international sports brand.
But the money came in four days late,
so the deal fell through.
That's how close I was to getting the next company in place in my pyramid.
[tense music playing]
[Karin] Team Moyne would acquire new companies
and sell off Trustor's assets.
[Joachim] When we got back to the office in London after the summer,
everything was completely different.
[Thomas] Business as usual.
It was time to dust ourselves off and wash the suits.
We had to get back to work and start looking for new deals.
From my apartment in London to the office,
I travelled every morning by private chauffeur, in two cars.
I rode in the front one
and my briefcase travelled in the one behind me.
When it came to showing up to work on time, I wasn't overly concerned.
[Joachim] Thomas arrived on Tuesday and went home on Thursday.
We argued the whole time.
Thomas had been my loyal henchman.
He'd always done everything for me, and it was perfect.
Then… he lost his mind.
He sided with Peter Mattsson.
Suddenly it was Thomas and Peter who were a team,
when it used to be Thomas and me.
I was losing him.
My focus was on finding a solution
that would make my ownership of Trustor legal.
Annual accounts were due on December 31st.
It was September. I had four months.
So I needed to keep Thomas somewhat… in check.
I think he was jealous that he was not living it up in high society like I was.
He wanted to do what I was doing.
If I said A, he said B,
just to make a point that he also was important.
My entire control of Trustor
depended on Thomas being between me and the rest of the world.
I had entrusted him with being the one who held the money.
The money sat in his account, not mine.
He suddenly had the power.
We started shouting at each other, like children, in front of everyone.
All of a sudden, my hired lackeys wanted everything to be put to a vote
and decided as a group.
Lord Moyne and Lindsay Smallbone sat on the board.
I had no role at all.
Then Thomas and Peter were busy trying to stop a journalist
who'd turned up.
I didn't think much of that at all. He just wanted to ask a few questions.
I think that's normal after a large deal.
[typewriter clacking]
[Gunnar] It was a coincidence.
I was very new at Svenska Dagbladet.
I was given various assignments.
Lord Moyne had just bought Trustor.
We came up with the idea of doing an interview with him
and trying to profile him. So I got started.
But when I called Trustor the next day,
he wasn't there.
I got put in touch with Richard Djursén,
who promised to set something up for me.
[Richard] I called Team Moyne,
and they came up with one reason after another
to postpone the interview again and again.
The journalist was irritated, to put it mildly.
At that time, it didn't occur to me that it could be a fraud.
I just wanted insight.
The more he discovered, the more curious he became.
Over time, I started to feel that something wasn't right.
I had doubts about whether Lord Moyne had any money.
Instead of the prominent businessman that he made himself out to be,
I began to suspect that he might be the black sheep of the Guinness family.
In my research, I had also learned about Peter Mattsson's involvement in a company
that had swindled wealthy Englishmen out of their fortunes.
Lindsay Smallbone had also run companies
and then taken money for his own personal use
and things like that.
A band of thieves, basically.
I had no idea about any of this.
Their skeletons came tumbling out of the closet,
all the things they'd concealed from me in order to be part of the deal.
The irony is, if they had given me an interview the next day
when I first called,
there wouldn't have been a Trustor affair. At least, not because of me.
[Karin] Coincidences can set off a chain reaction of events.
At the same time as the journalist started digging into the deal,
a British private investigator received a new assignment.
For the last maybe 35 years or so,
I've been a fraud investigator.
It's not rocket science.
It's like cooking, anyone can do it.
[Karin] His assignment was to dig up dirt
on one of the parties in a legal dispute.
And that person happened to be…
Lindsay Smallbone, Trustor's new CEO.
The client said,
"I want to look into Lindsay Smallbone. I have a bone to pick with him."
"I'd like you to see who he really is,
because I think he's a cheat and a crook."
So we did the background search on Lindsay Smallbone,
and found out that Lindsay was
a director of a company in Sweden called Trustor AB.
So let's see what this company
he's a managing director of is.
I'm flicking through this file of Trustor.
There was something just didn't seem right in that paperwork.
It looked like the payment was going to the original owner Norberg afterwards.
And I thought, "Hang on a second."
"It doesn't make sense,
because you shouldn't be in control of the company
and then pay the person."
"Something's wrong with this company. Something's really wrong."
[tense electronic music playing]
[Karin] The walls are closing in from every direction.
An investigative journalist,
and, on another front, a private investigator,
and, on top of that, the police.
Because on the same day the private investigator
stumbled across the information about Trustor,
he had a meeting with the financial crimes unit
on a completely different matter.
It was Friday, October 17th, 1997.
The meeting to see Jochum Söderström was nothing to do with Trustor.
That's important. I just had it on my mind.
[Karin] That day, an overly long phone call
would accidentally cause one of Sweden's largest police investigations.
[Nigel] I arrived early, but Jochum, I could see in one office,
was on the telephone.
I directed him to my colleague.
Nigel went over, they started talking,
and I continued my call.
[Nigel] I was being shown this paperwork,
very privileged to see what they were gathering intelligence on.
And I just said, "This is small stuff."
"Big stuff is actually already happening,
but it's happening in open space, on the stock exchange."
[Jochum] I can see they're getting worked up.
At that moment,
Jochum had finished his phone call.
He stood there and went, "Nigel, which company are you talking about?"
He was able to tell me it was the investment company Trustor.
Everything happened between about 12:30 and six in the afternoon.
We're talking about six hours.
Then I was out.
It was sheer coincidence that we learned about this.
This became the starting gun for us to launch the intelligence work,
and work towards a preliminary investigation.
Nigel also told us there was a journalist
who had already been in contact with them.
So I decided we should call him in to see what he knew.
[Gunnar] So we made a deal.
"I give you information and you give me information."
I knew a very damning newspaper article was going to come out
at the end of October.
But I didn't know the police had started an investigation.
At the time, I'd already booked a trip with my daughter and my girlfriend.
It was the first time my daughter and I would be able to go somewhere together.
Because I'd been in prison, I'd missed four of her five years.
Those important years of changing diapers
and being there to comfort her when she needed it.
This was our chance to get a fresh start.
So I decided to go anyway.
We went to Barbados for a week.
[foreboding music playing]
It was important to work quickly.
We had to focus on what happened and who did what.
It didn't take long until we discovered
that Lord Moyne was flat broke.
At the same time,
we looked into the Swedes,
Peter Mattsson and Thomas Jisander.
Did they perhaps have any credit cards?
Yes, they did.
A massive amount of money had been spent in Saint-Tropez,
buying cases of champagne,
renting helicopters, renting a boat.
Really living it up out there.
We knew we were on to something here.
We contacted the central bank of Sweden
to see whether any more money
had gone abroad.
We had discovered that over 600 million
had been paid out to a mysterious account
at Barclays Bank in London.
They also told us that the account balance was almost zeroed out.
This was serious.
[tense string music playing]
[Karin] Everyone on Team Moyne is abroad as police and the journalist dig deeper.
Piece by piece, the plan was uncovered.
-[music ends] -[typewriter clacking]
[Gunnar] There was a lot of back and forth before the article was published.
[sighs]
Were the facts correct?
We had to double-check everything and be absolutely sure.
[Richard] Then Gunnar Lindstedt published his article.
And that was it.
THE POLICE INVESTIGATES TRUSTOR DEALS
POWER STRUGGLE INSTIGATED LORD
PEOPLE INVOLVED IN THE TRUSTOR PLOT
Team Moyne began to panic in London.
They were demanding answers to questions that I can't even remember.
We went back and forth. I was asked to look into this, deny that.
All sorts of stuff.
[Jochum] We went to the Trustor offices. Richard Djursén was there.
We sat down to talk to Djursén.
After a while, he just broke down completely.
We needed to find the person who was in charge of this deal.
Three people were part of the Lord's entourage.
Peter Mattsson and Thomas Jisander,
and then there was Joe Falk.
We knew nothing about him.
[Gunnar] According to my sources, this was a key character.
Who is Joe Falk?
[intriguing music playing]
[Jochum] He clearly held a prominent position.
Who was Joe Falk?
EUROCARD - ADDITIONAL ORDER
That evening, Richard Djursén calls and tells us,
"Check out Thomas Jisander's cousin."
We checked the criminal records.
And who did we find?
Joe Falk.
His real name
was Joachim Posener.
[intriguing music intensifies]
[Joachim] As I prepared for the Trustor deal,
I sometimes used
made-up names,
such as Joakim Rolfsson,
Ralph Jobe,
and Joe Falk.
I didn't want anyone to associate the name Joachim Posener with Trustor.
[music softens]
While I'm in Barbados,
my life falls apart.
I remember I was having lunch on a sundeck by the pool.
A waiter comes up to me.
"Mr. Posener, there's a call for you."
He points at a telephone there.
It was back when we had those on the wall.
I expected bad news, but… nothing like that.
I pick up the phone. It's Thomas.
-Hello? -[Joachim] Saying…
"Jocke,
listen carefully."
"The police raided us."
[tense music playing]
"They've launched a preliminary investigation."
"What's that?" I asked.
He said, "Well, it's not good."
[chuckles]
No, it wasn't.
I knew it was over right away.
We had to act quickly.
There was a risk that the money might disappear
once they realised what was happening.
Time was up. The police were banging on the door.
They were already inside.
I had one image in my head.
Norrtälje.
I had a video camera.
And, uh,
my girlfriend was filming me at the world's most amazing restaurant.
My daughter said something to me and I answered her,
but we talked past each other.
I was just… not there.
It was over.
[clears throat]
A lot of things were happening at once.
So I left Barbados on October 31st.
That same day, Svenska Dagbladet published their article
and the police raided Trustor.
Thomas was waiting for me at Heathrow when we arrived from Barbados.
I sent my girlfriend and daughter back to Sweden.
My girlfriend was supposed to sort out a few things
and then come back to London.
One of the things was to go to Thomas's place,
where I'd left a few things,
and get rid of them.
She succeeded, partly.
She left a notebook behind.
[Karin] So when the police searched Thomas Jisander's home,
they found several pieces of information that linked Joachim Posener to the deal.
In Jisander's apartment,
we found documents and plans for the crime,
detailing how they did it.
HOW HE PLANNED TO TAKE OVER TRUSTOR
They also confirmed that Joachim Posener was the mastermind.
[Joachim] It came to light that 400 million was missing
from Trustor's accounts.
Thomas knew a few people in Geneva.
"They've got a solution, Jocke." And off we went.
LE RICHEMOND - GENEVA
Thomas had arranged a meeting
with the mafia's bankers.
Both were called Ricardo,
and they were both Italians.
They had bodyguards with them.
I realised straightaway
that they were involved in organised crime in Italy.
I was under the impression that they would present a solution
that would help me keep Trustor.
But their solution
was that they would buy Trustor and take it over.
No, we didn't meet them.
There was no meeting with Joachim and R1 and R2. No.
I don't think he ever met them.
Thomas was in a state of panic. Well, we all were.
And in that panic,
he wanted to pass the hot potato to them,
and cover up that 400 million shortfall.
I don't recall that.
Uh…
No.
He thought he could bring a bank statement to Sweden,
and show them that the 400 million was still there.
And that Ricardo and Ricardo were the new owners.
But they wanted to pick the company clean.
I didn't want that.
Because I realised that I'd be held accountable for that too.
So I declined right there and then,
and we left.
That was the last time I saw Thomas.
I was only interested in owning the company.
But since the police were involved, I knew that ship had sailed.
It was not gonna happen. I left Trustor.
When I left Geneva,
I was done.
I'd split my share of the Trustor deal across three bank accounts.
One of them was in Israel.
I thought my accounts would be frozen and the funds confiscated.
I thought I'd withdraw the cash, hide it, and return home.
I went to an internet café and followed the news.
They hadn't published my picture.
I called a few trusted friends at home.
But I didn't contact my family.
I realised they would be under police surveillance.
I was really paranoid.
[Karin] Since everyone in Team Moyne was abroad,
the police had to focus
on the few people they could find in Sweden.
For me, it all clicked into place over the All Saint's weekend that year.
My wife and I were driving down to Skåne with a trailer, carrying random things.
Bikes and a lawnmower, things for the summer house.
[phone ringing]
Then the phone rang.
I was a little more irritable than usual. I answered, "Hello?"
"Is this Björn Björnsson?"
"Course it is," I said. "Who the hell else would it be?"
"This is the Federal Crime Police."
I did a U-turn.
I started driving back and they said…
"We'd like to hold an interview with you this evening."
"Okay," I said, "I'll be there as fast as I can."
And then I hung up.
I drove as fast as I could from Österlen to Stockholm.
And when I got there, I was cross-examined for three hours.
I was a suspect initially.
I was furious, to be honest with you.
This always gives me a hard time.
[Karin] The police also spoke to vice president Richard Djursén.
It was a few hours before I was set to go on my honeymoon to Mauritius.
I'd spoken to the police and everything seemed fine.
They let me go to Mauritius.
It was not a fun vacation.
All the journalists kept calling me. No one else was picking up the phone.
[Richard, on phone] I understand Lindsay Smallbone will be explaining
later today how the funds have been invested,
what's happened with the money that is…
Or rather, the money that is not at Barclays Bank.
[chuckles]
[groans]
In hindsight, it was a disastrous vacation.
[on phone] I was only ever the vice president in name only.
That's just a title that I've been given.
In the day to day, I was more of an errand boy, I would say.
Djursén just couldn't keep his mouth shut.
He kept yapping.
[Richard, on phone] Had Lindsay Smallbone and Lord Moyne been a bit more crafty,
they could've easily accessed the account to rectify things.
There was no stopping him.
He kept creating new problems.
[Richard] I've been dragged into something that has nothing to do with me.
It went so far that some of my friends called and said,
"Don't talk to journalists."
"It's obvious that you've been drinking and you're on live TV."
[reporter] So who appointed you?
[Richard] Uh…
Well, officially, I suppose it was…
uh, the board, I think?
Disaster.
Still married, so that's good.
[Joachim] I was in Israel,
and just watching this story
grow bigger and bigger…
THE BRAINS BEHIND THE COUP?
…and bigger.
HUNTED FOR THE MILLION KRONOR COUP
I was on every front page.
POLICE INVESTIGATE COMPANIES
The collapse was amazing.
I mean, page after page of the British press.
I mean, everything stopped so quickly.
One day, it was business.
The next day, finito.
[Karin] A week after the affair came to light,
Thomas Jisander and Peter Mattsson left the Riviera and returned to Sweden.
They had intended to come forward and face the press,
but found themselves in custody instead.
CAME TO FACE THE PRESS, ENDED UP IN CUSTODY
I was like, "Man, what's the big deal? Why don't they just ask their questions?"
"Let's open a bottle of wine and talk it out."
PROSECUTOR DETAINED BOTH JISANDER AND MATTSSON
We were there all of 15 minutes at most.
And that was it, done.
Detained.
[Karin] Everyone in Team Moyne was removed from their positions.
FORCED TO RESIGN - DETAINED
Posener was arrested in absentia.
DETAINED IN ABSENTIA
Meanwhile, Björn Björnsson took on his second role in Trustor.
He was appointed the new CEO while this was happening.
It was an extremely messy week when this all blew up.
The first thing I did as CEO
was to try and wrap my head around what actually happened.
NEW CEO, TRUSTOR
In late fall, early winter, Björn Björnsson got in touch
and we met at a lawyer's office.
I sat there and told him everything I knew.
That Team Moyne was intending to sell some of Trustor's assets
at far too low a price
to a previous majority shareholder, Norberg.
I prevented that,
and in doing so I saved Trustor a lot of money.
[Björn sighs]
Well, you can be a useful idiot.
But that doesn't excuse your actions.
I saw a vice president who could not do his job properly.
It was obvious he'd have to go.
[Richard] Despite telling them everything I knew,
I was fired.
It was so humiliating.
That time at Trustor was…
[snuffles, clicks fingers]
It's still hard.
POSENER FALK, JOACHIM RALPH GROSS BREACH OF TRUST
[Karin] The last trace of Joachim Posener
was from November 1997.
NO KNOWN ADDRESS
He moved around Europe,
paid in cash,
and stayed in hotels using aliases.
He managed to board a plane to South America
just days before an international warrant was issued.
INTERNATIONAL ARREST WARRANT
[enigmatic music playing]
[Joachim] I did know somebody in the Stockholm criminal world,
and he knew somebody in South America.
These people are well-organised and highly dangerous.
I proceeded to buy what I later learned is known as a "legend"
in the world of spies.
So a shell of a person that you assume.
They can take decades to create.
And just like that,
I was a new man.
-[driver] Is it the next one? -[Joachim] Yes, straight, and then right.
I became another person, who already existed.
-[woman] Look at his face. So swollen. -[man] Actually, it's gone down a bit.
[Joachim] These people hid me in a small village in Brazil.
I lived there for many years.
-Hello! -Hello!
[Joachim] I spent a lot of time in a favela, the local slum.
The police never went there.
You don't go there uninvited.
-[indistinct, lively chatter] -[guitar strumming]
[Joachim] The territory was controlled by a drug cartel,
and they had soldiers at every entrance.
Nobody would find me there.
[ominous music playing]
[news theme playing]
Good evening. Recent developments in the Trustor saga…
[Karin] During the fall of 1997,
news anchors in colourful ties continued to report on the Trustor saga.
…looting of funds.
The looting of Trustor assets worth hundreds of millions.
[Karin] Everybody talked of "looting."
The looting of Trustor's assets might never be resolved.
THE MOST BRAZEN LOOTING
[Karin] One question remained unanswered,
where is the money from Trustor?
OH MY LORD, WHERE'S THE MONEY?
[Joachim] Around 400 million was missing.
I had used 240 million to pay the former owner, Norberg.
The money had been converted into shares and pledged to the bank.
So when the police were looking for the money,
it's there, as shares.
There had been speculation about how much I'd made from the Trustor deal.
I paid myself ten million in total.
That's the true figure.
Maybe not what you were expecting, but it's true.
I was planning to take out ten million a year in salary.
That was the plan for the long-term, anyway.
But nothing turned out as I had planned, of course,
and half of the ten million was frozen by the police and Trustor,
so I never even got the full amount of that.
And then we have Thomas's fee.
He got five million, but wasn't satisfied with that.
From what I understand, he took another 90 million.
But that happened behind my back. It didn't go through me.
What mattered to me was paying back the 20 million
I owed to the Swedish gangsters.
That way, I wouldn't be in their debt and wouldn't have problems in the future.
And 70 million went to various expenses.
Salaries, travel expenses, office rentals.
Compensation to Lord Moyne, Lindsay and Peter.
I bought Trustor, but I didn't loot the company.
[Karin] You looted company assets by buying it with its own money,
and using the accounts for furnishings, travel expenses, vacations…
[Joachim] But if I write,
uh,
an invoice, that's not looting.
It's a business expense.
I bought a company. I didn't rob anyone.
[Karin] So if it's not stealing, then what is it?
I bought the company using an unauthorised loan.
That's it.
[Joachim] This is where we live. We're in the kitchen.
[clears throat]
I'm boiling some water
for breakfast.
I'm sorry, I couldn't be bothered to clean.
The dishwasher can't handle it all.
We went out to buy some bread.
I lived off the money from Trustor for about three years.
Life on the run is very expensive.
So is buying a new identity
and not being able to work.
It's expensive
pretending to be somebody else.
I've seen a lot of this view.
In order to avoid being found,
you need to look completely different to what people expect.
So curly, black-haired Joachim shaved his head.
Chubby Joachim became fit Joachim.
I swapped glasses for contacts.
I obviously never went home.
That would have been idiotic.
First, I stayed in Brazil.
When the media found out about Brazil, I'd already moved back to Europe.
While Joachim was on the run,
there were all these media reports
that he'd been spotted somewhere or another.
Police believe that a picture taken by a tourist in South Africa
is the wanted Joachim Posener.
[Thomas] They published this picture.
Those of us who knew him said right away, "Jesus Christ, that's not him."
If true, the seven-year manhunt may have some life again.
"Have we finally found him?"
"Is this the end of the manhunt?"
HOW POSENER'S FOOLING THE POLICE
Various facial composites were created. Oh, my God.
There were probably 50 people who those could have been.
[curious music playing]
[music ends]
[objects clattering]
[Richard] Hold on, where did I put it?
-Is this it? -[clattering continues]
Okay, here it is.
There's a lot in here.
Check this out.
Newspaper clippings.
There's a ton of them.
They used the worst picture they could find.
I found that insulting, actually.
[tuts, laughs]
This is a nicer picture.
It doesn't embarrass me.
Such bullshit.
[Richard sighs]
Six months after the Trustor scandal,
I had a one-year-old son and newborn twins.
I had no job, all my accounts were frozen,
and nobody would touch me with a ten-foot pole.
I had to sell the house.
And we moved to a small rental apartment in Hägersten.
My life changed completely.
I lost everything, except my family.
I wanted to take revenge on all those people who'd hurt me.
And the person I was most angry with was Björn Björnsson,
because he threw me under the bus.
Because of that, I wanted to end him.
I drove around where he lives in Djursholm, past his house.
He doesn't know about this.
So I was driving around there in my car, and…
This is so crazy.
At one point I could've written a book
on 300 different ways of killing somebody
without getting caught.
Everything from buying a wood chipper and putting the corpse in,
then spreading the remains at sea for the fish to eat.
You need to dispose of the body somehow.
There was no Google at the time, but you could still find out
how to cremate stuff.
It's done with high heat, of course.
You can build it yourself.
I was going to rent a cabin in northern Sweden
and build one of those cremation furnaces
where all traces are destroyed.
I sat here watching Björn Björnsson's house.
I drove around
checking different escape routes in his area
that would allow me to get away quickly.
I thought I needed to turn myself in.
I called psychiatric services in Nacka.
I told them that I thought I needed to be committed,
since I was considering… killing someone.
You only have such violent thoughts when you're depressed.
[Karin] Do you still have those thoughts?
[Richard] Not at all. They're long gone.
Shit, I didn't start crying. That's weird.
[chuckles]
Oh, dear.
I thought I'd be crying the whole time.
No.
As long as… I'm talking and keep going, it's fine.
I can keep from crying.
But actually…
[hesitates, coughs]
No, forget it.
[breathes deeply]
[cries quietly]
Hm.
[Richard sniffling on video]
It's tragic to see how he's ended up.
Even considering where he's from.
[Richard sighs]
But he seems to be doing alright.
He's driving a Porsche and has a nice house.
He's doing well financially.
[dramatic music playing]
STOCKHOLM DISTRICT COURT 2001
Today saw the start of the trial of those involved in the looting of assets
from Trustor.
[Karin] Financial crime is hard to prove,
and becomes even more complicated when committed abroad.
In this case, the key figure was also missing,
which meant that the legal proceedings were doomed to fail.
Lindsay Smallbone was not prosecuted and walked free.
New Zealand has no extradition agreement with Sweden.
Lord Moyne was prosecuted,
but claimed that some of the signatures on the Trustor documents were not his.
He also walked free.
FRONTMAN WALKS FREE
-[man] Why were you important for them? -Name.
The name.
I'm bankrupt.
It's as simple as that.
[Karin] Peter Mattsson and Thomas Jisander
were initially convicted by the district court.
[Thomas] I was sentenced to five years in prison,
a nine-year ban on business activity
and had to pay 100 million in damages.
[Karin] But they appealed the decision.
This time round, we were better prepared.
FRESH START IN TRUSTOR CASE
[Karin] Since the key figure was missing,
it became convenient to blame him.
"TRICKED BY POSENER"
[Joachim] During the trial,
they came up with absurd arguments for their innocence.
THE PROSECUTED BLAME POSENER
The prosecutor claimed to have found incriminating documents
on the computer found in my apartment.
But who used that computer?
We brought in a technical expert
who demonstrated to the court
how easy it would be to access a computer remotely.
We were able to prove that was a possibility.
PROGRAM FOR DATA TRANSFER
Then it was in the hands of the court, and evidently they believed it, as well.
Today they were acquitted by the court of appeal.
There was not enough evidence
against Thomas Jisander and Peter Mattsson.
It's been incredibly tough,
but it's with great relief I can say that, luckily, there is justice in this world.
TRUSTOR SCANDAL VILLAINS WALK FREE
[Jochum] Posener was never convicted.
He vanished.
And we've not heard from, or seen…
[golfer] Fore!
Sorry.
He's gone up in smoke, so to speak.
I left the police force.
I needed to try something different.
I started working at a golf club.
It obviously haunts me that we never caught Joachim Posener.
What the…
It would give closure, an ending to it all.
That's how I feel.
I find it strange that you can stay away for 30 years.
Not seeing your family,
and having to look over your shoulder.
It must be like losing your identity.
[lively chatter in background]
[Joachim] Being in hiding means I've been able to live a life
on my own terms.
Where I live, nobody calls me Joachim…
Charlie, how are you, my friend?
How are you? Good to see you.
See you soon.
…despite the fact that I regained my passport
and my real name a long time ago.
[Karin] What's your life like?
[Joachim] I live kind of
a bohemian lifestyle.
There.
Not in my native country,
not even in my wife's native country.
One foot in society and one outside.
Do I need to make a living? Absolutely.
I've worked with what I know best,
as a consultant and advisor.
But in the shadows.
[woman] What do you want people to know about you?
[Joachim] It was never about money.
It was about… the challenge.
The adrenaline you get from such deals is my drug.
Yeah, it can be hard to stop once you've started.
Have you got a family?
Yes. A wife and two kids.
-[woman] Girls or boys? -Girls.
Do you get to see them?
-I live with my youngest. -Okay.
And I've promised not to talk about my other daughter.
How old are they?
The youngest is 15 and the older one is 32.
[woman] The same age as me.
Then I could be your daughter.
Yes, actually.
[Karin] The biggest victim might be your daughter.
What are your thoughts?
It is extremely sad and tragic.
But I wouldn't have…
I would have gone insane spending ten more years in prison.
I couldn't do it.
[Karin] Given how things turned out…
You've lived in hiding and lost contact with your family and your daughter.
Was it worth it?
That's a very complicated…
A simple, yet complicated question, because…
Had I not done the Trustor deal,
I would not have my current wife,
or my child.
Was it worth not spending another ten years in prison?
Absolutely.
[Karin] And what about the price that your family in Sweden had to pay?
It was worth it for me, but maybe not for them.
[tense, pulsating music playing]
[Karin] On to the most absurd consequence of the whole affair,
Trustor's shareholders profited big time.
In order to understand this,
we need to look at Björn Björnsson's third and last role,
as the liquidator tasked with winding down Trustor.
Our mission was to recover as much money as possible.
Pay off all the debts, sell all the assets.
Whatever was left went to the shareholders as dividends.
150 MIL INVESTED AT STOCK EXCHANGE
[Karin] The liquidators found money in Team Moyne's accounts around the world.
770 MIL BARCLAYS BANK
Thomas Jisander was ordered to pay back 65 million in a settlement.
BARCLAYS BANK SUED
The banks involved were sued for substantial amounts,
and Trustor's undervalued assets were sold.
So despite the missing money,
the value of the shares doubled after the scandal.
THE TRUSTOR SCANDAL IS REVEALED
[Björn sighs]
It's ironic that the shareholders got a good deal.
[Karin] Crimes had been committed, but the establishment lost out.
The taxpayers paid the bill for work carried out by the authorities.
And everyone involved walked free.
Well, nearly everyone.
As some say,
why follow the law
when you can treat it as a guideline?
[wistful music playing]
[Richard] I'm doing great now.
Just dandy.
I've got a good life.
I've worked hard.
I've started businesses that have done really well.
I've sold businesses and made a fortune.
I am now financially independent and can do whatever I want.
[wistful music continues]
[Thomas] Well, as I said, "Nobody remembers a coward."
Every krona that came out of Trustor, in one way or another, has been spent.
It was completely impossible to predict
that I would earn as little from this transaction as I did.
[laughs quietly]
[Joachim] After Trustor, I knew I had made my mark on the world.
That was satisfying.
But what drove me to it is no longer in me.
The freedom I sought through money
has been replaced with another kind of freedom.
One where no one can control me.
And I choose where I want to be.
And also choose when I vanish.
[Thomas whistles]
[Joachim] The crazy thing is that Thomas got in touch with me
during the trial.
And he asked me,
"Can we do it again?"
[suspenseful music playing]
THOMAS JISANDER WAS SENTENCED YEARS LATER
TO A SHORT PRISON TERM
FOR INCITEMENT TO GROSS EMBEZZLEMENT
"IT WAS A WONDERFUL
SIX-MONTH SPA EXPERIENCE!"
THOMAS JISANDER
LORD MOYNE'S FAMILY INFORMED US
THAT HE CAN'T TAKE PART DUE TO HEALTH REASONS
PETER MATTSSON, HOWEVER, HASN'T REPLIED
LINDSAY SMALLBONE HAS PASSED AWAY
NAPOLEON'S DESK HAS NOT BEEN FOUND
[energetic synth pop music playing]
A FILM BY KARIN AF KLINTBERG
[dog barking inside]
[muffled chatter]
[synth pop music continues]
Just have a look at my fire.
[short beep]
Magical fire.
Several people have looked and said, "Oh, what a lovely fire."
Thinking it's a real fire.
[clock ticking]