The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy Bundle Read Online Free Page B

money over a number of years. But Minos had gone under and Wennerström could not be blamed for it. Here the state guarantees kicked in, and Wennerström was indemnified. All he needed to do was pay back the money that was lost when Minos went under, and he could also show that he had lost a corresponding amount of his own money.”
    â€œLet me see if I understand this correctly. The government supplied billions in tax money, and diplomats to open doors. Industries got the money and used it to invest in joint ventures from which they later reaped vast profits. In other words, business as usual.”
    â€œYou’re a cynic. The loans were supposed to be paid back to the state.”
    â€œYou said that they were interest-free. So that means the taxpayers got nothing at all for putting up the cash. Wennerström got sixty million, and invested fifty-four million of it. What happened to the other six million?”
    â€œWhen it became clear that the AIA project was going to be investigated, Wennerström sent a cheque for six million to AIA for the difference. So the matter was settled, legally at least.”
    â€œIt sounds as though Wennerström frittered away a little money for AIA. But compared with the half billion that disappeared from Skanska or the CEO of ABB’s golden parachute of more than a billion kronor—which really upset people—this doesn’t seem to be much to write about,” Blomkvist said. “Today’s readers are pretty tired of stories about incompetent speculators, even if it’s with public funds. Is there more to the story?”
    â€œIt gets better.”
    â€œHow do you know all this about Wennerström’s deals in Poland?”
    â€œI worked at Handelsbanken in the nineties. Guess who wrote the reports for the bank’s representative in AIA?”
    â€œAha. Tell me more.”
    â€œWell, AIA got their report from Wennerström. Documents were drawn up. The balance of the money had been paid back. That six million coming back was very clever.”
    â€œGet to the point.”
    â€œBut, my dear Blomkvist, that
is
the point. AIA was satisfied with Wennerström’s report. It was an investment that went to hell, but there was no criticism of the way it had been managed. We looked at invoices and transfers and all the documents. Everything was meticulously accounted for. I believed it. My boss believed it. AIA believed it, and the government had nothing to say.”
    â€œWhere’s the hook?”
    â€œThis is where the story gets ticklish,” Lindberg said, looking surprisingly sober. “And since you’re a journalist, this is off the record.”
    â€œCome off it. You can’t sit there telling me all this stuff and then say I can’t use it.”
    â€œI certainly can. What I’ve told you so far is in the public record. You can look up the report if you want. The rest of the story—what I haven’t told you—you can write about, but you’ll have to treat me as an anonymous source.”
    â€œOK, but ‘off the record’ in current terminology means that I’ve been told something in confidence and can’t write about it.”
    â€œScrew the terminology. Write whatever the hell you want, but I’m your anonymous source. Are we agreed?”
    â€œOf course,” Blomkvist said.
    In hindsight, this was a mistake.
    â€œAll right then. The Minos story took place more than a decade ago, just after the Wall came down and the Bolsheviks starting acting like decent capitalists. I was one of the people who investigated Wennerström, and the whole time I thought there was something damned odd about his story.”
    â€œWhy didn’t you say so when you signed off on his report?”
    â€œI discussed it with my boss. But the problem was that there wasn’t anything to pinpoint. The documents were all OK, I had only to sign the report. Every time I’ve