A Plot For A Financial Thriller

You can't make up stuff like this, so you might as well take it and use it as the plot for that thriller you've been longing to write.

I'd do it myself, but I'm not familiar with the genre and I'd hate to spoil a good story with poor pacing or a style that would give away too much too soon.

The story is set in the recent past, during the height of the property boom. Everyone is keen on making big money on land, buildings and rents. Banks are keen to throw money at investors.

Two men cook up a little scheme to get their hands on some of that cash. If you're inclined to think Ocean's Eleven, you'd make the narrator one of the clever lads. On the other hand, you could use some wonky bank investigator as your hero and put him to the task of tracking down the bank's assets.

Achilleas Kallakis (as played by George Clooney, perhaps?) and Alexander Williams (Brad Pitt comes to mind) were able to convince authorities at Allied Irish Bank to lend them E850 million to purchase an office block in London's Euston Road.

Who is backing them, the bank asks. Why, Chinese property giant Sun Hung Kai Properties are guaranteeing the loan. A Chinese firm? The two gentlemen making the request are as Caucasian as can be. The bankers become suspicious.

Enter Jonathan Lee, suitably Asian, who brings in documents with solicitors' stamps that attest to the veracity of the guarantees.

The trio take the money, buy the property, and party hearty on the excess. They came away with a couple of million euro to fund a very lavish lifestyle.

Where it gets difficult to explain as an author is the part where the perps set up a shadow company to buy the property, and then set up another that was said to be a branch of SHKP which was renting the property. You, the author, have to make it realistic enough to be convincing or the reader won't keep turning the page.

Your bank investigator hero comes into play at this point, demanding further guarantees on the rents and loan repayment. The scammers then create yet another shadow company but the persistant examiner trips them up when they can't produce concrete evidence of the firm's assets.

Somewhere in there, you'll want to insert a Julia Roberts character who comes to find that her beloved was lifting cash to buy her love, or some such plot device that creates a touch of romance.

Not that such an element has emerged in court, where Mr. Kallakis and Mr. Williams are on trial for fraud, but a well-written novel requires more than the cold, hard facts.

It's one thing for the men in the dock to insist they believed that the forged documents were real. It's far more intriguing if one of them has a compelling reason to commit such a huge and complex crime.

Now go write that novel. Don't forget to leave room for a sequel.