Chapter 11 - Bribery and Corruption

Brianna arrived at Jackson, Jasmine and Kiara's apartment on a late Saturday evening. Getting into the apartment was easy enough - Jasmine gave Brianna a key to the apartment years ago. She made her way into Kiara's bedroom and opened Kiara's laptop. 

Brianna's trusty hacker, Kevin, had sent Kiara a phishing email earlier in the week and luckily Kiara had fallen for it. Brianna pulled out a piece of paper containing a series of letters, numbers and symbols: Kiara's password. She copied the contents of the paper into the laptop and managed to successfully unlock Kiara's computer. Brianna then opened the company's internal file management program and was faced with another request for a password. Brianna tried the same password again and voila: she was in. 

There was an overwhelmingly large amount of files to sift through and Brianna didn't know where to begin. She then spotted a folder labelled "Laurence Kerr" and began to fill up with rage. I'm going to get you, you son of a bitch, Brianna thought. No one gets to use me like that and walk away. 

To Brianna's disappointment, there was nothing interesting in Laurie's folder, or at least nothing beyond what she didn't already know: Laurie was guilty of bribing a public official.

--- one year ago --- 

Laurie gazed out the office window with a jealous look in his eyes. He had been looking forward to joining his father at Kerr Industries all his life but now that he was here, he didn't feel the elation or joy that he expected to feel. Rather, he felt unappreciated and ignored by all of the employees and most of all his father. God damn, Eric has already been here for three years before me, Laurie thought bitterly. 

Laurie despised Eric for stealing his father's attention and he became desperate to impress his father at work. Michael noticed that his son was starting to become a pain in the ass. In an attempt to inspire collaboration rather than competition, Michael decided to assign a new project to Eric and Laurie to work on together. 

The project required San Myshuno Council's urgent planning approval in order to meet the client's deadlines. Rather than working together with Eric, Laurie saw this project as an opportunity to outshine him. 

Without telling Eric, Laurie went down to the San Myshuno Council with a bottle of wine in hand - a random bottle he had swiped from a dark corner of his father's cellar. It didn't take long for Laurie to be seated across a council member after charming the front desk lady.

"I'm here to see if there's anything you can do to speed up our planning approval," Laurie schmoozed as he placed the bottle of wine on the desk. 

The council member's eyes widened as she read the label on the wine bottle. "What did you say your name was?"

"I didn't - it's Laurence. Laurence Kerr." 

"Well Mr Kerr, I can't help you today but thank you for stopping by..." and with that, Laurie was pushed out the door. The council member picked up the phone right away and reported Laurie's little visit to the San Myshuno Commission Against Corruption. And it wasn't long before Michael found out that a bottle of wine was missing from his cellar - a bottle worth $15,000. 

--- end of flashback --- 

Brianna was getting tired of aimlessly opening and closing files. She was about to give up when she came across the company's General Ledger. The file was locked with a pin. Brianna furrowed her brows and tried to recall the 4-digit code Laurie had entered into his family safe that time he showed her his father's Faberge egg: 2 - 9 - 0 - 4. Success. 

"There are repeated entries of large amounts of money being transferred to a company called Ernest Incorporated... But it's classified as a donation... Something about this doesn't seem right," Brianna said to herself as she copied the General Ledger documents onto her USB. She then logged out of Kiara's laptop and slipped out of the apartment. 

When Brianna arrived back in her own home, she ran upstairs to her computer and ran a search on Ernest Industries. Ernest Industries turned out to be a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. Oh my god - tax evasion, Brianna sneered venomously. Laurie and his whole stupid family empire is going down.

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