Murder, Greed & Power with Daniel Silva

0:04Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is Open Book, where I talk with some of the brightest minds out there about everything surrounding the written word, from authors and historians to figures in entertainment, neuroscientists, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's episode, if you haven't already, please hit follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're enjoying or how we can do better. You know, I can roll with the punches, so let me know.

0:38Anyways, let's get to it.

0:47It's that time again. The great Daniel Silva has a brand new book out, the next in his phenomenal Gabriel Alon series. Most of you will know my favorite read every summer is always Daniel's latest thriller. There's money laundering, art, political scandal, intrigue, and so much more. Even though Daniel writes fiction, I always learn a great deal about history and our society from his books. So do listen in.

1:22I'd like to take a second to recommend my friend Andy Ostroy's great podcast, The Back Room. Every episode is a fun, incredibly honest take on our society and the political situation, along with some brilliant guests. I've been honored to join Andy on the show, and you know anywhere that accepts me with no filter deserves a shout out.

1:48So joining us now is Daniel Silva. He's an award-winning, number one New York Times bestselling author. He's probably the spy novelist of our generation, if not all generations. The new book, which is the 24th novel featuring Gabrielle Alon. The title of the book is A Death in Cornwall. I got an advanced copy of this book, by the way, so I had the opportunity to read it. My producer was remarking about how fabulous it is. It's different from your other books in some ways. We're going to talk a little bit about that. You've gone in a different direction. There's some spying, but there's a crime thriller, but it's also wrapped in a political drama, and it's very contemporized.

2:31I feel like when I get a Daniel Silva book in the summer, I feel like I'm getting a briefing book on the next year of what's going to happen in our society. And so I want to start there for a second. It begins with the death in Cornwall. And of course, we have this familiar face, Timothy Peel, who set the scene for us from your prior books. And I know you love Cornwall, by the way, and I've been there and I know why you love it because it's, I don't know, There's a lot of cross currents that are happening in Cornwall from a civilization perspective. And so I understand why your protagonist is living up there.

3:07But explain it to us. Why Cornwall? Who is Timothy Peel? And tell us about some of these great characters of yours. Okay. Why Cornwall? It is the most magically beautiful place that I've ever been in my life. And I go every chance I get. I'm just inspired by the scenery. I love the coastline. I love the people. I just think it's got this Arthurian magic in the air. And I actually wrote the first chapters of the Gabriel Alon series in a rented house in Cornwall. So it'll always hold a very special place for me. And I had to put a little preface in this novel for new readers, just to make sure that everyone understood the connection.

3:53But when I created Gabriel, he was living as sort of a grieving recluse. He had just lost his wife and family to a terrorist bombing, his wife and son to a terrorist bombing in Vienna. And he was hiding out there, working as an art restorer under an assumed identity. And this little 11-year-old kid who happened to be exactly the same age as his dead son lived next door. And they were both sort of wounded souls in their own way, and they formed a relationship. Fast forward 25 years, that little 11-year-old boy is now a man in his mid-30s. And he is a, because of Gabriel, undoubtedly a detective sergeant in the Devon and Cornwall Police Department.

4:36A death in Cornwall takes place. The victim is a renowned professor of art history from the University of Oxford. She spends her weekends out in Cornwall. And Timothy asks Gabriel to help him out with the investigation. One thing leads to another, as it often does in the Gabriel Lod novel, and he finds himself in the middle of a big political scandal involving the election of the next British prime minister. So you're very astute. It is a it is a fast paced, entertaining, light and tone summer beach novel. It's part murder mystery. It's part art caper. And it's part political thriller. And it deals with how art can be used for purposes of money laundering.

5:23And frankly, how London has become the money laundering capital of the world. Yeah, well, listen, we interviewed an author that more or less wrote a book about the London for whatever reason, whether it's Russian money, art laundering, drug laundering. There's a whole laundry mat of a set of services in London now for the rogues. Can I interrupt you? Who did you interview? Butler to the world. The gentleman's name was Oliver Belong. Oh, Butler to the world. OK, look, this is a a Britain's National Crime Agency put out a report recently that it's it's too big to actually get your arms around. But they estimate that we're talking about several hundred billion pounds.

6:08Okay, but he was brilliant in terms of explaining, you know, this is the weird thing about this, Daniel, that is unspoken in the United States. The 15 million immigrants are generating economic revenues and taxation for the economy and are actually supporting the Social Security system. Of course they are. We don't talk about that, though, if we're American nativists. But the weird thing about money laundering in London, it's actually part of the commercial activity of that city now is what the point of this man who wrote Butler to the World, which I'll send it to you. I agree. I agree. It's the business model.

6:47The business model. And you have a country. You know, it's interesting because I was telling you this morning, I've learned a lot in your books over the years. And you write about some of the economic dilemmas that the country's faced with, particularly since Brexit. You also write about the lack of services, 90 minutes to get an ambulance to your house if you're under distress, under NHS. And there's a whole host of things that are going wrong. And there's a time and an opportunity for political change, which you write beautifully about. But I want to go to something that's always fascinated me.

7:20And I know you know a lot about this. And I want to talk about the thousands of paintings, thousands of paintings that were seized by the Nazis. Some of them ended up in the Louvre. Some of them ended up in these world-class museums. And they were literally stolen and pilfered from German Jews, aristocratic Jews in France, Polish Jews. And where are those paintings today? And how many of them got returned to their rightful owners? Remarkably large number. If we could just, we'll talk about just what happened in France, because that's what this book deals with. But, you know, the Germans came rolling into Paris in June 1940, and they started grabbing everything they could get their hands on.

8:02The French had managed to hide much of the greatest pieces that were in the Louvre. But Jewish collections that were in Jewish hands were seized. These Jewish art dealers' collections were seized, inventories were seized. Just small, successful businessmen who happened to be Jewish and happened to have a few pieces of art, they were in danger of losing their art. So we are talking about, I don't want to misstate the number, but hundreds of thousands of objets d 'art were seized in France. Much of it was carted back to Germany on trains. But there was a thriving art market that was that the that was underway in France during the war.

8:46And a number of Jewish people who were fleeing were engaged in what we now call coerced sales. You know, they had to they had to part with their art under circumstances, whether they were they were trying to flee or whether they were felt they were about to be deported. And so those pieces are still floating around the art world where people acquired a work under dubious circumstances during the war, whether being a collector or a dealer, and then profited by selling those later. And that's what that's that little sub angle to the story that I deal with in this book. So there are many, many thousands.

9:24I mean, if you were to look at the art press on a weekly basis, art news or the art newspapers, there's always a story about this painting popping up in this painting. And so if you are a collector and you are looking to buy something that might have changed hands during World War II in France, you better have someone like Charlotte Blake, who's the murder victim in this in this novel. She's a provenance expert. You better have someone really look at the provenance and make sure you've got a hair type provenance. because there are many, many pieces that changed hands under dubious circumstances that are still floating around the art world.

10:00But look, the good news is that we were able to get much of it back thanks to the work of the Monuments Men. And we were able to track it down and get many, many pieces back to France. But there are still pieces that are in the French museums, state museums, and pieces that seeped into the art world that are still lost today. It's a truly fascinating thing that's happened. And I, you know, I know more about the art world than I deserve to because of Daniel Silva and Gabriel Alonso. I want to switch gears and talk about free ports. OK, and so for viewers and listeners that don't know what a free port is, I'll try to explain it.

10:39And Daniel can interrupt me if I've got it wrong. No, I want you to explain it. You explain it. There are areas of cities near airports, frankly, where they're treated as tax free zones. They're almost treated as an international zone for purposes of storing goods. It could be collectibles, it could be wine, art, even automobiles. And why is that done that way? Because you can ship something to Geneva and store it in a free port and not be taxed or tariffed on an incoming product or good of service coming into the country. And so there are freeports in Geneva, there are freeports in Singapore and other parts of the world where billions upon billions of dollars of art are stored in these freeports.

11:24Moreover, the very famous Salvador Mundi ended up in one of these freeports while it was transitioning before it was sold to Christie's. And so the Freeport concept comes up in this book. So tell us a little bit about the Geneva Freeport, Mr. Silva, and what the solution to the wider issue is that Gabriel discovers. And try to do it delicately, sir, if you don't mind. I don't want to ruin the book for people. I'm going to do it. I'm going to talk about it conceptually. OK. Let us say, let me start to take a different tack into it. Let us say that governments, our government, European governments have awakened to the fact that fine art, especially very, very costly fine art, is a perfect way to launder money.

12:15Why is that? It's incredibly valuable. It's incredibly portable. It is subjective in values. I mean, it's worth whatever someone is willing to pay you for it or whatever you're willing to pay for it. And increasingly, this is something we learned from the Panama Papers scandal, because when those documents came out, we were able to determine that a number of incredibly important dealers and collectors owned their paintings using anonymous shell companies created by Mossack Fonseca. And, you know, it doesn't take someone like me to see that the Freeport system and anonymous sales using shell companies where the money is flowing through offshore tax havens, oblivious to government.

13:04So there's I mean, the size of the art trade is 70 or 80 billion dollars a year. Almost all of those sales are completely private. You know, in most cases, the seller doesn't know the buyer. The buyer doesn't know the seller. The government knows nothing at all. governments know nothing at all there's no regulation to speak of and and it's it's shell company to shell company money moving out there out there in the ether someplace and no taxation no capital gains um and it is a perfect way to launder money and so the freeport system um and and i know my my my friends in the art world will probably take issue with this but you can buy a painting um i'm around the corner from your office you can buy your 100 million dollar painting at Christie's, ship it to the Freeport in Geneva, and they're not going to pay any taxes on that.

13:51I mean, I can't go to Duane Reade and buy shaving cream without paying taxes. It's a fascinating loophole. I mean, how much you save in the state of New York doesn't receive when you ship your painting to Freeport. I mean, it's an extraordinary amount of money. This is a way that the rich avoid taxes, right? Because let's say I've come into a windfall. I buy the piece of art. I know that the art is going to appreciate due to the scarcity value of the art. I wait 15 years and I've got this tax-free accumulation of wealth. Well, there's another way that you could do it, though. So you can, if you're nefarious, and this is, I use this scheme in the novel.

14:33I actually, when I finished the book, I stumbled on a sort of a professional document that was prepared by an AML firm. and you deal with these people about red flags that you need to look for if you're in the art business. But say you ship your painting to the Freeport. And so now it's there, it's hidden in a vault, and the vault is rented by an offshore company. So you don't even know who the actual beneficial owner is of the company. You can sell your painting within the Freeport, and you can sell it for a profit and pay no capital gains on that transaction. It just moves from vault to fault.

15:10And so I created a scheme in this novel by which you're using the Freeport system and the opacity of the art world to launder and conceal billions and billions and billions of dollars belonging to some of the worst people in the world. And the scheme I used is quite real, actually. Yeah. Well, I mean, this is why I love your books is I'm always learning something in your books. And you are such a refined gentleman. It is nice to see that there's an aspect of your brain that can get to the nefarious nature of these SOBs that are out there. But I want to go to something that was said earlier today.

15:52We had the chance to see each other at Morning Joe this morning. Somebody said that the Tories, the Conservative Party in Britain, is one of the longest or the oldest parties that's stolen existence. I believe I said that. I said that on the air. OK, OK. And I think you then also said that for two thirds of the history of the country, it's run the country. Two thirds of the Tories history. It has been in power for two thirds of its existence. And I was I was citing those figures to sort of illustrate how dramatic the collapse of this party that we just witnessed really is. You know, as I said on Morning Joe, this is not some fringe party.

16:33This is the conservative party of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. And to see it devolve into this clown show over the last few years has been, you know, whatever your politics are, it was just not a good sign for the health of our democracy. What was a good sign for the health of our democracy was that the British people in their infinite wisdom said, you know, time out, Tories. You're going to you're going to you're going to have a think for a couple of election cycles and see if you can get your act together. And, you know, they were routed. They deserve to be routed. And hopefully and I mean this, hopefully they can they can go into the wilderness for a while and find their way back to the center and become the, you know, the professional governing party that we've known them to be.

17:23I want to say one more thing, if it's OK, that, you know, we were talking about the London laundromat. OK. One of the things that the London laundromat did is it welcomed with open arms hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Russian money. It just poured into the London's financial system, poured into real estate all through the economy, sloshing around. And in 2021, the British Committee of the British Parliament released what is now known as the Russia Report. And this is a stunning document that said that all that money that Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin, Russian intelligence services deliberately set out to corrupt the British financial sector, corrupt British institutions and corrupt British politics using money as a weapon.

18:13There have just been scandal after scandal after scandal involving the Tories and money. And I don't want to get too conspiratorial here. You know, the Tories were the Cold War party. They were always very Russia hawks. And now they are in ruins, at least for the time being. And I wonder how Vladimir Putin feels about that, because I think that was a goal of the Kremlin is to weaken that party. So, I mean, it's a really good segue for my next question because I want to tie it back to American politics. So we do know that, you know, when we read things like Putin's people from Catherine Belton, we do know that the Russians are trying to influence Western democracies.

18:54They're trying to unsettle them. They're trying to convince the people in these democracies that their democracies are not legitimate. And then they have these useful idiots that will chant that, pretend that there's election fraud, pretend that there's election lies and so forth. So I'm wondering, though, if this backfires on Putin, meaning he destroyed that party or he helped to destroy that party. It's not in their best interest. They have to now recalibrate. Something very similar, frankly, is going on in the American right where they have these acolytes of Trump and Putin and this chant of Putin talking points.

19:29Do you think something similar could happen here in the United States? I don't know. I have to say that, you know, just today we wake up and we open our newspaper and we see that the Russians have, you know, lopped missiles into a children's hospital in Ukraine. And to think that if President, former President Trump gets back in the White House, that we could, you know, pull the rug out from under the Ukrainians right away and let Putin have his way in Ukraine. It's too awful to contemplate. But that seems to be where we're headed. I'm stammering a little bit because I don't know what the future holds here in this country in terms of our foreign policy.

20:11I almost feel like these countries are so elastic that even the damage could create a reversionary effect where there could be also a renewal as a result of the damage. We'll have to see. I want to end it with a few last questions, if you don't mind. Sure, sure. Gabriel Alana has changed over the years. Rugged, tough, assassin, art restorer. He's a different guy now, though, right? He's a different guy. Different guy. How has he evolved in your mind and where is Gabriel Alon going? He, I guess I would describe it thusly, that for the bulk of the series, he was an intelligence officer and sometimes an assassin whose cover job was that he was an art restorer.

20:56And so he lived in Europe under assumed identity and worked as an art restorer and used that cover job to do his secret work. Now he is an art restorer who used to be an intelligence officer. So he still has all the old contacts. He could still move in and out of that world. But it does give me a lot more freedom in terms of the kind of material that I can send his way. It does allow me to, he lives in Venice. He and his wife own a restoration company in Venice. He lives in this gorgeous palazzo overlooking the Grand Canal. He's got two young kids that go to school at a escuela primaria around the corner from their house.

21:37He hangs out in the Campo de Ferrari all day at a coffee shop there. That's their neighborhood. He's got a great life. And so I softened it deliberately for this final stretch of the series to give him a nice life. It's fascinating. I mean, I love it. It's easy to fall in love with this guy. And I am obviously in love with him. I come down to my five famous words. Our podcast ends every time my producer and I, we pick five things to get our authors to react to. So I'm going to say the word and whatever comes into your mind, you'll say. Let's go back to the word Cornwall. I say the word Cornwall, you think what?

22:18I think the most pure light, this very special light that's there, the most gorgeous coastline, rocky coastline. The water is extraordinary. The coastline has changed over the centuries. And so there are submerged cities out there, probably. I just think it's absolutely magical. It's King Arthur. It's magical. Yeah. Okay. I think of Cornwall, I think of you, actually, when I think of Cornwall. British politics. I say the words British politics, you think what? I am, as you might imagine, reading this book, I am addicted to British politics. I have a great deal of admiration for the British system and what they accomplished in World War II.

23:01They saved us. They saved members of our family. They would not be alive. I just rewatched Darkest Hour for the 10th time the other night on Netflix. And I think about what the British people did. Gary Oldman as Winston, what Winston did. And I looked at my wife. I said, it wouldn't be a single Jewish person alive left in Europe if it wasn't for Winston Churchill standing up to that guy. And why you meant amen to that? I have tremendous, tremendous admiration for the British people and influenced by British literature. But I love British politics. I love number 10. And John Major is one of my biggest fans.

23:40I mean, I'm with you on all that. American politics. Nervous, nervous. I had hopes after the midterm election that maybe the fever had broken. And that was a term that you had used in one of our many conversations. Maybe the fever had broken. And I don't think that anymore. And I have memorized Robert Kagan's three or four pieces that he has written for the Washington Post. You know, they're at the dark end of the spectrum. And I think it's possible. And I think that we are could be heading into a period of great, great political and civil uncertainty. I'll use that word in the United States. All right.

24:20Well, I'm hopeful. I think that there's a weirdness going on now, but I'm I'm hopeful. All right. My last two phrases or words. Ready? I say Gabriel Alon. You say who? I think of a guy who is so gifted, so talented, but ultimately so decent. Okay, he's done, yes, he's done hard things. He's killed a lot of people in his lifetime. But at his core, he is a decent, decent person. And he has a really, sometimes too strong, but a very strong sense of right and wrong. And he defends those who can't defend themselves. He is a kind person. He's very, very funny. I love every minute that I get to spend with him.

25:06All right. What about the man, Daniel Silva? Friend of Anthony Scaramucci. Well, that's something I'm very proud of, by the way. And you always give me a beautiful inscription, by the way, which is quite flattering. Let's show it. Let's show it. You wrote in my book, and probably people are now thinking I'm looking for a compliment, but you wrote in my book, A Profile in Courage. And of course, that means a lot to me because sometimes you have to stick your neck out in life when you don't want to. And it may not serve your business interest to do so, but it may be the right thing to do. And you talk about Churchill and saving Jews.

25:41And obviously, I'm a Philo Semite. Having gone to more bar mitzvahs than christenings as a Roman Catholic Silva, I'm a Philo Semite. So I appreciate that and I appreciate the need of having to speak out. And I have five children and so they're watching. You have to make sure you let them know there are more than just the temporary things that are important. Sometimes the principles are more important than what's temporal. But the title of the book is A Death in Cornwall. It's written by an amazing man, Daniel Silva. He's a bestselling author, and I love this part of the summer. I also feel a little bit bad about this book, as always, because when I get this book in my hand, this is the 24th for me.

26:21I know it's peak summer. I know it's going downhill from here, Silva. Well, I know I got to go back to September shortly, you know, but I love I love this part of the summer. And thank you for sharing these amazing stories with us. Very grateful to have you on. Thank you for. Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's my favorite part of the summer. I love I love these conversations. I love the ground that we cover. I like that you come at it from a different angle. And I really, really enjoy these this time we have together. So thank you so much for having me.