Word: ferney
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...drawn carriage. Today planes, cars and sophisticated financial hanky-panky are the vehicles used. Businessmen are stashing their hoarded gold and cash in their Citroens and driving across the Swiss frontier. They run the risk of discovery and confiscation, but as a customs officer at the border post of Ferney-Voltaire puts it, "We cannot take every car apart...
According to the SEC, Vesco has chosen Costa Rica as a "haven" and Alvarez is helping him relocate there. President Figueres says that Vesco is still welcome to Costa Rica. At IOS's complex of buildings at Ferney-Voltaire in France, just across the border from Geneva, functionaries are preparing for relocation. They are selling everything movable, including bosses' rosewood desks and even toilet seats. Rumors are that the move will be either to Madrid or-no surprise-Costa Rica...
...hotel across the French border. I.O.S.'s day-to-day operations are run by Norman Leblanc, a Canadian accountant, but even he cannot work full time in the Geneva corporate offices because the Swiss have not granted him a labor permit. Leblanc is forced to operate from Ferney-Voltaire, a French village that became a minimetropolis almost overnight in 1967, when Cornfeld erected a complex of buildings to house I.O.S.'s administrative operations...
Nassau Haven? I.O.S. cannot move its sales or executive offices to Ferney-Voltaire, though. Like the Swiss, French authorities are increasingly antagonistic toward the foundering empire. Indeed, I.O.S.'s troubles have stirred such wide suspicion of unregulated mutual funds that the company cannot easily find a suitable haven anywhere in Europe. A move to Nassau in the Bahamas is rumored...
...Vesco is underwriting some of the losses with loans and loan guarantees from his stateside companies. He is also trying to raise cash by selling surplus subsidiary operations, like a computer-processing company near Geneva, and some of the now unneeded real estate in Geneva and Ferney-Voltaire. Vesco has recently been discussing the possible sale of some of his I.O.S. holdings to Edward Ball and Raymond Mason, Florida financiers. Black as things look for I.O.S., its officers have learned one thing: adversity is never so serious that it cannot get worse...