Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy - Eamon Javers [13]
The judge did accept jurisdiction, and permitted discovery. That is the process by which lawyers obtain testimony and documents from the other side in a legal battle. Lawyers can force documents, records, e-mails, and other material from the opponent’s files onto the record. That’s how Schuette’s e-mail later ended up as part of the court record.
And the Diligence case did not die a quiet death.
AFTER PROJECT YUCCA imploded, Nick Day closed the Connecticut Avenue offices of Diligence, LLC, in Washington in exchange for much more modest digs. He moved his own residence to the picturesque French Alpine town of Saint-Gervais, which is only an hour’s drive from Switzerland. He is still in business, although he says that fallout from the Bermuda incident—which included recriminations, resignations, and lawsuits—taught him a lesson. He and his firm have changed their ways in its aftermath. “We essentially help businesses deal with the risks of operating in challenging markets,” Day says. “It’s a role which government agencies don’t necessarily have the resources or understanding to be able to fulfill.”
Mike Baker, who left the firm well before the Bermuda operation, bounced around at other corporate intelligence firms, for a time running Prescience LLC, his own private intelligence firm serving hedge fund clients. He took on work as a Hollywood script consultant on intelligence matters and writes commentaries for FoxNews.com. He says he is working on a book. In early 2009, though, he and Day went back into business together for the first time in years. Day’s firm, Diligence, purchased Baker’s firm, Prescience, and Mike Baker went to work in Diligence’s New York offices at 7 Times Square.
These days, Guy Enright is working for Deloitte and Touche in London. He didn’t come away empty-handed from his encounters with Nick Day. As Project Yucca wound down in 2005, Day, still in the guise of Nick Hamilton, gave Enright a Rolex watch worth thousands of dollars. Enright was led to believe it was a thank-you gift from the British government.
But that, too, was a lie.
IT HAS NEVER been clear who, exactly, owns Diligence, especially since several investors and owners have come and gone over the years. Day refuses to reveal who owns the spy company today. But one possible source of financial backing is one of the oldest banking families in the world, the Rothschilds.
In the spring of 2007, the British and American press reported that Diligence had received an infusion of an unknown amount of capital from a fund controlled by Nick Day’s longtime friend Nathaniel Rothschild, then thirty-six years old, the wealthy son of Lord Jacob Rothschild and heir to one of the world’s most famous and ancient banking fortunes. The New York Times once called Nathaniel “the man who may become the richest Rothschild.”
By 2007, Day had become a close associate of Nathaniel Rothschild. The two men had a lot in common: they were roughly the same age, both British, and both high-living businessmen who thrived on global intrigue. The friendship was a sign of just how far Nick Day had risen, professionally and socially. Through Rothschild, Day gained entrée to a family that had long dominated European banking, and had figured out—hundreds of years earlier—the value of marrying business and intelligence.
Nathaniel is in line to become a baron, and thus the fifth in a line of Lord Rothschilds. His family’s history dates back to 1744, with the birth of Mayer Amschel Rothschild in the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt, Germany. His roots are in England, but Rothschild maintains offices and a spectacular home in New York. He travels around the world on a private plane. Rothschild, who is known to friends as Nat, was born on July 12, 1971.
Nat’s ancestor Mayer Rothschild founded a financial house, and then a family dynasty, sending his five sons to five different European capitals to