Corporate Fraud Investigator: "You wouldn't believe the hubris of the super-rich"

There is something unique to our era that encourages the charlatan. As well as investigating corporations, I am also a novelist, and I think we live in the age of the corporate fairy-tale: a magical land of unicorns and eternal growth. “What’s the story?” investors like to ask about the latest hot start-up, willing the narrative to be true even as they live the myth of their own absolute rationality.

Elon Musk once said: “Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time.” Put another way, if the emperor believes he is wearing wonderful clothes, others will start to believe it too. When I was researching my debut novel, in which a tyrant’s wife stands trial for her husband’s corruption, I found someone else making an eerily similar point to Musk. It wasn’t from another business leader; it was Imelda Marcos. “Perception is real,” the wife of the former Philippines dictator said. “And the truth is not.”

One of my contacts met with Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes at a time when investors were falling over themselves to give her money. He couldn’t see how Theranos’s work was possible, he said. His company didn’t invest, but he was sidelined internally for missing out on the hot new thing. By the time the company collapsed, vindicating his decision, he’d left the firm.

In another case, I spoke with a whistleblower who was subjected to silent phone calls and phishing attacks. He also believed he was being followed. Just before he was fired, they tried to send him on a business trip to a developing nation. He called his manager, who knew about his whistleblowing. “He said if I went, I wouldn’t come back.”