Ask Sanctioned Problems

[Julia Hipori]

Julia Hipori was irritated.

The gentle tap-tap-tap of her chromium plated pen on the glass tabletop in the boardroom demonstrated that fact, as did her general manner thus far in the meeting. It had been called by their logistics officer, Dryden Duo, after one of their shipments had been halted by a somewhat overzealous imports officer. Exactly why this warranted the entire board was beyond her - but hey, maybe I’ll find out?

Dryden was not a man she liked, at all. He was a slovenly excuse for a pencil pusher in her eyes, the sort of guy who looked at a spreadsheet and got all hot under the collar.

Yet here on the forty-second floor of an office block, their floor at least, the board of the Systech Corporation had been called up to listen to one of their members complain. Lovely.

Luckily for Dryden his office was only down the corridor, so he sat there picking in nails and huffing to himsel. At the head of the table, Davik Massa, the CEO, was projected in - he was offworld for some conference in the core - whilst Ko Deluto sat opposite Dryden, looking as prim and proper as ever.

The CFO, Mik, one of the few people Julia considered worth her time, had yet to arrive. He wasn’t late, the meeting was set to start in five minutes, and Julia was kicking herself for arriving early.

”You look like your about to pop Dryden.” Julia snapped across the table, as the man rocked in his chair, his face red. ”Rough day?” the man didn’t reply, as the CEO shot her a warning look across the table. She smirked, and stopped winding him up, as she waited for the meeting to start.

 

[Mik Deluto]

Mik walked into the room with his eyes still glued to his datapad, "What's this about a blocked shipment?" He looked up, expecting a response from their CLO only to realize that he was the last to arrive and judging from the looks on the other members of the board they were anxiously waiting to hear the answer themselves. Sighing, Mik rolled back his own chair and slid the datapad on the table before taking a seat. "Our deal with Taris has us looking at a hefty fine for breaching contract if we don't deliver on time," he looked at the CLO with raised eyebrows, clearly expecting to hear a good enough reason for them taking a financial dive and jeopardizing their expansion of the Quesh facility.

"It's not my fault-" Dryden suddenly cried and the CEO started shaking his head in disappointment. He clearly didn't think any of this was worth his time. "Taris is an Imperial world now and-" he looked at Julia for a second, "the Galactic Senate imposed sanctions and our ships have to cross FWA space in order to reach Taris."

Mik almost fell of his chair, but he composed himself and merely laid one of his two cold hand on the pulsating vein on his left temple. "The sanctions shouldn't affect us," his other hand raised to gesture at their office as if to say that the entire reason they paid these ridiculous fees to hold office in the corporate sector -and as CFO he knew the rent was off the charts- was that New Republic, Free Worlds Alliance or Intergalactic Systems Consortium laws didn't affect their business. "Losing this business will,"



@Nor'baal

 

[Julia Hipori]

She couldn’t help but roll her eyes as the topic developed. These sanctions, passed by someone who evidently had no idea how this would affect companies in real terms, were toothless if you knew how to get around them. Evidently, their logistics head didn’t. The fine for late delivery to Taris, or missed delivery for that matter, was hefty for sure, but Julia was somewhat concerned that nobody had considered the very real impact of breaking the sanctions would have on their share price.

Getting slapped with a fine was the last thing they needed.

”But they are Mik.” she cut across him ”Like it or not we are being held up by these sanctions. We cannot be seen to break them, or we forfeit the cargo, and get a fine for our trouble.”

”So what are the options?” Dryden lamented.

You have got to be kidding me?

What was the point of having a logistics ‘wizard’ if they didn’t know any spells? Maybe this was a test? Julia did not know, and at this stage she didn’t much care. This was an issue that needed fixing. ”Let’s get legal to check the validity of the stop, if it turns out we cannot make the shipment in time, we take the hit from the contract breach.” she remarked, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

@Eccles

 

[Mik Deluto]

Mik's frustration grew. "They have no jurisdiction over us. We'll challenge the illegal seizure and loss of our product," for the combat-stims, like all adrenals, had a best before date. The look on the CEO's face already showed he was more interested in what Julia had to say, though.. and Mik knew why. They were paying Julia a lot to be the Chief Public Relations Officer. She was a crafty and political woman with an extensive network in the galactic high class and exclusive circles with considerable experience as an executive officer for arguably the biggest megacorporation in the galaxy. Ofcourse Davik Massa was going to want to hear her out.

Her option was.. downright disastrous. Mik grabbed his datapad and ran the calculations, "we'll show red number by the end of business day tomorrow." That was simply unacceptable. They had to do something else, "What if," he hesitated, but his calculations seemed to make it valuable financially. "There are plenty of FWA worlds on the waiting list. If we sell this shipment to them, the profit from the sale will buffer the fine from Taris." and their net loss would be considerably less than having a fine, perhaps a double fine, and a wasted shipment.

Now he looked at Julia, "Julia probably has the contacts to make that sell on short term. Right?"

@Nor'baal

 

[Julia Hipori]

The tapping of her pen stopped.

Julia gave Mik to most withering look she could muster as he droned on about the short term losses the company would face. Surely they couldn't just circumvent the sanctions in such an easy way - they'd still have to move through FWA space to get there, they'd still face the same prob -

She stopped herself short, and opened the map up on her datapad.

He might actually be onto something here.

"What if we -" she paused, searching for the right words and double checking she was actually correct "What if we sell, as Mik says, to a new client on a FWA world, but, we sell it to an affiliate company of ours, an existing supply for a nominal fee. Once there, we purchase it back, and then act as the shipping agent to move it to Taris. Then the sale..." she scribbled something down, a crude diagram of the movement of the goods. "Hang on." she scribbled some more.

"We sell to a FWA based company, an 'on paper' firm, so no sanction. Then they sell, with us as the shipping agent, to any one of the planets outside of Sith Space, on the North Eastern arm of the Galaxy, just above the Sith on the map, here." she circled the planets in question "We establish a holding company to recieve the sale, and then sell it on to a Sith world, like Taris."

It was risky, but, she was reasonabl sure it wasn't actually illegal.

"Our involvement ends, the moment we sell in to the 'on paper' firm. Our client gets the goods, but not from us, from an arms length agent operating outside of FWA and Sith space." she sat back, feeling remarkable smug.

 

[Mik Deluto]

Mik listened to Julia's proposal but stayed silent. He thought it through. Shell companies that only exist digitally, addresses either vaguely traced back to the corporate sector or some onplanet patsy. It could work, sure, in the end it would cost less than selling to someone else and eating the fine.. but.. it did mean knowingly selling to the Sith Empire.

Theme​

Mik looked to his right, to the holo-image of the CEO. Davik Massa wasn't a hands-on executive on a lot of things, but whenever Mik had proposed going public with the company to get an extra cashflow they could use to expand he.. he always shut it down. Systech Corporation is and will always be privately owned. Decisions like knowingly trading with the big bad evil and setting up shell companies to hide it from the rest of the galaxy was... well, something you would've had a hard time hiding from diligent shareholders. In Systech's case it was easier to hide, but only Davik Massa knew the exact makeup of the corporation's complicated ownership.

After what seemed like an eternity to Mik, the holo-image stood up from the very physical chair. The weequay CEO closed his eyes, "Get yourselves a drink. We continue in ten minutes." and then he was gone, severed the connection, and left Mik looking at an empty chair until Dryden pushed himself up to his feet and breathed a sigh of relief, "Corellian whiskey, anyone?"

Mik looked at Julia first, trying to gage her thoughts on the CEO's behavior and the rest of the board being so casual about it. This probably wasn't how Blackwell was run, but for smaller corporations like theirs things worked a little different. "No, I'll go smoke a stim on the balcony-" he pushed his chair backwards and rose to his feet, "-Julia, why don't you join me."

Perhaps it was time to tell her some of Systech's history.

@Nor'baal

 

[Julia Hipori]

With an audible sigh of relief, Julia rose from her chair when the CEO called a break for ten minutes. All in all she was confident her proposal would be accepted, once the CEO had confirmed it with the shareholders, or at least the important onces. Every company had them, shareholders that just cared about the return, and others that where a little more hands on - Julia had no doubt that Systech was no different.

"-Julia, why don't you join me."

"Sure." she replied to him, dropping into a hushed town as she walked through the door to the balcony "-better than this crowd anyway." the executive added with a smile. On the balcony she took a stim when offered, he smoked an expensive brand, something that did not escape her notice. Lighting it, she asked "So the boss? Why's he not here in person?"

 

[Mik Deluto]

On their way to the balcony Mik's personal holo-communicator suddenly started bleeping and he quickly pulled it out of his pocket and answered it. Almost instantly the face of his personal bodyguard appeared on the holo. "Boss, we just got word from our agent on Ta-" she paused as she caught a glimpse of a holofied Julia Hipori. "Go on, she's a member of our board now," Mik smiled and opened the door to the balcony to let Julia enter first. His personal bodyguard wasn't just brilliant with a vibrosword, pistol and sniper rifle.. she was also a slicer capable enough to do some vetting on prospective investors and.. well, boardmembers.

"Imperial governments are antsy, their invasions result in massive casualties and with the bacta and kolto markets being firmly in Blackwell and ISC hands they're-" Mik held up is hand as he followed Julia onto the balcony and placed his communicator on the railing so he could get out his packets of stims, offered one to Julia and then took one for himself. "-they were depending on the Crymorah and neutral corporations. Let's get to the point." his bodyguard nodded, having been reminded that Mik wasn't oblivious to intergalactic affairs as he might seem to her sometimes. With the Empire having closed her own pipeline to the Crymorah Syndicate by killing their boss and effectively forcing them into hiding, she couldn't afford to lose the product from the neutral corporations. "Imperial agents are watching our man like Kath hounds, what do I tell him?"

Mik turned to look at Julia and finally lighted his own stim to take his first puff. "Tell him to take another stim and that everything is fine." His bodyguard nodded and killed the line. It was a harsh order, for the man was clearly freaking out after the news the FWA stopped their shipment. The Sith weren't exactly known for being the forgiving types and they went for physical lethal punishments really fast. Unreliable business partners, but selling to Taris had been Julia's predecessor's call.

As the first cloud of smoke escaped his lips, Mik seemed to try and sigh out the stress of it all. "Boss is never here," he answered Julia, "gives him the leeway to discuss some topics with the owners."


@Nor'baal

 

[Julia Hipori]

Julia looked out over the scenery below them as she took it all in. It was once of the few pleasures in life that Corporate Executives always overlooked - they tended to pick places with a good view. She didn't turn to face Mik as he spoke about her to his bodyguard, in her experience bodyguards tended not to be the people you formed any attachement to. Julia had two of her own, heavy-set human males she'd picked up back when she was a VP in Blackwell, they'd been with her ever since.

Despite their appearances as 'mere bruisiers', both where highly trained former members of the Corellian Special Forces, with a repetoire of skills in the field and off of it, that made them worth the credits.

Taking a stim when offered, she refocused her attention onto Mik and his guard as they spoke about some of the emerging issues in the medical sector. As always, dealings at this level took on a clandestine edge, and this was no different - Julia had long suspected the Bacta and Kolto trade was one of the shadiest out there. "Useful. Especially now," she replied as Mik ended the call "...the war has made business much more dangerous. Well, openly dangerous." she stressed.

It was true. Where once companies dealt with issues and conflicts behind closed doors, the war was opening the flood gates to more 'direct action'. Systech was not above that.

"We should smarten up out Security, and ensure the board doesn't meet all in one place. It makes us vulnerable." Julia continued. She had been told, when in the ISC, that she had to take her security more seriously, something she had taken to heart. "The war is a chance to grow, but we can only do that if we have the physical presense to reinforce our aspirations."