Emerald Circuit

The Emerald Circuit was a smuggling and fraud operation that began during the Black Air Conflict. The ring was orchestrated by ONC Deputy Captain Lucia Voroshin.

Background

By 428, many ONC ships ran on emerald air purchased under an exclusive contract from the Zalo Technical Kyro. During the Black Air Conflict, the price of emerald air from Kota refineries jumped to over 300phi per barrel as the few active refineries struggled to meet export demand.

The Governors of the ONC initially considered breaking the contract unilaterally, but a commissioned assessment from Mariposa warned that doing so could trigger an embargo from Kota, putting the company under an effectively indefinite Qamari fuel monopoly and possibly locking them out of the Kota market entirely.

The Scheme

Initial steps

One week after the Qime refinery disaster, Captain Voroshin privately contracted the Arkandic Maritime Union to install false bulkheads in four ships under her command: ONCF Ostro, ONC Ponente, ONC Levante, and ONC Tramontane.

Procedure

• The ships were loaded with emerald air in Cadaz, Qamar as if for export to Monnais. They then sailed to a private dock in the Soeur-Verron canton of Monnais owned by Edwin Terl, a conspirator in the ring.
• In Soeur-Verron, Terl’s dockworkers moved the emerald barrels behind the false bulkheads and loaded a legitimate shipment of blue barrels bound for Stolmont. The crews were swapped out as per standard ONC procedure.
• In Stolmont, the blue barrels were (legally) unloaded. The ship’s officers then collapsed the false bulkhead, revealing the emerald barrels. New crews were boarded and told that they were sailing the second leg of a route from Kota to the ONC fuel depot.
• Upon arrival in Marisa, the ONC was presented with forged custody documents and receipts from the Zalo refineries and paid Captain Voroshin accordingly. Skeleton crews embarked for a routine relocation to Cadaz.

Investigation

Initial suspicion

During the mandated refinery shutdown immediately after the Vosa explosion, IPRO began to keep exact counts of emerald barrels leaving Kota from existing stockpiles to ensure that no illicit refinement was taking place. After the shutdown order was lifted, IPRO continued to closely monitor production and export in case of longer term unrest in Kota or secession from the Pax Centralis. This was done in secret so as not to escalate tensions in the region.

As part of its normal duties, IPRO also kept track of emerald air entering the ONC fuel depot in Marisa. This led to a discrepancy in accounting: 4-9% of the emerald barrels being imported by the ONC each month appeared to be coming from somewhere other than Kota. This was initially assumed to be a clerical error caused by the general chaos of the Black Air Conflict, but by 431 the IPRO Analytics Team was confident that Kota exports were being completely counted and an audit request was sent to the newly-founded Enforcement Team.

IPRO-ET investigation

The Enforcement Team first raised the issue quietly with the Governors of the ONC. General contract enforcement is not within their jurisdiction, and an admission of extra-contractual Qamari importing would have meant the end of the investigation. However, the ONC vehemently denied any Qamari imports. IPRO-ET became suspicious that this was a coverup by ONC leadership, either simply fearful of IPRO interference in a contract breach or perpetrating some other illegal practices.

Since 428, IPRO had mandated that all importers of emerald barrels keep chain-of-custody documentation. This regulation was negotiated with shipping companies, including the ONC, who fought for the ability to keep these documents private unless legally compelled due to concerns of corporate espionage. IPRO-ET subpoenaed ONC’s custody records for the duration of the ONC-ZTK contract, which stated that all emerald imports had come from the ZTK.

After confirming that specific serialized barrels recorded in the custody documentation were not present in the list of ZTK-exported barrels, the ET formed Task Force Green Mirror and hired financial analysts from Acuto in order to investigate and potentially prosecute the ONC for forging custody records.

Task Force Green Mirror

In 433, the IPRO Enforcement Team infiltrated the Cadaz docks and marked the seals of a number of barrels allocated for export to Monnais. Soon after, the same barrels were found on the ONC Tramontane during assessment at the ONC fuel import center in Marisa. Inspectors immediately signaled an ET tactical squad on standby.

The tactical squad boarded the ONC Tramontane, seized the conclusively fraudulent documentation claiming Kota origin for the barrels marked in Cadaz, and arrested all senior officers on board. Lucia Voroshin was not among them, and a warrant was put out for her arrest. The other three ships in the fleet were detained under an administrative hold. IPRO engineers conducted a safety inspection and discovered the false bulkheads in all four ships.

Exposure

Director Krenk, Commanding Officer of the Enforcement Team, released a statement accusing the Governors of the ONC of fraud and banning the ONC from importing regulated aether to any IPRO signatory port. This was protested by the Marisa Commercial Congress on the grounds that non-ONC sailors and citizens of Marisa effectively relied on the ONC and would be unduly harmed by such a drastic decrease in ONC activity. Foreseeing the need for cooperation with Marisa, IPRO leadership overruled the Enforcement Team and suspended the ban.

The next day, payments to the Arkandic Maritime Union for vaguely described refitting work were found in Captain Voroshin’s personal ledger by Acuto analysts. IPRO-ET requested a search warrant from the Arkandic Combined Security Syndicate.

Mariposa audit

Meanwhile, the ONC hired Mariposa to trace the origin and path of the mislabeled barrels. Mariposa determined that the barrels came from a Qamari collection operation run by Buyan Kertu. Kertu claimed to have sold the barrels to the ONC for export to Monnais and to have interacted only with Captain Voroshin. This was deemed plausible given the level of autonomy at which ONC Deputy Captains operate.

Based on ONC crew records, Mariposa interviewed hundreds of sailors who had worked for Voroshin, eventually finding an anomaly: when in Soeur-Verron, Voroshin would always dock at a particular facility instead of going through the normal ONC dock assignment procedure. Mariposa reported this to the ONC, who hired Egide to investigate the facility on the ground.

Egide raid

Egide obtained a private security warrant from the Soeur-Verron court under the pretext of an imminent hazardous leak from improperly stored aether and conducted a raid during normal operating hours. The owner of the dock, Edwin Terl, was detained along with all present workers. In exchange for immunity for his employees, Terl confessed to supervising the bulkhead swap operations and forging docking logs for Voroshin. He also revealed the location of Voroshin’s Monnais residence in Montrevieux. Voroshin was arrested by Egide and turned over to Mariposa at the ONC Montrevieux office for interrogation.

Resolution

When IPRO confronted the Governors of the ONC about their apparent payments to the AMU for the installation of smuggling facilities on their ships, the Governors realized that even a full confession from Voroshin would not prevent them from being implicated. They released Voroshin into IPRO-ET custody and began building a case for corporate uninvolvement.

Critically, Mariposa discovered that all payments in connection with the Circuit were sent from an ONC bank account registered to Voroshin in her personal capacity, not to her fleet. This type of account was not visible to ONC treasury staff and the payments were not subject to any higher approval.

They also located Voroshin’s account at the Bank of Monnais and matched incoming payments to the expected difference between Kota and Qamar emerald air prices. This demonstrated that the scheme did not benefit ONC as a whole and that it was entirely plausible that nobody higher up than Voroshin was aware of the scheme.

The Governors of the ONC, eager to show cooperation, presented this evidence to IPRO-ET. This was accompanied by a settlement proposal, offering restitution for levies lost during the ONC aether shipping ban, surrender of the modified vessels, and future at-will access to custody documentation. After some deliberation, and against the wishes of the ET, IPRO accepted the proposal under pressure to avoid the inevitable global economic crisis that disrupting the ONC would cause.

Aftermath

Lucia Voroshin was tried in an IPRO tribunal for smuggling while in custody, then in the Marisa Commercial Court for fraud, and finally in absentia by the Supreme Court of Kota for forgery.

She was acquitted of smuggling as all relevant levies had still been paid to Marisa inspectors. She was convicted by the Marisa Commercial Court and sentenced to 10 years in jail, and by the Supreme Court of Kota for forgery and ordered to pay 300,000phi to the ZTK. Voroshin’s whereabouts after being released from jail in Marisa are unknown, but she is widely believed to have gone to Amberlee. Her Kota fine remains unpaid.

Terl accepted a plea agreement from Soeur-Verron and was sentenced to 3 years of civic labor. He was also barred by IPRO from any involvement in the aether trade. He later emigrated to Lusquo and worked on a seaweed trawler.

Egide was sanctioned by the Soeur-Verron court for perjury in filing a warrant request and banned from operating in the canton for 5 years.

The Tramontane was refitted as an inspection and tactical training vessel at the IPRO dock in Marisa. The Ostro, Ponente, and Levante were stripped of their false bulkheads by IPRO engineers and subsequently auctioned, with proceeds given to the ZTK.

All ONC officers with knowledge of the scheme were exiled from the ONC. Two of them were later discovered to have been working for the Arkand Combined Security Syndicate while serving as ONC officers. They remain wanted for further questioning in connection with ACSS involvement in the Lock 19 Blockade.