In death, the straight-arrow accountant became a tragic symbol of Asia’s financial collapse. In boom times, low crime rates and orderly societies made the region attractive to foreigners. That’s still largely true. But Asia’s economic contraction has sparked new dangers for accountants, bankers and lawyers–the very straitlaced professionals who are working to save the region’s companies. Executives are worrying about security as rarely before, from Indonesia, where social turmoil is fueling mob violence, to South Korea and Thailand, where layoffs and graft are feeding workers’ resentment. “Companies involved in restructuring and other financial jobs are saying, ‘Gee, we’d better take a serious look at our security and emergency-reaction plans’,” says Thomas Seale, executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Bangkok.
“Business risk” has a new meaning these days. Just ask the managers at Shanghai’s Chip-PAC semiconductor plant; last summer, when the factory was still run by Korea’s Hyundai Electronics, they found themselves cowering in locked offices when 20 recently laid-off workers pounded on their doors, demanding their jobs back. After the workers staged a weeklong protest, local government officials arrived on the scene and persuaded them to go home.
Threats against foreigners are still rare. But in places like Jakarta, local business and banking leaders feel the pressure. Ethnic Chinese tycoons–widely blamed for the hard times–drive around in monstrous four-wheel-drive vehicles with crash bars in front and space for bodyguards in back. Officials involved in reviving the economy are also watching their backs. Glenn Yusuf, chief of the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency, which closed 38 banks this month, has had bodyguards ever since he started his job last July.
In South Korea, government efforts to convince workers that layoffs are necessary have helped prevent violence. Still, Kim Jin Min, president of Hanvit Bank, was recently barred from his office for three days by labor leaders protesting a layoff plan. Kim had no extra security because the protesters, who eventually apologized, weren’t violent. That’s no guarantee for the future, however. Laid-off workers often blame their bosses. “There is less respect and loyalty for the chairmen,” says one official at a Korean conglomerate whose boss has a bodyguard. “We feel there is a bigger chance of attacks in the future.” Last summer, Lee Hun Jai, head of the commission that closed dozens of financial institutions, stayed at hotels while demonstrators surrounded his building. Though the protests have quieted, Lee keeps a guard outside his office, and riot police surround his building.
Whom do you call? Many bankers and executives are turning to security firms for advice on everything from how to avoid violence when firing employees to how to locate an armor-plated limousine. The field has boomed amid East Asia’s bust. Pinkerton says its corporate-security business in the region has jumped as much as 30 percent in the past year. Its staff in Indonesia has grown from four to 40 since last May’s riots. Kroll Associates, another security firm, says the crisis-management and corporate-security side of its business has grown 13 percent in two years.
None of that helped Wansley. In January, after a Thai civil court appointed Deloitte to save the sugar company, Wansley started traveling regularly to one of the mills, about three hours north of Bangkok. According to Police Gen. Prasarn Wongyai, Wansley uncovered massive fraud: some of the firm’s executives, Prasarn says, had siphoned millions of dollars from the company into private bank accounts. According to police, Wansley found that the factory hadn’t paid some $5.4 million to local cane growers, despite an injection of cash by creditors. “Wansley asked where all the money had gone,” says one employee. Police say an unnamed suspect at the factory “had fierce arguments with Wansley on several occasions.” And a local planter says he witnessed a heated argument between Wansley and one of the mill’s executives just four days before the Australian was murdered. Wansley reportedly threatened to “dismiss” another company official for whom an arrest warrant has been issued.
Wansley apparently took no special precautions. Thai police say he received at least three death threats (although Deloitte denies that he had received any). Veteran foreign businessmen in Thailand say that especially “upcountry,” north of Bangkok, disputes over politics, business and love are often resolved by contract killers, who are cheap and readily available. Last week police arrested the suspected driver of the gunman’s motorcycle and recovered the $810 that, they say, he was paid for the job. “When you get threats like that, you have to check out where the threat is coming from,” says a longtime foreign resident, who hired an armed bodyguard after he received death threats over a business dispute.
The sugar company’s owners, a family called Siriviriyakul, strongly deny the allegations of corruption at the plant and say it’s “impossible” that any family member could have been involved in the murder. “The allegations are untrue,” says Prasert Siriviriyakul, a deputy managing director at the mill. “We had a good working relationship with Mr. Wansley.” The family’s 70-year-old matron, Hattain, adds she’s “100 percent sure” that none of the family was involved in the murder. No charges have been filed against any of the family. General Prasarn says the police investigation is continuing and warrants related to Wansley’s death have been issued for the arrest of two factory executives.
Wansley never seemed to realize that the confrontational style of the boardroom could prove deadly in the field. Security firms are advising clients that cultural sensitivity is more crucial than ever as Asians face up to their financial mistakes. According to Joe Zaccaria, Pinkerton’s chief in Bangkok, clients “really need to be careful during these tense and sensitive times. Thais, or anyone for that matter, don’t want to be kicked in the rear while their business is failing and told they’ve screwed up big time.”
Foreign executives worry that being foreign–once considered almost a shield against mafia hits–may now be a liability. Says Peter Brimble, a longtime Bangkok consultant: “There is a new feeling out there that foreigners are trying to take over Thailand on the cheap. You have to tread carefully.” Worried executives at several investment banks met in Bangkok last week to brainstorm about their future in the country. “We’re the hired guns brought in to clean up the mess,” says one loan specialist who attended the meeting. “That makes us the most disliked.”
Like most professionals trying to untangle Asia’s financial mess, Wansley never asked to be in the line of fire. An active supporter of the International Red Cross, he went to work for an accounting firm straight out of high school. So executives are wondering: has it gotten so bad that a few blunt words and a sharp eye for any signs of corruption can end in tragedy? Deloitte has evacuated Wansley’s 13 team members and hired Kroll Associates for emergency security advice. The remaining staff in Thailand are under 24-hour guard. The rising fear won’t speed Asia’s recovery.
