I have come upon a case in a most impromptu fashion. I met a young woman in the bar of my hotel who was quite clearly distraught and – I was surprised to find – swearing in English! I introduced myself, and I discovered that the young woman was of all peoples Irish, and was working in Paris as some sort of finance called investment banking. I must admit I found it quite strange; as an Irish woman, I wouldn’t have expected her to be so intelligent and urbane, but that is beside the point; the point is she was clearly in distress and I thought it necessary to help her.
Only when I told her that I wished to help, she insisted there was nothing I could do. Her investment company, PNB Paris, accused her of misusing corporate funds supposedly after the money delivered to one of her investments disappeared. Only by her recollection she made no such call for an investment; in her mind this particular investment didn’t even exist. But they had proof in the form of a report that she had written requesting payment and detailing the reasons why. Her suspicion was that she was framed, but she was fired before she had a chance to retaliate. She said that her field of international finance was incredibly complicated and she couldn’t expect that a layman like me could understand it, particularly not enough to help her!
I was rather insulted by this remark, but luckily at that moment her manager arrived in the hotel – a Pierre Lafayette – who was there to meet with her as her final ditch effort to negotiate her job back. Yet the man continually suggested that the evidence was conclusive that she provided a report that advocated the purchase of 250,000 euros of Irish bonds. She asked to see a copy of this report, but he claimed that all copies were deleted and that only the back-up computer had them on file, which he printed out and showed her. Clearly, he said, Maureen’s investment in Irish bonds went bad, and she wanted to eliminate the evidence that she made the error. When she asked whether the report was altered, he said himself that he saw on the screen himself when showed to him by her coworker, a German investor Edmund Strauss, that when the document was put in the folder it was not changed since two years ago, 2010, the date it was entered. Therefore, the document as he had in his hand had to have been Maureen’s own official report.
Meanwhile, as they were talking I pretended to mind my own business as I slipped out two sheets of the report from his pocket. I could only get out two before I was in trouble of getting noticed, but I have often found that mysteries are built on top of trifles. Maureen O’Shea left in anger before I was able to tell her that I received a couple pages of the report, and alas! I do not know where to find her. However, if I can found definitive proof that the report was altered, and can come up with a theory how, perhaps we can turn the document into her company PNB Paris, and she might just be reinstated to the job!
The difficulty is, I know next to nothing about the subject matter contained in the report. I know almost nothing about this bizarre institution the European Union – I didn’t know until I came to Paris what a euro was! Also I am rather incompetent on doing research on this internet though doing so would get me that information faster. However I will do what I can to figure out what whether or not information was false and added in haste. With your help I might just be able to help Maureen.
Yours truly,
Sherlock Holmes
Give me a moment and I’ll collect the required information. I’m afraid I’m a bit distracted at the moment dealing with events in my homeland of America, so it may take slightly longer than normal.
Quick rundown on investment banking here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_banking
Possible hit for “PNB Paris” not sure if it is correct, however:
http://www.pnbeurope.com/Remittance_files/RemitParis.htm
Info on the European Union:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_union
If any further information is required, please specify and I will endeavor to acquire it for you.
What in particular would you like our help in researching, we’re much savvy with the technology available and would be happy to help? Like, anything specific or just what was mentioned in your post?
Is this the institution by chance?
http://www.pnbeurope.com/Remittance_files/RemitParis.htm
The address I got was 165 Avenue Victor Hugo 75016 Paris. I hope that helps.
That may prove in handy; what would prove more helpful however is if some information in the report actually pans out or if it shows signs of being written in haste. There isn’t much that I possess, and so far the process of the descriptions shows little in grammar problems but there are some descriptions that even I, an man uninformed in the ways beyond inspection and enforcement, halt in believing; for instance it describes Ireland as the largest economy in Europe and the fourth largest economy in the world in 2010. Surely Ireland does not have a larger economy than the United Kingdom does in Europe! Was this report written recklessly??
Ah, an idea; maybe it was not the case that the report was simply making up its information but that some single piece in the information was changed repeatedly. Tell me; is there real country that was the fourth largest economy in the world, had a trade surplus, a rate of inflation at 1.3% and a AAA rating in 2010? If so I cannot find it myself…
I’m afraid that makes no sense. I am but an amateur in economics myself, but I’ve looked into several separate sources, and while, as sir TheWildWestPyro said, India is, indeed, the 4th largest economy of 2010,
(sources:
http://www.einfopedia.com/top-ten-economies-of-the-world-in-2010-the-best-progressing-economy.php
http://www.popularsomething.com/2010/08/top-10-largest-economies-in-world.html )
its inflation rate is nowhere near to those 1.3% stated, being at least 8.5%.
(Sources:
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=in&v=71
http://the-finance-blog.blogspot.com/2010/06/inflation-rates-of-india-2010.html )
I neither posess the data, nor do I grasp the entirety of the case, so you’ll have to come to your own conclusions. Sorry that I couldn’t be of any more help, Mr. Holmes.
Fair enough; perhaps the websites are using some added metric to their analysis that I am missing. Again, I fail to fathom what a GDP is. Could you explain it to me perhaps?
Yet perhaps we’re thinking about this too literally; let’s just say we are looking for a country with a substantial economy but not the largest, has a AAA credit rating and a low rate of inflation, and is ranked at least somewhere near fourth in its size. Perhaps some other piece of information can help; right near the bottom of the sheet it discusses that this country (which is listed as Ireland, but I doubt that it could) has a dominant strategically advantageous position in the EU. Am I correct in believing that is referring to the European Union?
GDP is Gross Domestic Product, the total value of goods and services produced within the country in a year. EU is, indeed, the European Union. Now let me try to process the rest of it…
But if by value we mean price, perhaps there is some confusion in how one is able to account for the total GDP in a country. Is there some different measure of GDP such that Germany would be considered comparatively larger than it actually was? Perhaps that’s what caused the confusion in the first place…
Hmmmm… this is proving very difficult.
I think it would be India..
This may help. sir.
http://www.therichest.org/world/worlds-largest-economies/
India doesn’t seem… correct. It would seem that its inflation percentage is too high, and its credit rating is listed as BBB instead of AAA. Are you sure you have the records from 2010? On that note my head is throbbing with these Economic information pieces that I have been looking up. My mind is as a vast storage cabinet with limited space – how can I be expected to hold all these details? Perhaps you could explain to me what an inflation and a GDP is?
Oh yes, and what’s an EU?
An EU, Mr. Holmes, is a group of countries that use the Euro, which is a form of currency.
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union
The site should help you more.
Now move, for the case is AFOOT!
I’m fairly certain it’s Germany Mr. Holmes.
Ah. Ah, now I see… It’s Germany. That makes sense. That makes much more sense! The language points to a person who was a resident in that country, which would mean that we may have a culprit!
Tell me; is there some sort of computer functionality that would allow you to change a single or multiple words in a document for all instances of that word? That is to say, for all instances of the word Germany, it would be replaced with Ireland and for all instances of the word German it would be replaced with Irish? And let us say, the name of Maureen O’Shea to… let us say, Edmund Strauss?
Furthermore, how quickly could this entire process take place? Let’s say a timeframe… one minute. Is it possible?
Yes. In word documents (on the computer), there is a function known as “Fine and Replace” that does that exact function. it fines a specific phrase or word and replaces it with something else. Most anyone could do it in a matter of minutes, if not seconds.
*find and replace
Aha! If I understand you correctly, a person could see that a report was unaltered until 2010, and then if he should turn his back ‘inadvertently’ for a period of time lasting about a minute, a culprit who was managing the computer could alter the content of a report using this ‘find and replace’ function very quickly such that it would incriminate a person assuming that the report were skimmed and not being thoroughly re-read! If that is the case, I believe we have a culprit!
It seems you’ve got this narrowed down, but one thing that occurred to me that might be possible is if someone who was more computer-savvy than the norm might have backdated changes to appear to have been part of the original document.