The Man Who Played with Fire: Stieg Larsson's Lost Files and the Hunt for an Assassin

by Jan Stocklassa

The Seychelles were key to South Africa’s frequent efforts to evade sanctions in order to deal in arms and oil. For his company GMR—named from Ricci’s initials—Ricci found a business partner who was well connected in the top circles of South African politics. That partner’s name was Craig Williamson. Williamson and Ricci worked together busting sanctions in 1986 and 1987 by, among other things, supplying the apartheid regime with oil from Iran. The deals through the Seychelles most likely happened with the knowledge of CIA director William Casey. In an interview published by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training with the headline “The Seychelles—Gangsta’s Paradise,” the CIA chief of station at the US embassy in the Seychelles said he had been given an unusual order by Casey: “You are hereby instructed never to report, never to use any assets or any resources to pursue anything regarding international fraudulent banking operations in the Seychelles.”