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unusual, but money transfers were displayed just as before.
    After three hours of investigating he came up with nothing and the maintenance deadline neared. He was about to give up when he found something odd: the account balance and deposited funds by some individuals did not add up. In each case the transactions were recorded but the balance remained the same; money was diverted and siphoned off into a company’s account and then withdrawn. It hit Aazim like a knock on the head: the withdrawal records were all made by foreign accounts residing mainly in countries like Pakistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Indonesia, Somalia and Lebanon. The amounts deposited by individuals were exactly the same as the withdrawals. Records showed they originated from legitimate companies but all traces of the source had been lost.
    Registered companies were presented as fronts for illegal activities. If that was the case it was cyber laundering of digital cash on a mass scale. For hard currency to get legitimised it required entry into the mainstream economy. Aazim picked names of individuals at random and the records showed them making simultaneous cash deposits into various businesses, but never over nine thousand Australian dollars at a time. He realised that was too small an amount to be picked up as suspicious. From there the cash was distributed by Aust Global Funds into other legitimate financial institutions and later withdrawn. Aazim found a list containing names of individuals, businesses, financial institutions and various other organisations that Aust Global Funds used to distribute electronic cash; there were close to a thousand entries. He recognised a couple of the larger finance companies but the rest were unknown to him.
    He sat back to think for a moment and take in the enormity of the situation. He realised that Kareem must have uncovered it and had wanted to share his conclusions with Aazim. But was he wrong in this assumption? Surely Sam would have an explanation if he approached him. Then again, two employees responsible for AccountsClass01 had suddenly found jobs elsewhere and no one had ever heard from them again. In Aazim’s previous job he had worked on a contract for the Victorian police and learned enough to know how technology was used for illegal gains. Could he alert the partners and bypass his boss? He pondered the idea and quickly dismissed it. For all he knew the corruption was instigated from the very top.
    Aazim looked at his watch. It was way over the maintenance deadline and he knew the audit report would be sent to his boss ten minutes after logging out, showing exactly what he had accessed. There was no going back to his desk, pretending all was well. If he planned to confront Sam and demand an explanation, take it to higher management or take it straight to the authorities, he needed evidence. He might well ‘disappear’ like Kareem and his predecessor, but having that data might give him some leverage. He took out the USB flash drive and inserted it in the server USB port. Selecting all four databases, he started downloading.
    Drops of sweat trickled down his face as the progress bar dragged to eighty-five percent; it seemed to be taking forever to download the last database. When the screen flashed DOWNLOAD COMPLETED , Aazim hastily pulled the flash disk out of the server. With his shirt sleeve he wiped his forehead and logged out of the console. He shoved the USB disk into his pocket and headed for the data centre exit. Server fans, air-cons and all sorts of electronic noises filled the huge room, which contained technical hardware worth millions of dollars.
    Aazim gave the security guard behind the glass window a quick nod. Without waiting for one in return he swiped his access card and hurriedly punched the four-digit code in the exit pad. INVALID flashed on the display screen.
    Calm down, he told himself and shot a quick glance towards the monitoring room. He tried again, more slowly this