Page 7
WHEN Richard "Dirty" Desmond held a mega-party last week to relaunch Channel 5,
it wasn't at a swish venue like Billingsgate, next door to his Lower Thames
Street HQ, but in the ninth-floor canteen of his own offices.
This meant clearing the canteen the day before to the annoyance of hungry
Express and Star hacks, and switching off the deafening fridges. When the party
finally kicked off, Des's D-list "celebrity guests" were heard muttering about
the thimble-sized glasses of bubbly before, halfway through the evening, waiters
were told to put their thumbs over the top of the red wine bottles when pouring
so it would last longer.
The guests included one Joy Canfield, a 36-year-old American blonde, who was
listed as a representative of Des's company Northern & Shell. She is rather more
than that, of course. When first editions of his newspapers were delivered to
the revellers, Canfield took exception to being described in a caption as
Desmond's "partner". "I'm his girlfriend," she whinnied. Editorial slaves were
sent to stop the presses and correct the captions as per milady's demands.
Dirty Des has long modelled himself on the Dirty Digger - buying national
newspapers, acquiring a TV channel, divorcing his wife and shacking up with a much
younger woman - so it was perhaps inevitable that Joy Canfield would "do a Wendi
Deng" by getting pregnant without delay. Lord Gnome learns the baby is due in
February - on St Valentine's Day! Since Joy worked for the "special services
department" of British Airways when they met, presumably this makes her an heir
hostess (geddit?)
THE NEOPHILIACS
"Is Vince Cable the new Karl Marx?" - BBC News
"Cricket is the new football." - Daily Mirror
"Accountancy is the new rock 'n' roll." - The People
"Big breasts are the new small breasts."
- Guardian
How did X Factor contestant Chloe Mafia come to give two different - and
contradictory - accounts of her cocaine use, both under "Exclusive" banners, on
the front pages of the Sunday Mirror and People on the same day, 26 September?
Simple. The Sunday Mirror set up an elaborate sting with the help of a "friend"
of the 19-year-old during which she was videoed in a Yorkshire hotel room
snorting the drug and talking about her work as a prostitute, which they printed
under the headline "I LOVE COKE ... I DO IT EVERY NIGHT."
The People went for the rather easier option of looking at the stills from the
video on the computer system the two Trinity Mirror titles share at their London
HQ, phoning up Mafia and offering her cash for her side of the story, and
printing it beneath the headline "COCAINE FREAKS ME OUT ... I HAVE BEEN SO
STUPID," as a shameless spoiler to its sister paper.
While Mafia herself was voted out of The X Factor that evening, Trinity Mirror
bosses have so far resisted the furious demands of Sunday Mirror editor Tma
Weaver that someone senior at the People must be sacked over the incident.
"Machines made by Staffordshire digger firm JCB played their own small part in
the Chilean mine workers' rescue drama. In the minutes leading up to the
successful rescue mission, a JCB 531-70 Loadall telescopic handler - made at the
company's World HQ in Rochester - arrived at the rescue shaft to deliver, on a
set of forks, the capsule which brought the miners back to safety." - Birmingham
Post
"Rescued Chilean miners receive free iPod Touches from Steve Jobs."- Network
World.com - the new model iPod Touch was launched while the miners were
underground
"FLORENCIO AVALOS SILVA - The first Chilean miner to be rescued last week. And
the hottest."- Entry on Heat magazine's "manmeter"
"The Taiwanese foreign minister, Timothy Yang, has suggested that his country
will invite the 33 rescued Chilean miners to the Taipei International Flora
Expo, which runs from 6 November until 25 April 2011.. . 'Everyone is fighting
to invite these miners. We will join in the fight and hope we can succeed.' It
is not known whether the miners will also be receiving invitations to next
year's Chelsea Flower Show." - Professionalflorist.co.uk
"Single Chilean Ladies - 1000s Hottest Ladies of Love & Family Happiness ...
AmoLatina.com" - Targeted advertisement accompanying YouTube videos of miners'
rescue.
"Dear reader: As editor of Times2 I would like to welcome you back to our
bigger, better and bolder features section ... As one of you put it, Times2
'surfaced at the same time as the Chilean miners. Greeted with equal enthusiasm
and rescued by the tireless efforts of Times readers and editorial staff. ", -
Emma Tucker, editor of Times 2
"33 reasons to celebrate with the 33 miners, here are our top tips for Chile." -
Emailfrom holiday firm toescapeto.com
"I have been thinking about what I would miss the most if I had to spend over two
months buried in a mine like the Chilean miners. That means months without a
relaxing bath, no shopping, no Sunday roast but most importantly ... no X
Factor!!! How can you live without telly for more than a few hours? With that in
mind we have reduced one of our best selling LED TV/monitors so that you can
work on your computer and never miss any of your favourite programs [sic]." -SVP
Communications (electronics sales firm) email
33 Miners rescued in Chile this month who received worldwide coverage
37 Miners killed in gas explosion
in China this month who didn't
34 Average number of accidental deaths in Chilean mining industry each year in
last decade
57 Miners killed in accidents
in USA so far this year
THE PAUL FOOT AWARD 2010
THE judges of the Paul Foot Award have announced the shortlist for this year's
prize, which recognises the best investigative campaigning journalism of the
year.
Chairman of the judges Brian MacArthur, who read all the original entries and
selected the longlist for the panel of judges to consider said: :'It is always a
cheering experience, giving the he to any impression that investigative
journalism is no longer so important to contemporary editors as it was.
"One pleasure is the unexpected entries: it isn't only the big beasts who
impress. There was a creditable entry from Horse and Hound on equine cruelty,
for instance, another from John Hoyte's website exposing the threat to airline
passengers from aerotoxic fumes. And investigative reporters still flourish on
regional evenings and weeklies."
This year's shortlist speaks for itself. The six entries selected are (in
alphabetical order):
Jonathan Calvert and Clare Newell (Sunday Times) on MPs and peers seeking cash
for influence ("I'm like a cab for hire" àStephen Byers)
David Cohen (Evening Standard) on the plight of the poor in London, including
children's poverty and the continuing existence of paupers' graves in the
capital
Nick Davies (Guardian) on phone-hacking conducted by the News of the World when
Andy Coulson, now the government's director of communications, was editor
Linda Geddes (New Scientist) on evidence that DNA tests are not always
accurately interpreted
Eamonn McCann (Irish Times, Belfast Newsletter, Guardian) on the cover-up of the
British army's actions on Bloody Sunday
Clare Sambrook (numerous publications) on the scandal of the detention of asylum
seekers' children
Also highly commended from the longlist were Andrew Gilligan (Sunday Telegraph)
on the fundamentalist infiltration of Tower Hamlets; Nina Lakhani (Independent
on Sunday) on the fate of NHS whistleblowers; Sean O'Neill and David Brown
(Times) on the failure of Ealing Abbey to protect children from a known
paedophile priest; and Robert Verkaik (Independent) on events at Guantánamo Bay.
The award was set up by Private Eye and the Guardian in memory of Paul Foot, the
campaigning journalist who died in 2004. The £5,000 first prize will be
presented on Tuesday 2 November in London, with each of the runners-up receiving
£1,000.
Page 9
THERE was an impressive turn-out for the '_'~'ter Fry" breakfast at the recent
Tory party _: nference, ranging from Northern Ireland
;, 2retary Owen Paterson to Martin \lcGuinness.
The breakfast was organised by an outfit .L"d Champ, whose patrons include Peter
::cdelson and David "Rommel" Montgomery, :~j whose director is one James
Winston.
Older readers may recall the name: Winston, a '::-:ner Labour councillor in Tony
Blair's
= .o:"lsbury ward in Islington, was convicted in
= ,:cember 1997 of fraudulently obtaining £8,000
:rth of housing benefit (Eye 940). There's no '~"ntion ofthis on Chump's
website, however, . hich says Winston is "managing director of
. ,','CM Associates and acts as political adviser to :c r,umber oflarge
organisations throughout the .X, Ireland and Europe", with clients including ',arious
police federations throughout Great 3ritain and Ireland, North and South".
A fraudster advising Inspector Knacker and -ebbing shoulders with top Tories as
they vow a :~ackdown on benefit cheats? Shurely shome =ishtake!
KEEPING THE LIGHTS ON "I
'M fed up with the stand-otI between
advocates of renewables and of nuclear which means we have neither," said energy
secretary Chris Huhne in the comprehensive spending review.
The stand-off is down to neither lobby wanting to invest until Huhne showers
them with more money; and the minister is "determined to clear every obstacle in
the way".
The nuclear industry now has few excuses for inactivity as Huhne bends over
backwards to clear the path to new power stations. Dispensing summarily with a
public inquiry ("the secretary of state does not consider such a process is
necessary to enable him to reach a view"), Hulme has made his "Regulatory
Justification Decision" in favour of both the nuclear reactor design
applications before him.
Old Sparky has already noted Huhne's weasel way with words on the question of
"what is a subsidy?" (see Eye 1268); and last week he excelled himself. "There
will be no public subsidy for new nuclear power - no levy, direct payment or
market support," he affirmed in his announcement, "unless similar support is
also being made available more widely".
He also said government was not ruling out action to "take on financial risks or
liabilities for which there are corresponding benefits". Given that he has
identified "a clear need for the generation of electricity by the nuclear
reactor designs [that he approved]", the test of whether there are
"corresponding benefits" may not be hard to satisfy.
Huhne went on: "Specifically, we will not rule out [the government] taking title
to radioactive waste at a fixed price provided that price properly reflects any
financial risks or liabilities assumed by the state." Green lobbyists say this
could end up being a huge subsidy; and even the government's own Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority has opined that, if the fixed price proves
TRADITION demands that a novice MP pays tribute to his or predecessor in a
maiden speech, and when the new Democratic Unionist Party member for North
Antrim first spoke in the Commons on 27 May he duly did so.
"My constituency boasts the Giant's Causeway," said Ian Paisley junior, "and I
have to follow, ever so lightly, in the footsteps of a giant public
representative who represented North Antrim for four decades and made the case
on behalf of its people without fear or favour." In short, his dad.
With his sharp suits and swagger, the new North Antrim MP may appear the very
model of a modern Unionist. But behind the suave trimmings, the 44 year old is
still very much the son of Rev Dr Ian Paisley Sm, the notorious loudmouth who
held the seat for four decades. Hence his unaffectionate nickname: Baby Doc.
Until his general election victory in May, Baby Doc was a member of Northern
Ireland's devolved assembly. The DUP's deal with Sinn Fein had landed Paisley Sm
the post of Northern Ireland first minister at the age of 81, and with his son
getting a ministerial job in Papa Doc's department the Paisleys were, for a
brief moment, able to pose as Northern Ireland's first family. In the interests
of peace, everyone was obliged to forget all the abuse they had rained down on
past Unionist compromisers, and all their foam-flecked Catholiccbaiting rhetoric
of old.
Unfortunately for the Paisleys, their new department's responsibilities included
gay equality - a slight difficulty in light of their homophobic outbursts over
the years. Paisley Sm campaigned - unsuccessfully - to "Save Ulster from
Sodomy", while his charming son has more recently denounced gay relationships as
"offensive and obnoxious". No sooner was Junior in ministerial
office than he told a ma2~Z:'. 0 interviewer how "repulsed" he ,,:a5 c-:
homosexuality, adding that gays shouk "free" themselves from "being gay".
Junior's brief ministerial career in Northern Ireland was also punctuated by
expenses scandals and controversies over his lobbying for property developer
Seymour Sweeney, a fellow DUP member who wanted to build a visitor centre at the
Giant's Causeway. His resignation in February 2008 left Paisley Sm looking frail
and isolated, and the old man's own resignation as first minister followed
within a few months .
Thus Jnnior will always have to live with the knowledge that he helped bring
daddy down.
But then it was family business that also prompted Junior's own ministerial
resignation, in February 2008. For it was revealed that while having a full-time
dsy job in Northern Ireland as a devolved minister he was also on his dad's
House of Commons payroll as a part-time parliamentary researcher. Meanwhile, the
rent allowance the two Paisleys were claiming from the assembly for their
constituency office in Ballymena was - at £57,200 a year - three times higher
than any other member's total. The company that owned the property was run by
Seymour Sweeney, but its ownership had then been transferred from Sweeney to one
James Currie - Paisley Jm's father-in-law.
A report by the standards commissioner found that the Paisley rent claims for
the Ballymena office were "significantly" above the market rate for such
premises, and concluded that a "property asset" was being created for the DUP at
taxpayers' expense. However, there were no rules against any of this, so that
was all right then.
Sonnds familiar? Even ifhe weren't occupying the family berth, Baby Doc should
feel thoroughly at home in Westminster.
No. 11 IAN PAISLEY Jnr
too low, it will establish a benchmark for a new arbitrage market for trading
radioactive waste between companies with higher costs of waste disposal and
those with lower costs.
To cap it all Huhne offered the following sophistry: "Arguably, few economic
activities can be absolutely free of subsidy in some respect, given the wide
ranging scope of state activity ... Our 'no subsidy' policy will therefore need
to be applied having regard to proportionality and materiality." In other words:
treble subsidies all round!
'Old Sparky'
IN A RIGHT MESS
THE British National Party is on the brink of insolvency. But instead of its
usual tactic of threatening blacks, Jews and Asians, it is threatening its
creditors instead.
In a letter the party's money man Jim Dowson tells its "highly valued suppliers
and creditors" with a record of "commitment to the British National Party" that
it does not value them enough to pay them what it owes. A grave financial crisis
was forcing the party to close offices and layoff staff, he says. It was
unlikely to "pay its outstanding bills in anything like a normal timescale - if
indeed at all".
Dowson then tells creditors that "lawyers who have reviewed the underlying
contracts to most of the outstanding invoices have advised that most are not
enforceable. Many creditors who have supplied good [sic] and services and which
were used in connection with the activities of the British National Party may
never be paid."
And it is no use suppliers hiring lawyers, Dowson warns. Legal action against
the party would be throwing "good money after bad in the shape of futile
lawyers' costs". Creditors must accept 20p in the pound or risk getting nothing.
Dowson blames the deficit - estimated at £500,000 - on the recession and "hugely
expensive politically motivated High Court actions by the Commission for
Equalities and Human Rights" to force the party to change its racist
constitution. He is too modest.
The party is paralysed by internal disputes.
NaIve critics have been shocked to discover that its fuehrer Nick Griffin
behaves like, well, a dictator. Meanwhile busty "glamour model" Shelley Rose,
who stood as a candidate in Luton, has posted a video on YouTube claiming Dowson
made unwanted Ugandan advances to her at a hotel near Euston. "I thought it was
safe to stay with him because he was a religious and family man," the innocent
22-year old says. Alas, this turned out not to be the case, and she says Dowson
accused her of being "frigid" when she rejected him.
Dowson does not mention one preposterous reason for the BNP's indebtedness. In
the general election campaign, Griffin ripped offMarmite's "Love it or Hate it"
campaign by putting out a picture of a Marmite jar with the slogan "Love
Britain, Vote BNP". He scoffed when Unilever, Marmite's owner, protested; but
the firm's lawyers then hit him with a breach of copyright action, which cost
the party between £1 00,000 and £170,000.
The BNP operates behind front companies to place orders without arousing
suspicion - the most prominent being Dowson's adlorries.com. As a limited
company adlorries could be sued, which may be why Dowson is offering 20p in the
pound on contracts he claims are unenforceable. As a political party, the BNP is
an unincorporated association, which cannot technically be declared bankrupt.
However, creditors could hold Griffin as its leader and party members who
entered into the contracts personally liable for debts.
If senior figures are taken to the cleaners, they will earn a unique place in
the history of European fascism: the first neo- Nazi party to have been
destroyed by the makers of a yeast-extract sandwich spread.
'Ratbiter'
Page 30
MONEY LAUNDERING
A COURT decision in Dubai last week could prove embarrassing for a senior Tory
backbencher, Britain's international development fund CDC and any number of
British banks.
After a long legal battle, the Dubai court of first instance ruled that the
former governor of Nigeria's oil-rich Delta state, James Ibori, should be
extradited to Britain to face charges of laundering millions of pounds -
allegedly stolen from his government in the years up to 2007 - through London.
Earlier this year Ibori's sister and mistress were convicted of similar offences
and are serving five-year prison sentences.
The extradition comes despite the efforts of Tony Baldry, Tory MP for Banbury
and, until 2005, chair of the international development select committee. Last
year Baldry wrote to the foreign secretary and attorney-general on behalf of
Ibori in his capacity as a barrister, he insists.
The Foreign Office refuses to release Baldry's letter, but when a blogger
reported the intervention, libel solicitors Olswang jumped in, denying that
Baldry was "seeking any course of action that would benefit Mr Ibori". All
Olswang would say about the letter was that it indicates that "perhaps after the
outcome of the criminal proceedings is known, relevant agencies might want to
reflect on lessons learned".
Baldry was acting on instructions from Ibori's solicitors Zaiwalla & Co, who
paid Baldry £37,000 last year. The relationship goes back: in 2000 Baldry was
forced to apologise to the Commons for failing to declare a personal loan of
£5,000 from Sarosh Zaiwalla made just before the MP provided a reference
supporting Zaiwalla's nomination for a CBE.
CDC, meanwhile, has supposedly been investigating its Nigerian investments
alongside Ibori associates through US private equity fund manager ECP for at
least the eight months since the Eye pointed them out. So far it has done
precisely nothing.
HEP C SCANDAL
Milton schemes
TAX AVOIDANCE
"WE want the banks to pay not just by the letter of the tax law, but by its
spirit," said George Osborne last week, announcing a renewed commitment to stop
tax avoidance.
So he might not be too pleased when he hears that the man responsible for the
taxpayer's stakes in RBS, Lloyds Banking group and others as chief executive of
the UK Financial Investments arm of the Treasury, Robin Budenberg, is a fully
signed up, big time tax avoider!
Back in 2003 Budenberg was a managing director of Swiss bank UBS when it hatched
an audacious fiscal Great Escape, only now exposed in a tax tribunal, in which
its 426 top bonus-earners in London would tunnel out of tax and national
insurance bills on £100m worth of bonuses through a complex offshore
arrangement.
The scheme - known within the bank as NECAP and planned with the help of tax
avoidance specialists Ernst & Young - involved routing bonuses for bankers who
were entitled to more than £20,000 for 2003 through Jersey trustees and an
offshore nominee company, Lively Ltd, into another Jersey company called ESIP
Ltd. Even UBS's own officials admitted to the tribunal that it was "a tax
avoidance scheme".
As a managing director Budenberg was almost certainly entitled to a much higher
bonus than the average £235,000 or so. He was described in a recent book by
welfare minister and ex-UBS
banker Lord (David) Freud, Freud in the City, as "the most respected mainstream
financier in the bank". And Freud also reported that "for the senior bankers,
hovering below managing director level, the [bonus] figures moved up from $lm to
$1.6m [by 2000] ... Certainly nothing I saw over the years made these figures
look unrealistic". (Freud retired from UBS in December 2003 and told the Eye he
was unaware of the scheme).
A UKFI spokesman, having spoken to Budenberg, defended the arrangement to the
Eye on the grounds that it applied to hundreds of UBS bankers and claimed that
Budenberg's involvement was a "personal issue". When the Eye's hack suggested he
could draw his own conclusion from that, the spokesman agreed: "Indeed." The
personal saving to Budenberg is likely to have run into six figures.
Which puts Budenberg in a tight spot. When the Eye exposed former UKFI chairman
Glen Moreno last year (Eye 1228) as a trustee of the Liechtenstein Global Trust,
home to many a tax dodger's secret stash, the then shadow chancellor George
Osborne pounced. "It was an error of judgement to have appointed someone who
advised an offshore tax haven to look after the taxpayer's stake in our banking
system," he pointed out. Moreno, who at least hadn't avoided his own tax bill,
stepped down. What hope then for Budenberg, one of whose jobs is to enforce the
clampdown on banking tax avoidance?
LEVELLING THE PLAYING FIELDS
AFTER many fine words in opposition about promoting competitive sport and
protecting playing fields, what is the coalition actually doing?
According to the September update from Department for Culture Media and Sport,
the current state of play is: "Determine appropriate steps to protect playing
fields:
work ongoing."
While they're trying to make their minds up ...
In Bristol, tennis courts, playing fields and open spaces are all listed among
62 "low value" or underused sites earmarked for sale to raise £90m for the city's
parks budget. The sites include Wellington Hill playing field, currently used
for outdoor activities by the Scouts, Guides, Brownies, Rainbows and so on, as
well as by plenty of footballers.
n, Gates to a football field in Barnet, north London, has been chained and
padlocked while the
council decides what to do with it. Plans to sell Stanley Road playing field for
housing have been much discussed but never happened, while the fencing,
floodlights and goalposts are rusty and in disrepair. Plans for a sports complex
were recently mooted, but even if funding could be found there would
be a long planning process. The council says the gates were locked to prevent
fly-tipping, but the move has halted all sports and community activities.
The playing fields of the former Milldown Primary School in Blandford, Dorset,
look likely to be sold soon. The neighbouring site is already luxury housing and
the county council fancies selling the fields to developers now that the primary
has been relocated to the grounds of the local secondary school. Campaigners say
there's already a shortage of space for organised sport in the town, but the
council claims the land is too sloped to make a good pitch.
IN THE scramble to decide which section of . society is worst hit by the public
spending cuts, one long-neglected group has been completely overlooked: the
haemophiliacs who were sentenced to protracted illness and death from
contaminated blood products in the 1970s and 1980s.
Eye readers will recall that in April the surviving TEL E H E A L T H
infected haemophiliacs - one in three of the 4,700 -
originally infected has since died of liver cancer, cirrhosis or HIV - won a
judicial review of the last government's decision not to increase its miserly
payments. The Archer inquiry into the blood scandal EARLIER this year the NHS
North (pictured), then director of strategy at
had recommended that payments should be at least Yorkshire and York Primary Care
Trust NYYPCT, waxed lyrical about the
the same as those to sufferers in the Republic of (NYYPCT) spent £3.2m on 2,000
hi-tech home trust's significant investment in the
Ireland. monitors for patients with chronic illnesses. "revolutionary
technology", adding: "We recognise
Last Thursday, they learnt that health minister The tele-health systems, from a
company called tele-health as being a key enabler to us achieving
Anne Milton - so sympathetic to their plight when in Tunstall Telecoms, allow
those with long-term our aspirations."
opposition - was not going to increase the payments conditions, such as chronic
obstructive pulmonary Mr Cockayne was such a fan of the system, in
either. She estimated it would cost £3bn, adding: disease, to have monitors
installed in their homes to fact, that after leaving NYYPCT in August he
"Every country must make its own decisions on send readings of their blood
pressure, oxygen levels started work as healthcare strategy director for
financial support for those affected, taking account and other vital signs to a
monitoring centre. The Tunstall on Monday 10 October.
of its own particular circumstances and affordability." system relieves the need
for constant trips to a GP's A spokeswoman for Tunstall insisted the
That means the level of payment to those with surgery for tests and professional
help can be sent if company won its trust bid after a robust tendering
HIV and their dependants remains £12,800 a year. readings give cause for
concern. process, adding: "The tele-health market is small
Although Milton acknowledges that she had heard That all sounds very good; but
months on from and specialised and inevitably, when talented
"first hand" about the hardships the sufferers had to the deal, only 135 of the
2,000 units bought by people become available, there is a strong demand
face on a daily basis because of their health problems, NYYPCT are so far in
use, and local doctors have for their skills and expertise ... Tunstall believes
she offered only a "review" to look at the lower level questioned whether the
PCT, which already has a there is no potential conflict of interest."
of payments to those with hepatitis C, and also at £23m deficit, should be
spending money on a The recruitment pool must be very small
prescription charges and access to nursing and care pricey system that is still
being trialled. Dr Brian indeed. In 2008 Tunstall hired David Kelly as its
services - other matters raised by Archer. McGregor, vice-chair of the local
medical managing director (Scotland and Ireland). His
As Carol Grayson, a tireless campaigner who committee, predicted last week in
the York Press previous job at West Lothian Community Health
partner died a long and painful death after being that the system would create
extra workload for and Care Partnership included overseeing a £1m
infected, said: "Justice is supposed to be justice, hard-pressed community
nurses. trial of what was at that time the biggest tele-health
whatever the economic position of the country." In a press release in June, David
Cockayne scheme in Europe, using systems from ... Tunstall.
You can contact the In the Back team on 020 74374017 or email: strobes@private-eye.co.uk
Prospector Lewis
Michael Ashcroft. Then - if briefly-
David Rowland. Now Alan Lewis has . emerged as a moneyman with a colourful past
chronicled by Private Eye who is backing Daw and his new Tory party with more
than cheques,
"I'm surrounded by a fabulous team ... And the business brains of Alan Lewis,"
trilled party: chairman Baroness Warsi at the Birmingham conference earlier this
month. Just how significant the one.-time second-hand car dealer and former
offshore banker has become was confirmed by his presence next to chancellor
George Osborne in the conference audience that day ~ a recognition recorded on
the cover of the last Eye (see right).
The Lewis chequebook has kept him close to a succession of Tory leaders since
Margaret Thatcher. He was treasurer for a committee funding campaigns in
marginal seats - a role later taken over big-time by Ashcroft. He founded the
Conservative Millennium Club. which offered private meetings with ministers
return for donations to help John Major ahead of the 1997 Labour landslide - a
fund-raisin" technique revived by Cameron. -
Like Ashcroft, Lewis was also one of the secret lenders to the party when it
needed help with its debts. Lewis loaned £100,000 in 2005 for at least two years
at 1 percent over base rate, The loan was repaid last December.
Lewis has also made a series of chunky donations - more than £147,000 between
2006 and 2008, plus another £125,000 from his company, Crombie Concessions, by
providing staff, services and covering costs between March 2009 and June this
year.
So how good are the "business brains of Alan
Lewis"? Certainly good enough to make the 72-year-old a very rich man. But in
the view of some creditors, such as the taxman, and former employees of his
companies, not to mention banking regulators, perhaps not good enough,
After experiencing business failure at the age of 30 when A&M Lewis (Motor
Agents) collapsed in 1968 owing £125,000, a sizeable sum back then, Lewis then
had much greater success -- especially from 1982, when he obtained control of
Illingworth Morris, Britain's largest wool textile group. He took the company,
private in 1989. Textiles and property became the core of Lewis's master
company, Hartley Investment Trust.
But textiles were and are a struggling business, and it was the properties,
including those owned by the woollen companies Lewis acquired, that sometimes
delivered more. In particular, there was 39 Charles Street in Mayfair, once
headquarters of the Millennium Club, which was acquired by the well-funded
Illingworth Morris pension fund for £6m some time before 1990. The property was
sold by the fund to a Hartley subsidiary in 1995 for just £4.9m. The explanation
was the cost of improvements and repairs under the terms of a lease held by
another Hartley company. In 2000 the property was acquired by Lewis and the Alan
Lewis Settlement "of which AJ Lewis is the sole life tenant" (which suggests an
interest in possession trust much used to protect assets and which may have some
tax advantages) for an "open market value" of just £4.5m. Mayfair property
prices then rocketed during the next decade.
From 2004 to 2006, problems in the textile industry and large group
PAYE/National Insurance and VAT debts (postponed because of foot-and-mouth
outbreak) resulted in several
into
a:r:ount of PAYE/NI _. '''1 for Huddersfield '0:: ::c-~ 'i·i·forGlobeWorsted, ,-
ae:: ~: ,,-1-00.000 .
. . __ ... --C,i=h owned the
e: ':550.000 in group VAT , .:' ~:2re than £8m, mainly '. --:'.~ ::,:es. \\hich
were always ". ::gh usually secured ::.::g ~ ;'cior claim on any
. :c, e :':,::mer Illingworth
. :::z the taxman £1.12m .. ' c: - ::' .. 'These somewhat
::: ::i:ec, bv the taxman as
. - :; __ p : __ , s~pport for the Tories. , -: :~:e :::ain for the Lewis
':'~:ces I:: the Isle of Man, . ::. :~:'- havens now very I-L:nley Investment :
\lanx companies, interested in the
, owns the Anglo
cc,zio '-.lanx Bank. Back ':e ~ :::-oen an AMB branch in . __ .. ,:::' ;:::nland
was not
: c,: ~ :e:-'c\IB \'oluntarily
,::_: :c.king licence and ceased
e':nlent Trust reported a : :::;:;ared with a £1.3m
i 'raid himself
s 'i-:tle corporation tax :0 £4.5m in available _ .. . ... '.:'-~:si says,
"business
___ , __.__ ~ CBE from 1991 to
, ' : .. :., Bu \\ith Dave looking : : .' --. -, :, .. :',: e:· .:-:, ::-,e,
Lo:ds. surely greater
Liberal interpretation
The Lib Dems are leading the charge against tax avoidance. Nick Clegg in particular has
been vocal about the need to crack down on legal tax avoidance as well as illegal evasion.
This raises the interesting question as to whether his City lawyer wife Miriam has
retained the "non-dom" status she would have legitimately inherited from her Spanish father.
While providing no benefit for UK-sourced
income, the non-dom does have benefits for income received and retained outside the
UK. Has Mrs Clegg supported the Lib Dem campaign by opting for a UK domicile of
choice o and surrendered her non-dom status? No doubt she has, but perhaps we
should be told!
Lord Frazzled
:3 =:::',1 ::.ee~ ~ :~~ :::~znii finds himself in ~::. e:::.:·:~~~,,:--.z o~~:
:,er the sale of "death
, •• __ ,_ •• 0 •• ,' - tonds invested in the
.. , .. :e,· __ :.e' ::' eide,1y Americans, by
~ ..... ': ._ .. ,. of ,,'hich he is a
::::::::s~-s :c :'e'~e~til bonds" business have :ee--. ::'.:::.e ',: __ .~ :egoi~:C'"s
and even by the
F ::i~~: ~::'o::.":e ;_0 ~oi.~ .~ ~~1'~~~n~~e1;!o~i~~Po~:
... . has launched an
'--, e"::-- CK investors were
:~'.:g::.:- :::. ::'-,:~.",:e::' 'cond issue which was
:-2 ::e:s~: }~r i~ e~~~~~~:;l ~ 0 rr:~~:~~
~l2.S ceeL _ 1he L u:\.clnbourg regulators for
",", the Keydata/Lifemark
,eCindal and th~ disappearance of funds managed h the late Da\id Elias - life
settlement funds supposedly regulated in Luxembourg - may be relevant.
Catalyst marketed the ARM Asset Backed Securities bond. Investors have been
offered a refund while a listing is now being sought in Dublin. All very
embarrassing for Tim Razzall, who has been a spokesman for the Lib Dems on
regulatory reform in the Lords.
Page
31
Ritz backers
The
taxpayer-controlled Royal Bank of Scotland has at last obtained its money back
from the phoney pharaoh Mohamed Fayed on a loan it made to the Paris Ritz hotel
company.
The €105m loan was originally due to have been repaid in May 2009, It was repaid
a year later -- after agreed extensions - thanks, it seems, to Fayed selling
Harrods to the Qataris.
The latest Ritz Hotel accounts disclose that RBS was repaid on 17 May, nine days
after the Fayed family sold Harrods and its properties to the Qatari sovereign
wealth fund for around a net £900m. Another £600m went to assume the loans
Harrods and related companies had from .. guess who - mainly RBS.
As with Liverpool FC, RBS was no doubt reassured by the arrival of a new owner
for Harrods, if only because it made repayment of the Ritz loan somewhat easier.
After previously agreeing a rolling six-month extension of the repayment, RBS
negotiated in November 2009 a new repayment date of August 2010 with an option
to repay early in May. A hint, perhaps six months before the sale, that Fayed
was expecting to have sold Harrods by then?
RBS was repaid by another Fayed family company, the Jersey-registered Ritz
(Paris) Holdings, which controls the hotel. The Jersey company had already
seemingly borrowed some of the money loaned by RBS back in 2001. How the loan
was repaid other than from the Qataris via the offshore Fayed company network is
hard to see, especially given the timing, But that £90m further reduces the
amount realised from the Harrods sale.
The Ritz had a poor year in 2009. Turnover fell from €67m to €57m and there was
a €3.4m pre-tax loss compared with a rare profit in 2008 of€5.6m. But with that
RBS loan repaid, the future looks much brighter for the family trust which owns
the Ritz.
Crime pays
,1); MAJOR problem for the planned new "lrJl,Economic Crime Agency in these
straitened times for public spending is what to do about the very different
salaries of senior employees in those agencies to be merged into the ECA, in
particular those joining from the FSA.
Since failing to spot and stop the banking crisis at Northern Rock, HBOS, RES
and others, the FSA has headhunted many new enforcement staff from the private
sector at top salaries. These people are now expected in large numbers to join
the ECA from 2012.
The problem is that FSA staff are now paid much more than those likely to be
working with them at the ECA from the Serious Farce Office, the Crown
Prosecution Service, the Office of Fair Trading/Competition Commission, the
Insolvency Service's company investigation branch and possibly the City Police.
And as salaries will not be reduced at the ECA - as that would mean a rush for
the exit even before its doors opened - that means that other salaries will have
to be managed upwards to ensure that there is just one compatible salary system.
This process may take up to five years. Meanwhile, the cost of the new
white-collar crime fighters
' •. See over."
32
,~V',.
/
"You really haven ~ got the hang of this blogging lark, have you?"
could keep on rising while government spending is supposed to be falling.
The scale of the problem was indicated earlier this year when it was disclosed
that the FSA had almost 200 staff earning between £100,000 and £200,000, 11
earning between £200,000 and £300,000 and four earning more than £300,000. One
of these is believed to be enforcement director Margaret Cole, who is tipped as
a potential head of the ECA. Her FSA boss Hector Sants earned £478,000. Compare
these numbers with the £170,000 paid to SFO director Richard Alderman and you
begin to see the problem.
Similar difficulties were encountered when the FSA was created by Gordon Brown
out of a merger of several City regulators. But the pay differences then were
less stark. The pay differentials explain at least in part why many senior FSA
figures are said to be at best lukewarm about being transferred to the new ECA.
It is even suggested that Cole may prefer to take over at the equally new
Consumer Protection & Markets Authority, replacing part of the FSA's duties,
which is due to also open for business in 2012 regulating financial services and
markets while leaving the other FSA activity, enforcement, to the ECA. The post
of chief executive designate for the CPMA has just been advertised.
Ahsan about face
The
Financial Times last week carried an
advertisement for Western Gulf Advisory (WGA), whose Indian founder Ahsan Ali
Syed has been talking of buying Premier League club Blackburn Rovers.
"Is your business facing a liquidity crisis?
Assistance provided," declared the ad, which promised "diverse kinds of funding
assistance".
So what's unusual about that? Well, in August the Bahrain authorities ordered
Syed to close WGA for "violating the laws and regulations of Bahrain".
Furthermore, the Sunday Telegraph reported earlier this month that Syed had
loaned WGA just over $lbn. How he made that amount while leaving unpaid debts
behind in Britain (including a 2007 county court judgment for £61,500) is
unclear. Syed says he is investing his considerable family wealth, is sorting
out the Bahrain problem and that the loss of the firm's licence does not affect
its Swiss business, which placed the FT ad. So that's all right, then.
'Slicker'
See also:-
Blackburn Rovers suitor Ahsan Ali Syed ordered to shut firm ...
Blackburn Rovers bidder Ahsan Ali Syed told to close firm -
Telegraph
NUMBER CRUNCHING
£422 Average loss to lowest income families, those most affected by spending
cuts
£1.6 MILLION Inheritance tax George Osborne's family are avoiding through use of
a trust fund