Tuesday, 24 January 2017

Kent - Rolls Royce of corruption compared to Thailand?

How refreshing for Thai Air and the Thai Government to move promptly on the Rolls Royce corruption scandal.

And Indonesia's Garuda Air and police have stepped up their investigations too.

A dynamic approach sadly lacking in UK and especially Kent mired in the sloth and dirt of civil service corruption and police apathy.

With Rolls Royce linked to corrupt deals for aviation engines across Russia, China, Nigeria, Indonesia and Malaysia it's astonishing UK has done so little to prevent this rampant corruption - for so many years and across so many nations.

Unfortunately with my politics hat on it's par for the course for UK.

Former PM David Cameron's Anti-Corruption Summit of March last year has highlighted the problem of corruption but with little action.

The Rolls Royce scandal goes back decades and with on-and-off investigations by the Serious Fraud Squad only now being galvanised by the FBI and USA Justice Department.

And this week the Panama Papers detailed the vast numbers of tax haven companies with unsurprisingly British Virgin Islands, a UK colony, or dependent territory if you prefer, with more tax haven companies than all the rest put together. And Barbados and even UK featuring too.

It’s no wonder the latest 2016 crime figures issued last week include fraud and cybercrime for the first time and now constituting a massive 50% of all crimes.

British Virgin Islands companies also a notorious Kent seafront corruption issue in my South Thanet constituency for over a decade of successive councillors and senior civil servants in the Gang of Four covering up the ownership and transfer of the Pleasurama site.

A site that’s the largest seafront development in South East England so hardly one that could be missed.

While the Infratil crimes of removing the required Manston airport pollution monitors -even from Clarendon school - and faking the data and fines with TDC and KCC Toxic Three councils, was also replicated with Gloag/Stagecoach - one of Scotland’s richest people and firms – along with the dozens of illegal flights by KLM and Cargolux etc, jeopardising the public.

Concerning that although the numerous Infratil airports in Europe and NZ were shuttered, they still operate Wellington airport - I'm not sure I'd want to go through that airport with such criminal safety standards, nor their old folks homes in Australia:

https://infratil.com/our-businesses/

Fitzgerald and Clarke and Bogoievski and Baker should be brought back in chains to stand trial for corporate manslaughter. Orange jumpsuit, handcuffs and legirons and private jet ride manacled to an FBI agent.

While Dreamland one of the UK's largest amusement parks in nearby Margate has mysterious Cayman Islands ownerhship with Arrowgate Investments, and transfers over a decade complete with mystery insurance fires and plans for housing and the council leader jailed for compulsory purchase scams.

And Kent Police seem asleep at the wheel with one of their longest-running investigations into the 2015 election fraud of bussing supporters around the country and illegal candidates.

I hope they are just pretending to investigate because if it’s a real investigation they’re hardly worth a 3.99% pay rise without a referendum.

And how monstrous Cllr Driver is the first UK councillor ever to be prosecuted for releasing supposedly secret council document son the Pleasurama corruption with a £20k charge on his house – and silence form the sheep-councillors cowed into submission.

Any councillor – and member of the public – is entitled to any council document at any time.

As KCC Leader I’ll refund all his cost plus a £23k bonus for representing the public and sack TDC legal beagle Tim Howes.

While British Business plc even apart from Rolls Royce has been mired in dirt: Sports Direct breaching the minimum wage guidelines.

BHS's Philip Green purchasing super-yachts as one of UK's oldest High St retailers went bust with dozens of stores and thousands of jobs lost. And a missing £500M pension plan. Despite assurance to solve the issue of dodgy deals all that's happened is the new owner Dominic Chappel being arrested and questions over secret shareholders.

While Lord Grabiner of One Essex Court as BHS Chairman has been roundly castigated by parliament for his wilfully incompetent if not fraudulent role.

All the more astonishing as he's a High Court Judge and QC.

And, despite the multi-million BHS fraud, remains a Judge - hopefully not of fraud cases.

While his One Essex Court colleagues Ian Glick QC and Guy Hollingworth and Steve Palmer of PBI Law seem to have taken their learning form Grabiner and become the go-to barristers for defrauding High Court.

And with the active assistance of the Bar Standards Board regulator and Bar Inns.

With Hollingworth as a part-time conjuror, the Magic Circle is looking less than magical awash with such grease.

Lawyers judging lawyers without jury trial or cameras and closed courts, seems an obvious conflict of interest exacerbated without capped fees and parliamentary scrutiny.

Not so much poacher turned gamekeeper, as poacher remaining poacher and treating the highest court in the land as little more than an ATM for lawyers fees.

Lord Grabiner described as Lord Grabafee by the Financial Times for his inept yet multi-million pound reviews of LIBOR and Bank of England is the apogee of suck systemic fraud.

Thailand is far more active with NACC and ACT anti-corruption and schools training etc - UK only just appointing the dynamic Eric Pickles as Anti-Corruption Minister.

And the latest UK crime figures for the first time included online fraud which is 50% of the total - the City of London police under Chris Greany and much-vaunted Action Fraud scheme is astonishingly simply an email redirection to the local police forces.

A City Police that doesn't police the city at all.

The former South Thanet MP Jonathan Aitken notorious for arms deals with the Al-Yamamah deals with Saudi Arabia - essentially a similar mechanism to the Rolls Royce deals in over-inflating projects and paying a slice to Saudi princes. And with Sangcom and GPT - all not just glossed over on the taxpayer's dime, but the public actually funding over 100 UK MOD civil servants and troops in Saudi to continue the scam.

The East Kent civl service fraud over Ramsgate Port also covered up by the DCLG GIAAA auditor and NAO – refusing to provide details of their investigation or how the police if at all have been briefed.

You’re paying four ways: the council, the fraud, the investigation and the coverup.

The Cameron Summit called to begin to remove such tax havens and highlight the problem of white collar crime of accountants and bankers and lawyers in the City of London such as Holingworth or palmer for Conway. Yet silent on judges such as Mann etc. One result of the overheated London property bubble was the volume of dirty money from African dictators, Arabian royals or Russian oligarchs.

The Gambia's Jammeh dictator may have been ousted by the first democratic election in the former UK colony's since independence - and by Senegal military action - but he took the national bank's money and bullion with him.

https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-01-06/gambia-worst-dictatorship-youve-probably-never-heard


No doubt such funds will appear in London or Zurich in the next few months - his bolthole in Equatorial Guinea already faces questions by Swiss prosecutors over President Obiang's son's wealth. While Saddam and Gadaffi also raided the national piggy bank before their fall.

Bill Browder the instigator for the Magnitsky Act has detailed the volumes of Russian dirty money from the polonium and Perepilichnyy murders to parliament too - Surrey Police dragging their heels on that case along with the reopened Deepcut army barracks murder-suicides.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/11453125/Bill-Browder-why-I-fear-for-my-life.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/billionaire-russian-businessman-found-dead-outside-surrey-home-could-have-been-poisoned-10258798.html

And not one UK tax haven closed down yet -whether offshore in the Caribbean with BVI or Caymans, or inshore closer to home with Jersey and Guernsey and Isle of Man. The silliness of Brexit, if it goes ahead, making all the British Isles one giant tax haven for Mickey Mouse firms like One Essex Court or corrupt deals as Sangcom.

USA or Canada wouldn’t tolerate any of these regimes for five minutes let alone five decades.

It's good to see that the Thai government and Thai Air aren't Roll Royce's teabag carriers and are taking a more forensic approach than UK to these crimes.

@timg33

* Trident: what a mess - kept secret from Parliament if not PM for over 6 months and through the Trident debate. UK almost nuking Disneyland by accident speaks volumes on the safety of nuclear weapons - and what must the Russian rusty nukes be like? Or the 30 UK nuclear subs simply left to rot rather than cleanup. As with nuke waste at Sellafield and Dungeness and Channel nukes in France and Benelux. Unsafe junk and military vanity and waste.

* Vattenflall windfarm - good points and more details later

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