Euro arms moguls EADS... recent years de rigeur attendance at Bilderberg
- BAe Sharard Cowper-Coles goes too and their
proposed Bilder-merger was blocked in October 2012
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19897699
see also.....
EADS Offices Raided in Corruption Inquiry
By
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/nicola_clark/index.html>NICOLA
CLARK Published: November 7, 2012
PARIS - Prosecutors in Germany confirmed
Wednesday that police officers had raided several
offices of European Aeronautic Defense & Space as
part of an investigation into alleged corruption
in the sale of Eurofighter jets to
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/austria/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>Austria.
Austrian prosecutors opened a bribery
investigation this summer. The German police
raids on
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/european_aeronautic_defence_and_space_company_eads/index.html?inline=nyt-org>EADS
offices around Munich took place Tuesday and
coincided with searches of several homes in
Hamburg and in Austria and Switzerland, Austrian and Swiss media reported.
Thomas Steinkraus-Koch, a spokesman for the
Munich prosecutor's office, confirmed that
"search warrants were executed" at EADS offices
based on "information received from Austria."
Prosecutors declined to name any of the
individuals under investigation or to say how
many there were, nor did they disclose the nature of the documents seized.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/business/global/eads-offices-raided-in-corruption-inquiry.html?_r=0
Exclusive: The Cameron crony, the private jet
company, and a crash landing that cost taxpayers £100m
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-the-cameron-crony-the-private-jet-company-and-a-crash-landing-that-cost-taxpayers-100m-9350090.html
Robin Southwell is one of the PM's most trusted
business leaders. But there is one blot on his
career. Corporate Jet Services, a company that
lays on planes for the rich and famous, collapsed
in 2007 - costing its main creditor, HBOS, about
£100m (and helping to bring about the bank's
state bailout, at vast expense to the taxpayer).
Tom Harper asks what was HBOS doing lending so
much money to such a small firm. And how is it
that Mr Southwell and other directors of the firm
ended up buying back CJS for a knock-down price?
<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/http://www.independent.co.uk/biography/tom-harper-8144117.html>TOM
HARPER
Author Biography
Take a look at pictures of David Cameron on one
of his many globetrotting trips to boost British
trade, and there's a good chance you'll see Robin
Southwell at his side. The chief executive of the
arms giant Eads UK, Mr Southwell is one of the
country's most respected and influential
businessmen. He was appointed a government
ambassador for British industry in 2011, and has
accompanied the Prime Minister on trips to India and the Middle East.
In 2012, when Mr Cameron was criticised for using
a rented American-made Boeing plane during a
business trip to Indonesia, Mr Southwell stepped
in to offer him an Airbus model from his own fleet.
The Prime Minister appears to value the
assistance of the business leader in developing
markets overseas. But Mr Southwell is facing some
awkward questions rather closer to home -
questions which should also be directed to Bank
of Scotland (HBOS), the multibillion-pound bank
which had to be rescued by the British taxpayer
at the height of the credit crisis because of a
catalogue of reckless lending that brought it to the brink of extinction.
While running EADS UK, Mr Southwell, 54, was also
a non-executive director and shareholder of
Corporate Jet Services, an exclusive private jet
group which owned planes hired out by the likes
of David Beckham, Max Clifford and media mogul Richard Desmond.
However, an analysis of the company's brief but
extraordinary five-year history sheds light on
some of the decadent lending policies that led,
according to the National Audit Office, to each
and every taxpayer forking out £7,600 to prop up
the disgraced banking industry.
When Corporate Jet Services (CJS) went bust just
before the financial crash in September 2007, it
had assets of only £2m. Yet according to an
official receiver's report setting out its assets
and liabilities, the company owed HBOS an astonishing £113m.
As its balance sheet collapsed, the beleaguered
bank placed the company into administrative
receivership with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC),
but then encouraged the accountancy giant to sell
the profitable assets back to the same directors
- including Mr Southwell - for what one expert
now describes as a "knock-down price".
This decision was bizarre as the company -
seemingly under the control of its directors,
with Mr Southwell as a non-exec - had caused a
loss to HBOS of about £100m, with the bank
writing off £60m worth of debt on a single day in March 2008.
Seven months later, the British government was
forced to spend more than £20bn of public money
bailing out HBOS's reckless lending positions,
helping to usher in the current "age of
austerity" that still dominates life in Britain today.
Prem Sikka, professor of accounting at Essex
Business School, said: "How can HBOS have lent
£113m to a company with net assets of only £2m?
Unsurprisingly, this kind of unsound judgement
eventually resulted in a bailout of HBOS by
taxpayers. There is a massive wealth transfer to
directors who picked up assets at a negligible
price, and insolvency practitioners who collected
high fees while owing no duty of care to taxpayers or unsecured creditors.
"This insolvency should be examined by the
Business Secretary Vince Cable. This is a huge
write-off and the cost of this has been borne
ultimately by the taxpayer. It raises further
questions about the quality of management at HBOS
and its relationship with some of its clients.
The pre-pack management buy-out has enabled
directors to acquire assets at knock-down prices.
It has left unsecured creditors high and dry."
Mr Southwell said via his lawyers that he was
appointed "at the express instruction of HBOS" to
assist a company in difficulty, that at times
decisions were taken with the "encouragement" of
the bank and "if anyone is to blame for CJS's
difficulties, it should firmly be laid at the door of HBOS".
David Cameron's business adviser said via his
lawyers that his role was "legitimate and
uncontroversial"; he always acted in a "prudent
and professional manner" and that he was "not
part of the dedicated executive management team".
When his new company bought the subsidiaries of
Corporate Jet Services in 2007, Mr Southwell said
he took part in the management buy-out only to
save 250 jobs as there was no other alternative
in the wake of the credit crunch.
Jet firm to the stars
Mr Southwell was first appointed as a director of
CJS in 2002. His lawyers stated that he was a
"non-executive director" and was installed "at the direct request of HBOS".
He also stressed that his involvement in the
company was very much a hands-off capacity "to
provide corporate governance and management
advice at a board level in a non-executive role".
That notwithstanding, flight manifests from CJS,
seen by The Independent on Sunday, show that Mr
Southwell and his wife were passengers on one of
the company's jets when it flew to the tax haven
of Monaco - via Cannes - in December 2003. The
Southwells were accompanied by an HBOS bank
manager. His lawyers said this was a business
trip exploring a "potential three-year
sponsorship deal relating to an event in Monaco
which had the potential to generate significant
business for CJS on the UK to South of France
route". They also said that the potential
business partner had "specifically" asked to see one of the company's planes.
The jets were not only used by Beckham and
Clifford. Other celebrity clients included
football star Jamie Redknapp and the late film
director Michael Winner. Despite enjoying
super-rich clients, the company was struggling
financially and, towards the end of its short
existence, failing to file its accounts.
CJS failed to file accounts at Companies House
for the years ending 2005 and 2006, during which
time its debts to HBOS leapt from about £28m in
December 2004 to the extraordinary figure of
£113m when it went bust three years later.
Lawyers for Mr Southwell said that "many of the
debts" were transferred to the company by HBOS
before Mr Southwell became involved in 2002.
Because of the lack of published accounts, it is
not possible for The IoS to ascertain how the huge liabilities were racked up.
Lord Oakeshott, a former Liberal Democrat
Treasury spokesman, has serious concerns over the
company's trading history - and its relationship with HBOS.
He said: "A failure to file accounts is a breach
of company law and it is astonishing that HBOS
would lend such a huge amount of money to a firm with relatively minor assets.
"This raises very serious questions of corporate
governance. The bank should have known Corporate
Jet Services had no prospect of meeting its debts."
Lawyers for Mr Southwell told The IoS that he was
a "nominal shareholder" in CJS, and that HBOS was
the "effective shareholder of the business" who
"at all times maintained an extremely active
interest in all company affairs" and "continually
encouraged further purchases of aircraft using
debt finance provided by them". Lawyers said on
behalf of Mr Southwell that he received a modest
£25,000 a year for his non-executive role.
However, CJS accounts prepared by the finance
director show cheques totalling just over
£250,000 were made out to Mr Southwell personally
over a 10-month period up to February 2007.
Lawyers for Mr Southwell said he could not
remember what this money was for, and attempts to
find out had been hampered by the fact that his
bank's records did not go back that far. However,
they said that all payments were "in no way
unusual" and would have been made with the
"express authority and approval of HBOS".
Alarm bells over Corporate Jet Services
indebtedness finally rang in May 2007 when HBOS
appointed PwC to "investigate the financial
position" of CJS. Administrative receiver David
Chubb of PwC soon established that it was
"insolvent" and recorded that he was "instructed"
to find buyers for the ailing business and its subsidiaries.
The company limped on until HBOS - as the main
secured creditor - placed it into administrative
receivership with PwC in September 2007.
However, on the same day, the bank then directed
the accountancy firm to sell the company's
subsidiaries to a new firm Quest Aviation
Services Ltd, part-owned by Mr Southwell, who was
also the chairman. The deal was struck for an
initial payment of just £50,000 plus future
payments based on results that, by 2012, had reached £5m.
Mr Chubb from PwC said the sale to the directors
was agreed because the company "had insufficient
funds to support the trading subsidiaries during
a prolonged marketing campaign".
However, documents from Quest dated January 2008
and seen by The IoS may suggest another reason
for the pre-pack administration. "In the early
part of 2007, the management team at CJS
comprising Robin Southwell and [two others]
concluded that the strategic development of the
business was likely to be better served under an
independent ownership structure less encumbered
by the legacy trading of the various subsidiary companies."
Mr Southwell said via his lawyers that he was
appointed by HBOS to assist a company in
difficulty and was only ever a non-executive
director that acted on the bank's instructions.
His lawyers said it would be "misleading and
damaging to suggest that the pre-pack and
purchase by Quest was in any way premeditated or
preplanned by our client". They also said Quest
continued "clearing obligations on behalf of HBOS until 2013".
Who really owned Corporate Jet Services and how did it rack up such huge debts?
Mr Southwell said he was a non-executive director
and "nominal shareholder" of Corporate Jet
Services. He repeatedly directed The IoS's
inquiries over the company to HBOS which he
described as the "effective shareholders of the
business" and said he acted at the "invitation
and encouragement of firstly HBOS and then PwC on
behalf of HBOS". The bank declined to comment on this claim.
He told us via his lawyers that HBOS "at all
times maintained an extremely active interest in
all company affairs" and "continually encouraged
further purchases of aircraft using debt finance
provided by them". The bank refused to answer any
questions over the matter, saying it was a "confidential issue".
According to documents filed at Companies House,
Mr Southwell was a shareholder in CJS from its
inception in 2002 until late 2005 when his
shareholding was transferred to a company called
"Sandstone Organisation Limited". This company,
in turn, was owned by a nominee company called
Devonshire Registrars Ltd, which makes the true
ownership impossible to determine from publicly available records.
However, board minutes from CJS just after the
share transfer to Sandstone may provide a clue.
They list under the heading "Actions Completed":
"Shareholding of Corporate Jet Services transferred to Bank".
If HBOS really did beneficially own the company,
it would raise questions over where the money
actually went - and how it could write off such
mammoth losses when the loans were made to
entities beneficially owned by itself.
When The IoS shared its findings with Lord
Oakeshott, he said he would be raising these
matters with the Government as HBOS merged with
Lloyds in 2008 and the Treasury still retains a
significant stake in the banking giant.
The Liberal Democrat peer said: "We need to get
to the bottom of this sorry saga. Mr Southwell
appears to be suggesting HBOS had a beneficial
ownership and some control over the company. Why
did they not disclose this? It is outrageous that
this little company alone seems to have cost
every taxpayer £1 when we bailed out HBOS."
As we have seen, Corporate Jet Services had a
formal overdraft facility with HBOS of only
£800,000 and assets of only £2m when it went bust
in September 2007. So who in the bank approved
the huge liability well beyond its overdraft amounting to £113m?
Mr Southwell directed The IoS to the bank, and a
Lloyds Banking Group spokesman refused to
comment, saying it was a "confidential matter".
Peter Cummings, a senior HBOS director handed a
lifetime ban by the Financial Services Authority
for his role in the credit crunch, told a
parliamentary commission into the banking crash
that a single "Level 8" loan over £75m had to be approved at "executive" level.
Even if the HBOS board monitored only single
payments of £75m and above - and in the case of
CJS the huge debt was created via multiple
smaller loans - it appears to have been a costly
mistake for the bank not to check overall liabilities.
The expensive subsidiary
Without full disclosure of the company's
accounts, it is very difficult to say where all
the money went. However, internal CJS financial
statements, prepared by the finance director and
seen byThe IoS, may suggest one answer.
They detail six-figure transfers from CJS coffers
every month to Euromanx, one of its subsidiaries
based in the tax haven of the Isle of Man. Mr
Southwell is listed as chief executive on the
company's annual returns. His lawyers said he was
a non-executive director. According to company
records, just under 30 per cent of its shares in
Euromanx were owned by Mr Southwell through
another Isle of Man company called Deepdene Limited.
Euromanx briefly ran its own airline in the Isle
of Man, which was launched in a blaze of
publicity in February 2005 at a lavish party at a
country club attended by Max Clifford and Simon Cowell, the pop music mogul.
Speaking at the launch in the Isle of Man, one of
the directors reportedly told the London Evening
Standard: "Having people like Max and Simon
around attracts attention. Of course, having Max
around may look like we are overdoing it and
setting up ourselves for a fall. We'll see."
In hindsight, his words appeared remarkably
prescient, as Euromanx also went bust in
controversial circumstances, owing the Isle of
Man government £1.5m and costing 70 jobs.
In May 2008, Tony Brown, the chief minister, told
its parliament that when the company's last
aircraft left the island, Euromanx waited until
two minutes after take-off to inform the airport
that the company was bust. He said this was "a
deliberate act by the owners of Euromanx so as to
ensure that the airport authority could not
arrest the Euromanx aircraft as security against any outstanding debt".
Lawyers for Mr Southwell said this was
"inaccurate and a distortion of the facts" as the
aircraft was only leased by Euromanx and "owned by a bank".
According to documents lodged at Companies House
by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the aircraft was owned
by Corporate Jet Services, which had recently
changed its name. Euromanx was eventually placed into liquidation.
When Corporate Jet Services went into
administrative receivership, Mr Southwell was
being paid £737,000 a year for his job leading EADS UK.
Throughout his involvement with CJS, Mr Southwell
was running some of this country's largest
multibillion-pound PFI projects. In July 2005, he
was made chief executive of EADS UK with overall
responsibility for a hugely sensitive satellite
surveillance system and work on the Ministry of
Defence's Eurofighter Typhoon programme.
Corporate Jet Services minus its subsidiaries was
placed into liquidation in 2010. However, almost
four years on, liquidator Elliot Green of Oury
Clark, who was appointed at the behest of an
unsecured creditor, is still trying to obtain CJS
documents from PwC, which retained them from its
time as administrative receivers. After engaging
in correspondence, the liquidator has now
resorted to litigation and a High Court hearing
is scheduled for later this year.
HBOS refused to answer any questions about its
relationship with CJS or Mr Southwell, citing it as a "confidential matter".
'Out of control'
The government regulator that was supposed to
keep the Square Mile in check was the Financial
Services Authority (FSA), which was run by former bankers.
From 2004, former HBOS chief executive James
Crosby combined his role at the bank with a
directorship at the FSA. Eventually, he became
the City watchdog's deputy chairman in 2006.
At the height of the financial crash in 2009,
HBOS's ex-head of risk, Paul Moore, blew the
whistle and said he warned the FSA in 2004 that the bank was out of control.
Mr Crosby resigned from the FSA the day Mr Moore
made his claims to the Treasury Select Committee,
although he insisted his former colleague's allegations had no merit.
In its damning conclusions published last year,
the banking commission named Mr Crosby as the
"architect" of the bank's downfall and he was
eventually stripped of the knighthood bestowed
under Gordon Brown's administration. Mr Crosby
said he was "deeply sorry for what happened at
HBOS" and offered to give up 30 per cent of his £580,000p.a. HBOS pension
Andrew Tyrie MP, the chairman of the commission,
said: "The HBOS story is one of catastrophic
failures of management, governance and regulatory
oversight. The sums would never have added up."
--
--
Please consider seriously the reason why these elite institutions are not discussed in the mainstream press despite the immense financial and political power they wield?
There are sick and evil occultists running the Western World. They are power mad lunatics like something from a kids cartoon with their fingers on the nuclear button! Armageddon is closer than you thought. Only God can save our souls from their clutches, at least that's my considered opinion - Tony
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