Shyam
The UK phone-hacking scandal has now suddenly become the international phone-hacking crisis http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14166162 . The latest news is that:
- The chief executive of 'News International,' Rebekah Brooks, has finally resigned.
- FBI agents are investigating allegations that Rupert Murdoch's 'News Corp' attempted to bribe a NY police officer in order to hack the phones of victims of the 911 attacks.
- Mr. Murdoch, his son James and Rebekah Brooks have agreed to appear before the UK House of Commons Media Select Committee to answer MP's questions.
- Former 'News of the World' executive editor, Neil Wallis (who went to work for the police), has been arrested.
It almost goes without saying, that the phone-hacking crisis is not being reported by US newspapers and television channels within 'News Corp.'
Sadly, had a handful of senior UK police officers done their job and enforced the law (without fear or favour) on behalf of their employers - the UK public - then widespread criminal activity (including police corruption) would have been exposed and halted many years ago. Unfortunately, the reasons why these senior UK police officers preferred to bury their heads in the sand, are becoming increasingly self-evident; for one of these officers, former Assistant Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Andy Hayman, currently works for 'News International.' When asked by a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee if he had ever accepted money from the media?, Mr. Hayman's angry and self-righteous response, left few people in doubt that he was not telling the whole truth http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14126326 .
Your free-thinking readers are already aware that, six years ago, 12 officers from the Anti-Terrorist Branch of the London Metropolitan Police began to investigate 'News International,' due to complaints from representatives of the British royal family that confidential information was being published in the 'The News of the World' about HRH Prince William, which could not have been obtained by entirely-lawful means. With the full co-operation of telephone companies, its was soon discovered that voice-mail services belonging to royal aides had been hacked by a private investigator working for 'News International', Glenn Mulcaire, who had undoubtedly had access to confidential portable phone numbers and voice-mail pin-codes. Despite a team of around 70 police officers subsequently visiting the offices of 'News International' and retrieving 11, 000 pages of documents proving that thousands of UK citizens had, in fact, also been the victims of illegal phone-hacking stretching back years, a much smaller team of police officers assigned to analysing these documents (but under instructions to limit their search to evidence concerning the royal family and national security), failed to spot this major criminal enterprise and, instead of senior police officers pursuing their inquiry to its logical conclusion and holding the senior management of 'NoW', the executives of 'News International' and those of 'News Corp' to account, they felt obliged (apparently, acting on the advice of ill-informed lawyers from the Crown Prosecution Service), to accept (what they now claim they knew to be) a pack of lies told by attorneys. As a result of this dismal failure, only two persons (the former royal editor of 'NoW,' and Mr. Mulcaire) were prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to prison terms in 2007. Furthermore, when other people (including the former UK Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott) came forward to complain that they also suspected that they had been the victims of phone-hacking by 'NoW,' the police flatly refused to re-open the investigation due to 'lack of evidence.' In reality, we now know that the police were already sitting on a volcano of evidence, but we are supposed to believe that they were completely unaware of what it contained.
As more and more red-hot information about these matters has erupted, the boss of 'News Corp,' Rupert Murdoch, tried to limit the damage to his multi-billion dollar, global media Empire, by ordering the unprecedented closure of 'NoW,' but the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron MP, has appointed Lord Justice Leveson to head a public inquiry to determine not only the scale of phone-hacking within 'News International,' but also the scale of all other criminal activity within 'News International;' particularly, the corruption of police officers.
None of this surprises me, because, back in 1990s, my experience was identical when I first began complaining to UK Law enforcement agencies that 'Amway UK Ltd.' was the corporate-front for a pernicious, blame-the-victim, pyramid scam and related advance fee fraud which, since the early 1970s, had been allowed to steal hundreds of millions of pounds from hundreds of thousands of constantly-churning UK citizens (including members of my own family). I clearly explained how 'Amway UK Ltd.' was just one of dozens of identical fakes around the world, which were all centrally-controlled by billionaire racketeer-families in the USA who, whilst posing as 'patriots and Christian philanthropists,' have bought political protection in the USA by pouring buckets of stolen cash into the coffers of the Republican party and into the pockets of individual politicians. Furthermore, I explained how the de facto agents of these foreign-based racketeers (particularly, Richard Berry, Director of the so-called 'UK Direct Selling Association') had pretended affinity with ill-informed UK legislators. Thus, co-opting at least two wide-eyed, Conservative Members of Parliament in a criminal attempt to infiltrate the democratic process in the UK, when modifications to Trading Schemes Law were being introduced. At this time, UK legislators failed to identify the painfully-simple, deconstructed explanation of all pyramid scams and Ponzi schemes (i.e. they are closed-market swindles in which ill-informed victims are peddled infinite shares of their own finite money), or how this type of fraud can be dissimulated behind 'MLM business opportunities' which pretend to operate lawfully, but which secretly oblige their victims to keep buying effectively-unsaleable products and services, and to recruit their social contacts to do the same.
UK police officers refused even to record my complaints about 'Amway'. They insisted that corporate frauds were far too complex for the police to investigate, let alone prosecute successfully, and that the sole responsibility for investigation and prosecution of pyramid scams lay with specialists in the UK Dept of Trade and Industry. However, between 1995 and 2005, officials at the Competition and Policy Unit of the DTI blocked all my legitimate complaints about 'Amway.' Indeed, at one point, I was sent a copy of an offensive letter which had been sent to my family's Member of Parliament, Alice Mahon, by the then Minister for Consumer Affairs at the DTI, Gerry Sutcliffe MP, in which he falsely accused me of being 'paranoid' to suggest that 'Amway' was a fraud and that the 'Director of the UK DSA' was corrupt. However, in 2006, a team of officials from the 'Companies Investigation Branch' of what used to be the DTI, retrieved several truck loads of documents from the HQ of 'Amway UK Ltd.' The then Deputy Inspector of Companies, Cliff Callaghan, had finally recognized 'Amway' to be a huge fraud, and had taken the decision to try and have its UK activities halted using a technical procedure in civil law. In brief, a UK government Minister filed a public interest bankruptcy petition against 'Amway UK Ltd.' on the grounds that the company had been receiving annual subscription payments from its agents in breach of existing UK trading schemes and lotteries legislation. Government attorneys requested that the High Court should order these illegal payments (totalling many millions of pounds) to be surrendered by 'Amway UK Ltd.' working on the established legal precedent that any technically-insolvent UK company (i.e. with insufficient funds to cover its liabilities) can be automatically closed. Part of the documents retrieved from 'Amway UK Ltd.' revealed that the company had never once declared an annual trading profit since 1973, and that it had been receiving multi-million pound cash-injections from overseas to keep it afloat. Due to its low-level nature, the civil bankruptcy petition could only make a passing reference to the sale of so-called 'business support materials' within 'Amway.' In reality, between 1973 and 2006 an estimated one billion dollars was removed from around one million constantly-churning UK victims of the 'Amway' closed-market swindle, by peddling them effectively-valueless publications, recordings, tickets to meetings, etc., on the pretext that these materials contained secrets vital to achieving success within 'Amway.' Thus, the chronically-insolvent corporate structure known as 'Amway UK Ltd.' was merely the bait in a trap, but this was not the focus of the UK government's feeble case.
To defend itself against this ill-conceived civil bankruptcy petition, 'Amway UK Ltd.' hired some of the foremost legal brains in the UK, including Peter Kiernan, the former Deputy Director of the Serious Fraud Office. In this way, the billionaire bosses of the 'Amway' mob managed to convince a single High Court Judge that the executives of 'Amway UK Ltd.' had been completely unaware that their company had been trading in breach of UK legislation, but now that they had been made aware, they had voluntarily sought legal advice and changed the company's practises to comply with UK legislation. They also managed to convince the judge that any further breaches of UK law (such as the sale of unauthorized business support materials) by persons within the ranks of 'Amway' in the UK , were isolated incidents, and that the two most-senior 'Amway' agents responsible, Patrick Gregory and Gerry Scriven,' had already been expelled. As a consequence of accepting these (and other) lies, Judge Norris broke legal precedent and allowed 'Amway UK Ltd.' to remain registered in the UK. His astonishing judgement, which was immediately appealed by the government on the narrow grounds that it was incorrect in law, was subsequently allowed to stand by two out of three Appeal Court Judges. To date, the UK Serious Fraud Office has maintained that the investigation and civil prosecution of these matters has already been adequately handled by trade regulators, and that the crimes which I have complained about, do not fall within the SFO's remit.
In the cases of 'Amway' and 'News Corp,' your free-thinking readers will observe the remarkable similarities between the reluctance of UK law enforcement agents to do their job (without fear or favour) on behalf of their employers - the UK public. Your free-thinking readers will also observe the remarkable similarities between the lies told by the executives of 'Amway UK Ltd.' in 2008, and those told by the executives of 'News International' in 2006, in order to block further inquiry.
David Brear (copyright 2011)
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