Grant Shapps: master criminal?

I have - as is my wont - spent a happy hour or so perusing the provisions of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. It is, as you'd expect, riveting. A real page-turner. Or mouse-clicker.

Why would I do this? Because I'm intrigued by the determination of the Conservative Party's determination to hold on to the money given to it by various Polly Peck subsidiaries without the consent of their shareholders and directors. Asil Nadir, the ultimate owner of these companies, fled to Northern Cyprus after they collapsed, taking £29m with him.

Given that this was the biggest scandal of the City in the 1980s, one would have thought that the Conservative Party would have been ashamed to be associated with this crook, and given the money back to help the failed companies' creditors. But they don't think like us.

More recently, Mr Nadir (and what a wonderful name for a man who was essentially competing with Robert Maxwell for Worst Shyster In London) came back and was found guilty of a number of offences. He's now in prison. So will the Tories give the money back now? Don't be ridiculous: as Oliver from Tory HQ said to me,

We have seen no evidence that money donated to the Conservative Party from the Polly Peck group was stolen.

The Polly Peck administrators wrote to the Party years ago asking for the cash back on the basis that it was stolen. Nadir's gone to prison for stealing cash and breaching his legal duties as a company director. One would have thought that was proof enough.

Based on my amateur scroll through the Proceeds of Crime Act, I'm not convinced that Oliver's claim is an adequate defence.  Let's look at some key clauses:

Money laundering2An offence under either of the following provisions of this Act—(a)section 327 (concealing etc criminal property);(b)section 328 (assisting another to retain criminal property).

To my untrained eye, the Polly Peck donations are criminal property if the donations weren't authorised by the shareholders and/or the directors. So the Tory Party has concealed criminal property and by refusing to give the cash back, retained criminal property.

But the Tories didn't steal any of this money, did they? Well, I seem to remember people going to prison after the London riots for holding on to property stolen by other people and then gifted to them. And lo! there's an applicable clause:

A person benefits from conduct if he obtains property or a pecuniary advantage as a result of or in connection with the conduct [of the criminal]

A gift is also tainted if it was made by the defendant at any time and was of property—(a)which was obtained by the defendant as a result of or in connection with his general criminal conduct, or(b)which (in whole or part and whether directly or indirectly) represented in the defendant’s hands property obtained by him as a result of or in connection with his general criminal conduct.

Boosting Party coffers certainly looks like 'pecuniary advantage' to me. So does a gift acquired through breaching directors' legal duties. And if that's not clear, how about this?

Acquisition, use and possession(1)A person commits an offence if he—(a)acquires criminal property;(b)uses criminal property;(c)has possession of criminal property.

And there's more!

242“Property obtained through unlawful conduct”(1)A person obtains property through unlawful conduct (whether his own conduct or another’s) if he obtains property by or in return for the conduct.(2)In deciding whether any property was obtained through unlawful conduct—(a)it is immaterial whether or not any money, goods or services were provided in order to put the person in question in a position to carry out the conduct,(b)it is not necessary to show that the conduct was of a particular kind if it is shown that the property was obtained through conduct of one of a number of kinds, each of which would have been unlawful conduct.

It doesn't really matter whether the Conservative Party thinks the money isn't stolen: it's committing a crime if the cash is stolen. 2 a and b seem to mean that a political donation from fraudulently acquired funds is covered: it doesn't matter whether or not Nadir or the Tories (who was close friends with senior Conservatives) expected to get anything from the gift. More to the point, ignorance is no defence. The Polly Peck story was sensational, and the Tories could only have missed it if none of its members opened a newspaper or watched the TV in 1988. Which seems unlikely:

A person commits an offence if he enters into or becomes concerned in an arrangement which he knows or suspects facilitates (by whatever means) the acquisition, retention, use or control of criminal property by or on behalf of another person.

Given the overwhelming publicity, Conservative Party Chairs and Treasurers must now and must then have suspected that these donations were 'criminal property'. As I read it, that makes all Conservative Party employees (and members?) involved in donations who knew about the donation guilty of not reporting each other for continuing to retain, use and control criminal property. 

But it was all a long time ago, wasn't it? Not according to the law:

It is immaterial—(a)whether conduct occurred before or after the passing of this Act, and(b)whether property or a pecuniary advantage constituting a benefit from conduct was obtained before or after the passing of this Act.

A gift may be a tainted gift whether it was made before or after the passing of this Act.

I'd say the Tories have benefitted rather a lot before and after the passing of the Act from a donation of around £440,000.

Now, would any legal eagles like to offer an opinion on my amateur interpretation before I make a complaint to the police?

The Great Escape

With a single bound, Grant Shapps is (relatively) free:

Further to my letter of 27 September, we have received a response from HowToCorp.  They have explained that the advertising is no longer appearing and have provided assurances related to any future advertising that we consider address your concerns.  We consider that this will resolve the complaint without referring the matter to the ASA Council, and will consequently be closing our file.

In a formal investigation, if the ASA Council decides that an ad is in breach of the Code, the advertiser is told to withdraw or amend it.  Because HowToCorp have already assured us that the advertising you complained about has been withdrawn and will be amended if it is used in future, we consider there is little to be gained from continuing with a formal investigation, which would achieve that same outcome.

Although we will not publish full details of your complaint on our website, www.asa.org.uk, basic information including the advertiser’s name and where the ad appeared will appear on Wednesday 17 October.

Thank you for taking the time and trouble to raise the matter with us.  If you would like more information about what we do and the ads we have found in breach of the Code, please have a look on our website.

Obviously this looks like a victory for Grant Shapps: he's avoided an investigation and the embarrassing revelation that HowToCorp's personnel and satisfied customers were fictional - proof that he and his wife (who succeeded him as the company's owner) actually lied would have finished him off. Now he keeps his job and the company carries on, though it's non-existent on Google and presumably will struggle to attract business. 

But as it is, a nasty smell hangs around Mr Shapps. The ASA has folded very weakly - I suspect under pressure from Mr Shapps - but he's fixed in the public consciousness as a spin, rather than as a statesman - today's Guardian cartoon portrays him at the Tory Conference naked but for three delegates' passes. He fobbed off Michael Crick of Channel 4 News this weekend with the claim that an ASA investigation was under way - he'd have known by that point that it wasn't. Folding so early looks very, very like a guilty conscience: rather than asserting that Fox, Green and these testimonials were genuine, the company agreed never to use them again. Now we just need a customer to take him to court for fraud…

How do I feel about this? Disappointed, of course: the Establishment has found a loophole through which he's escaped. But I'm also pleased: despite the sneering about bloggers, this has been an instructive exercise in active citizenship. What next? Back to Paul Uppal, the egregious and invisible local MP. 

Update: I asked to see HowToCorp's response to the ASA:

I’m afraid we are, however, unable to pass copies of correspondence between an advertiser and the ASA to complainants.

Which seems a bit odd: HowToCorp saw my correspondence to the ASA. Does it have a duty of confidentiality to offending companies? Why?

The Thick of It… come to life

I may have mentioned in passing that my complaint about HowToCorp's shady business practices (pseudonymic business gurus, testimonials from - ahem - elusive customers of rather unethical products)  has hit the national press, due to Conservative MP and party chairman Grant Shapps' involvement.

Imagine my delight when the indefatigable Michael Crick of Channel 4 News pursued Mr Shapps through a rabbit warren of corridors, all the while asking Shapps about his happy customers. The answer is, I suspect, that none of them are real: I spent a happy few hours trying to track them down, and came up with precisely NO actual people.

I love this clip: it's straight out of The Thick Of It, particularly Shapps' increasingly demented hope that the next door will be the one that gets him away from Mr Crick. At one point, we glimpse the backstage fruit machine room - no doubt where Mr Osborne tries to reduce the deficit.




I'm profoundly depressed by the calibre of politicians we have now. In a functioning democracy we'd be able to respect even those whose policies repulse us. No longer: cynicism, individualism and careerism have combined to ensure that only the selfish, spineless, unthinking and vicious rise to the top, with a few exceptions. Idealism, altruism and public service are alien concepts to such a large contingent of our politicians.

I find myself thinking that even I could do it better, which is a terrible thought. We're really in trouble.

Shappocalypse

I was out of the office for a whole 11 hours overnight, but what an 11 hours they've been.

If you buy The Independent (no, seriously), you'll have noticed that their front page ('Exclusive: Tory Chairman Rocked by 'get rich quick probe'' despite the Guardian diary printing the story a few days ago) 'reveals' that Grant Shapps is under investigation by the Advertising Standards Authority for his pseudonymic business activities, after a complaint by a blogger. There's also an editorial calling on Shapps to go. The story is also reported in the news section of the Guardian, the New Statesman, by Sky News and of course the Welwyn and Hatfield Times.

That blogger is me. I'd like to make some simple points.

Here's my original post about the curious triple lives of Grant Shapps ('he's three of the sharpest business brains in the Conservative Party') and the frankly seedy and cynical material published by HowToCorp. Click here for my follow-up piece about the ASA agreeing to undertake an investigation. The full story of Shapps' chequered any multi-monickered life is summarised here.

'Friends of Grant Shapps' (which always means Grant Shapps) have made two points to the news organisations. The first is that 'any blogger' can make mischief by firing off a complaint. Very true. The joy of blogging and new media is that an amateur can devote time and resources to stories which a news organisation may not have the patience for. That doesn't make any complaint any less valid. A blogger is firstly a citizen: the tools employed are beside the point - and for a man whose business involved stealing other web-writers material, it's a bloody cheeky point.

The second accusation is that my complaint is 'politically motivated'. This is a bit strange coming from a politician. The Chair of the Conservative Party, no less. And from a man who deleted details of his funding from Wikipedia and posed as a Liberal Democrat to disrupt their party business, it's very rum indeed. One would have thought that any sign of political engagement would be welcomed in a cynical age…

I'm not sure why Grant Shapps thinks my complaint is 'politically motivated'. Indeed, I don't know why he has any comment to make at all. My complaint to the ASA did not mention Mr Shapps. It drew the organisation's attention to a company whose supposed leaders may not have existed, and questioned the veracity of the company's testimonials from satisfied customers. This last, I suspect, is where the real dirt is, by the way. Mr Shapps tells us he has no connection with HowToCorp any more - it's his wife's company now. Furthermore, he's not asked me what my motivation is. I think I'd complain about any organisation which behaves like this, whether connected to a Tory or a Labour representative.

However, I will make one political point. Go back to my original post. Read the 'How To Get Out of a Recession' and compare it to the government's programme. While Shapps ran the company, he made a fortune from plagiarising web material and from publishing frankly ridiculous get-rich-quick guides. We are in the middle of one of the deepest recessions in modern history. To have a prominent Member of Parliament recommending and practicing sharp practice, voodoo economics and flaky schemes is a disgrace. The country requires fundamental, structural economic change. From my perspective, it needs leftwing policies: from the government's, hardline monetarist and free market solutions seem attractive. Neither side recommends the kind of quick-buck hucksterism Mr Shapps and now his wife promote. His ability to maintain a double economic life does him no credit.

Mr Shapps has now spoken to the Welwyn and Hatfield Times.

But Mr Vole has since published the letter on his personal blog The Plashing Vole – even though the ASA explicitly asked the correspondence be kept private.
The point was made by Mr Shapps himself, who said he thought the ASA would take a “dim view” of the leaked letter.
Now the ASA has said it could close the investigation if it chooses to.
An ASA spokesman told the WHT: “We are aware that the complainant has published our correspondence despite requests to keep it confidential.
“The ASA reserves the right to close the investigation if the complainant does not respect our request.”

I declined that request. No mention was made to me by the ASA of closing the investigation if I publicised the investigation - the right has not been reserved. If Mr Shapps is trying to close down an investigation on these grounds, it shows a distinct lack of enthusiasm for examining the substance of the matter. Considering Mr Shapps posed as a Lib Dem to infiltrate one of their online forums, you'd think he'd approve of low-down dirty tactics… Although frankly I'm bemused as to why he's getting involved at all - I complained about a company he neither owns nor controls. What's his interest?

PS. Paul Uppal: I've not forgotten about you, by the way.

Shapps Fell…

Update for new readers: further developments can be found here. 

(OK, that may be one of my weakest puns ever. And therefore one of my favourites).

You may recall that I complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about Grant Shapps MP posing as 'Michael Green' and/or 'Sebastian Fox' to flog dubious and potentially illegal business guides, software and SEO scripts. After a bit of digging, I decided that the enthusiastic endorsements by happy customers of HowToCorp might be just as fictional as Grant's alter egos.

I have a reply from the ASA. They're going to conduct a proper investigation. This might be a little uncomfortable for Shapps and his wife Belinda. They will have to demonstrate the existence of Fox, Green and the endorsers… which might be a tad difficult. Here's the text (click to enlarge):

Hot Grant Shapps News!

You may recall that I reported Tory Chairman Grant Shapps' family company to the Advertising Standards Authority, on the basis that the fictional figurehead claimed to be a successful businessman and an MP, and a range of other infringements: a bit difficult if you're not actually real. In real life, Shapps seems to spend most of his time removing incovnenient truths from his Wikipedia page, pretending to be a Lib Dem activist to intervene in their internal politics, and using one of his own products to follow and unfollow tens of thousands of Twitter users a week, to up his own stats. All this while working as an MP and government minister. Stakhanovite, I tell you!

The company has gone into hibernation, mostly because its business was webpage scraping: nicking other people's text and using it to drive traffic to website. Google doesn't like that kind of behaviour: it damages the global behemoth's profit margins, and so poor HowToCorp has been erased from its search algorithms. 

It's really easy to report people and companies to the ASA. I'm certainly going to do it more, and more often. I got this today:

Dear Dr Vole

Thank you for contacting us.  We have referred this matter to our Investigations Team, and an Executive will update you on the outcome of the Investigation in due course.  Thank you for your patience.

Yours sincerely

Lewis JonesComplaints Executive
 Advertising Standards AuthorityMid City Place, 71 High HolbornLondon WC1V 6QTTelephone 020 7492 2222www.asa.org.uk

As their logo is 'legal, decent, honest and truthful', I'm expecting a good result from their scrutiny of Mr Shapps!