In June the year before, comedian Aaron Barschak set off alarms at Windsor Castle when he gate-crashed Prince William’s twenty-first birthday celebration dressed as Osama bin Laden, just a few weeks after the invasion of Iraq.
Barschak scaled the perimeter wall and gained entry to the private party, where nearly all of William’s family was present. SO14 officers thought he was a fancy dress guest until he interrupted the Prince’s speech to ask for a kiss.
Lax security and gate-crashing palace parties was not the preserve of publicity seekers and activists with a serious point to make. According to Page’s defence-case statement, some SO14 officers in his syndicate would fix it so friends and family could gate-crash palace garden parties.
The court document said:
Some police officers had given extra perks to some loyal investors whereby it was arranged that the investor and one guest would be ‘spirited’ into royal garden parties by these officers. These persons were not invited guests of the Queen nor were they subjected to the strict vetting procedures undertaken on genuine guests. They would bypass the usual long queues and were escorted through various security posts before being left in the grounds of the palace with bona fide guests. Additionally, they were given the mobile number of an officer if any problems occurred and briefed with a cover story.
The security review into the breach at Windsor Castle concluded in August 2003 that there had been a ‘series of errors’ for which a few minor heads took the brunt and the bosses at SO14 survived. However, Met Commissioner Sir John Stevens said the report was a ‘grave wake-up call’. He had assured the Home Secretary that ‘significant lessons’ were learned.
Except, in November, the Mirror splashed the results of its two-month undercover investigation at Buckingham Palace. Reporter Ryan Parry had got a footman’s job with false references in the run-up to the state visit of US President George W. Bush.
The Met commissioner launched another review and suggested that the SAS could do penetration testing of the royal palaces while his officers gathered intelligence on publicity seekers and royal obsessives. Vetting procedures would also be tightened and a new royal security co-ordinator, an ex-SAS brigadier, was appointed who reported to the Queen’s private secretary and liaised with the head of the Royalty and Diplomatic Protection Group, Commander Peter Loughborough.
SO14 was the only unit in the Metropolitan Police with a lord in charge. Loughborough, the 7th Earl of Rosslyn, is a hereditary peer. His seat, Roslin Castle in Scotland, was created in 1801 for his great ancestor, a Lord Chancellor.
The Castle includes Rosslyn Chapel, which was made famous by Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, published in April 2003, just as Loughborough was about to take over at SO14.
Brown’s blockbuster recycled various conspiracy theories about Freemasonry and the Knights Templar. These included that the Catholic Rosslyn Chapel is the secret resting place of the Holy Grail because Loughborough’s ancestors were direct descendants of the secret union between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
More historically accurate are the following facts: Loughborough succeeded his father in 1977 and two years later, aged twenty-one, took his seat as a hereditary peer in the House of Lords. Perhaps his youthful modernity chimed with New Labour because the party allowed him to escape its cull of hereditary peers in 1999.
As well as being a senior policeman, Loughborough is active in the second chamber as a cross-bencher, which means he is neither a member of the governing party or the official opposition, but has the unelected potential to shape or influence legislation.
The Eton-educated peer read Latin American studies at Bristol University. He joined the Met in 1980 and transferred to Thames Valley Police in 1994, where he was the commander for his old Eton stomping ground. After returning to the Met in 2000, Loughborough was sent to study criminology at Cambridge University. A year later, in May 2003, he was appointed head of SO14 at the age of forty-five.
Loughborough is married with two sons and two daughters, one of whom went on to play Kate Middleton in a US TV film of her blossoming relationship with Prince William. He is said to speak the Queen’s language, which no doubt came in handy when he had to explain why only one month into his new job her son’s birthday party was gate-crashed by an Osama bin Laden lookalike, and how the Dynamic Duo had gained entry to Buckingham Palace in September 2003.
Of course, Purple One had no idea about another scandal brewing under her nose: Page and his out-of-control Ponzi fraud and the SO14 culture of greed and gambling that was also undermining her security during the war on terror.
But then neither, apparently, did the new head boy at SO14.
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The warnings were there, six of them between August 1999 and November 2004, when Loughborough was well into his job. But no one in SO14 at a senior level put it together and asked the right questions.
Since 1999, there had been two complaints about Page’s unpaid spread betting and tax bills, the last one in January 2004; two suspicious transactions reports from banks, the last one in August 2004; the gun incident with Page’s brother-in-law; and the Hearts scandal when an officer had to be moved to Windsor Castle to prevent Page and others beating him up.
In his defence-case statement, Page gave a flavour of the culture at SO14 that he had in part inherited and helped change. It was hardly a picture, reinforced by newspapers, of an elite squad of SAS-trained police officers ready to confront a new terrorist threat.
Those within Royalty Protection were stationed there for limited reasons. Some were lazy and did not wish to work hard so therefore enjoyed the slow pace of the squad until retirement. Others had just had enough of policing and were clearly frustrated with the legal system. Some wanted the ‘down time’ for studies to progress through the ranks by preparing for police exams. A further common feature was officers using their time to make money from other business interests outside the police.
The prevailing attitude within the ‘Royalty Protection Department’ was that it was a licence to print money for officers. Thousands of pounds could be earned on overtime for doing very little. All these factors made the system very close knit and officers wanting to join would be ‘vetted’ by other officers before their formal interviews. This exercise would entail the potential departmental recruit being invited to spend a day with departmental officers. If they were not deemed popular they would be ‘blackballed’.
When [I] was at Royalty and went on leave an agreed understanding with most at the Department was that 'what happened at Royalty stayed at Royalty’. That was not restricted to investments with [me].
The way SO14 handled Page’s requests for extended leave suggests further mismanagement on an epic scale. He was allowed to go on a sham parental leave request in February 2004 but managed to stay off work until his fraud collapsed three years later. Page had given all kinds of spurious reasons to continue his unpaid leave yet no one queried it. ‘All kinds of strokes we pulled to get me out of there for a long period of time. My file was dropped down the back of the cupboard and I did disappear off the radar,’ he said.
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Page had certainly disappeared off the SO14 radar, but the Complaints Investigation Bureau (CIB), the Met’s anti-corruption squad, had finally picked up on his activities in November 2004.
The squad was set up in 1993 to secretly examine the levels of corruption in the force following high-profile scandals, including the murder that year of Stephen Lawrence.
Anti-corruption chiefs believed there were two types of corrupt officer – the ‘meat eater’ and the ‘grass eater’ – and two types of corruption – those who were ‘bent for self’ and those who were ‘bent for the job’. The meat eater was largely bent for self, in that he was driven by a corrupt opportunity to make a pound note. But he was also an effective policeman, a leader of men and someone who knew how to bend the rules and play the justice system not only to his advantage but also to fit up criminals when the evidence was lacki
ng. In contrast, the grass eater was a follower who went along with corrupt practices for a pound note but also out of some sense of misguided loyalty.
In 1998, when Page moved to SO14, the Met announced to Parliament that it was launching a campaign to root out up to 250 meat eaters in its ranks.
However, by October 2004, CIB had only managed to convict a handful of corrupt officers. My book about CIB, Untouchables, was published that month and revealed that the squad had cherry picked its cases, ignored or protected some corrupt officers while others were unfairly crucified, and covered up corruption allegations including those involving a detective on the Stephen Lawrence murder inquiry.
In November, when concern about Page first reached anti-corruption detectives, the squad had been renamed the Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS). Within the DPS is a covert department called the Intelligence Development Group (IDG), also known as the ‘Dark Side’, which runs undercover officers, handles informants and sets up stings to test officers’ integrity.
The IDG had received intelligence about large amounts of money moving through Page’s bank accounts. Detective Sergeant Jim Wingrave, a financial investigator, was tasked to look at ‘large electronic transfers from third parties and gambling transactions in respect of a Barclays Bank account held by Page’.
On 16 November, he presented an interim report to SO14. It identified nine transactions totalling £236,000 between May and July 2004 as being a ‘cause for concern’. Some of these were payments to William Hill and there were two £60,000 payments to Page from a married police couple (Steven Tree and his wife) and a BAT investor (Mubasher Hussain).
The report also noted the Pages had £22,000 worth of county court judgments against them. The majority, over £18,000, was against Page’s name. He had also defaulted on bank accounts, loans, credit cards, hire purchase and vehicle agreements going back to September 1997, the very time he was successfully vetted for SO14.
Wingrave’s inquiries at William Hill identified three accounts, two held by Page, one by his wife, which had amassed almost £40,000 in losses. These, however, had been paid off but Wingrave was alarmed at the volume of money being gambled. He recommended that while he continued his inquiries, SO14 should conduct a risk assessment on Page’s ‘potential vulnerability to corrupt approaches that may seek to take advantage of his financial situation’.
SO14 had not carried out any risk assessment of Page by January 2005, when Wingrave returned with his boss, Detective Inspector Gino Lupo, to update a very senior Royal Protection officer.
In fact, by January, SO14 had, through its actions and inactions, unwittingly helped Page continue his fraud. First, that month Page was granted another six months unpaid leave without any questions asked. It looked suspiciously like some of SO14 management were glad to get him out of the palace.
Had someone followed up on Wingrave’s report they would have discovered that CMC had recently won a county court judgment against Page over an unpaid £15,000 gambling debt and the spread-betting firm was placing a charge on the family home, where the mortgage was already in severe arrears.
Second, and worse still, Page had been allowed by senior Met management to register ULPD as an outside business interest in November 2003 without any oversight of the company and its dodgy director. In all likelihood, had someone from the Met done simple checks on ULPD they would have discovered that it was a ghost company and a vehicle for Page’s growing fraud.
This, then, was the situation in January 2005 when Wingrave and Lupo met with the second most senior officer at SO14 after Lord Loughborough.
Chief Superintendent Peter Prentice had spent thirty-one of his thirty-nine-year police service in the Royal Protection Squad and had risen from a sergeant to chief superintendent in 1998, the same year Page joined SO14.
According to a DPS intelligence note of the meeting, Lupo carried out the briefing. He told Prentice: ‘Whilst there are no criminal or discipline concerns at present, there are welfare concerns around PC Page with regards to his gambling addiction and that upon his return to Buckingham Palace from his career break he would have access to a firearm and confidential SO14 intelligence.’
Prentice says he made a note immediately after the meeting. He wrote: ‘[Met Police] notified of large amounts of money passing through bank account of PC Page. This would appear to be associated with his business activities in building development. The [DPS] investigation reveals considerable activity by PC Page in loans and credit applications and large amounts of money being exchanged with William Hill.’
Prentice concluded that ‘in view of his financial dealings he should not serve in a unit which could bring embarrassment to MPS or leave the officer open to inappropriate approaches from outside influence or persons’.
However, Prentice was retiring in three months. He does not appear to have briefed his successor when he left on 11 April. Instead, he put his handwritten note in a brown envelope marked ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ and placed it in Page’s SO14 file. An official later attached a yellow sticker marked ‘RESTRICTED’ to the brown envelope.
Remarkably, SO14 did not think it necessary to investigate Page’s spread-betting and property syndicate to find out how many other SO14 officers were involved, vulnerable and needed warning that their Money God was a man of straw. Nor did anyone make any welfare visit to Page.
On 29 March 2005, DS Wingrave submitted a closing report to his bosses at the DPS. A senior anti-corruption officer signed off the investigation with the words ‘There is no evidence of any wrongdoing’ and recommended the file be ‘put away’.
Page had already taken approximately one million pounds from police and civilian investors. Over the next two years he would take at least two million more before his fraud collapsed in a spiral of alcohol abuse, degenerate gambling and violence. One of his investors would even contemplate having him kidnapped or murdered by a hit-man.
Part Two: Bust (2005–2014)
Chapter 12
Grand designs
A few days after sacking Paul Ballard, his brother-in-law builder in charge of the Essex barns site, Page got the workforce together to appoint a new foreman.
It was early April 2005 and after eighteen months the three barns were still unconverted, and the £217,000 construction budget from Mortgage Guarantee all spent. The slow progress against continual outgoings convinced Page that Ballard was fiddling things and buying cheap materials. The finance firm shared his unhappiness about progress and had already loaned an extra £120,000 to complete the works with little effect.
Page exploded at Ballard when he learned that the taxman was also now chasing him for £17,000 in unpaid employment contributions for the builders working on the barns site.
‘I fucking warned you about taking the piss,’ Page told his brother-in-law. ‘We are so fucking behind and you are using the men to do other work.’ Ballard denied fiddling the development budget, but Page sacked him anyway and stormed off with the accounts – the irony of feeling short-changed and betrayed clearly escaping him.
This was now the third serious fall-out with a member of Laura’s family since 2002. First, there was the threat to shoot or beat up the husband of her sister, Christine. Then came Lisa, her twin, who was still angry at being duped over ULPD and the failure to repay money.
Addressing his workforce in front of the unfinished barns that April afternoon, Page was over £700,000 in debt to Mortgage Guarantee and had just come off the phone pleading for an extension on the repayment plan. He sacked some of the builders he believed were moonlighting for Ballard and turned to the others and said: ‘You’ve all got to pull your weight.’ Adding: ‘And you, Dave, are now running the show.’
Dave Newman had only been working on the site for one month. He got on well with Page and in part shared his concern that money did not appear to have been spent on materials. Walking around the site, Newman seized the opportunity to ask him about a rumour among the workforce.
‘Is it true you�
��re a copper, Paul?’
‘Yes, mate, I’m Royalty Protection at Buckingham Palace.’
Newman was impressed. He too wanted to join the force, but wondered to himself why Page was developing property and not protecting the Queen.
The new foreman had also bonded with Adam McGregor, who on occasion came to the site with a camera to show potential investors around. Newman became one of McGregor’s golf partners and fitted a kitchen for Bald eagle as a thank you from Page for bringing in the new hub of Bristol-based punters.
Page had confided in McGregor about some of the problems at the barns and asked him for another £35,000 for building materials. McGregor in turn asked his older brother to take out a £19,000 bank loan. He also prevailed on his mother to give him £16,000, most of which she withdrew on her credit card at lunchtime. Her largesse was rewarded with use of a ‘free’ Saab courtesy of Gripper’s car-hire connection in Cardiff.
The spring of 2005 also saw McGregor’s brother, Robin, return from the Iraq war. The injured Royal Marine was concerned to learn from Page that Ballard had been sacked and there was a labour shortage to finish the job.
Before going to Iraq, Robin had borrowed almost £20,000 from his bank to invest in the barns. There was no contract because he trusted his brother. But Adam McGregor still hadn’t told him that Page was also an avid spread better.
The marine was on sick leave when he contacted Page in April. Earlier in the year he had been evacuated back to the UK after an Iraqi special forces soldier accidentally shot him. Months of rehab had helped Robin rebuild muscle and start walking again. But his financial situation was worrying him. As well as the money invested in the barns, he and his girlfriend had also bought a house with a loan from the Marines for first-time buyers before he left for Iraq.
For Queen and Currency: Audacious fraud, greed and gambling at Buckingham Palace Page 13
