For Queen and Currency: Audacious fraud, greed and gambling at Buckingham Palace

by Michael Gillard

  Chapter 20

  God save the Queen

  Laura couldn’t shake her bad mood on the eve of the trial. She was angry with her husband but also at the DPS for dragging her into the dock and away from her sons. ‘All for what?’ she thought. ‘Something I could walk away from if Paul went guilty and took one for the Queen.’

  Laura was still committed to their earlier agreement to stick two fingers up at the Crown’s offer and roll the dice one last time. ‘When the morning comes,’ she told herself, ‘I’ll put on my head and be the hard-faced bitch they all expect me to be.’

  For now, though, there was still an evening ahead of fears for the future. Her five boys: what would happen if both their parents went to prison?

  Then there was the thought of facing her twin sister in court. ‘She’s going to be saying nasty things about me, Paul. I don’t want to retaliate. She’s my flesh and blood.’

  ‘Don’t worry, love. I’ll be next to you holding your hand,’ he told her with a can of Stella in the other.

  ‘All I do is fucking worry about these,’ she shot back, pointing at the boys. ‘And you won’t be holding my hand all the time. Remember what my barrister said about when we’re not in court? You’ll be off in your conference room and me in mine.’

  Before sitting down for some Stella time, Page had been preparing for the trial in his own way. During the day he worked out in a shed in the car park that he’d turned into a gym, much to Laura’s amusement. ‘I’m working on having the tightest arse so no fucker can get inside,’ he joked with her.

  There was not going to be much time during the trial to spend with his boys and Page was well aware his oldest son, James, now almost fourteen, needed the most love. Through the highs and mostly lows of the last decade, his once innocent eyes had seen bad things, not least the violent rows between his parents, and once again he was fearful of losing his dad to prison.

  James knew enough to know what happens to cops on the inside. Page was desperate to reassure his son that, after Pentonville, he knew he could handle the prison system. To make sure, though, he had been trying to get back to his karate-fighting weight of fifteen stone.

  Page’s other form of trial preparation was reading legal books. The prosecution disclosure had not been as forthcoming as it should be, he thought. There were documents in the Operation Aserio files that he believed were being held back, especially about the Osman warning.

  Page had made an important promise to himself, which would have far-reaching consequences for the conduct of the trial. If the level of disclosure didn’t change in the first few days he was going to be ‘a right cunt’ with the judge.

  By the evening, his bullish frame of mind was still in evidence when he took my call.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for it to start for so long,’ he said.

  Page had a secret plan in the event his legal team felt the trial was going badly for the couple. He would ‘go guilty’ to get Laura off. He knew he was guilty of some things, but not all of it. Ever the gambler, Page felt there was a ‘trade’ to be done with the prosecution: his silence on SO14 and Prince Andrew for Laura’s freedom.

  ‘The most I’ll get is a two spot,’ he told me. In fact, the maximum was seven years at the discretion of a controlling judge he was planning to further piss off.

  As we talked, Page suddenly became remorseful when he considered the type of policeman he had been during the mobile classroom days before joining Buckingham Palace.

  Bad memories of a mentally ill man he had mistreated were bothering him. The man was praying on his knees in the middle of the road. Page had persuaded him on the way back to the police station that he’d get released quicker if he did an impression of the comedian Bruce Forsyth in front of the custody sergeant. There was much hilarity in the custody area when the prisoner did his best Brucie.

  Tonight, however, on the eve of his trial and possible incarceration, the laughter was replaced by concern for whatever became of the prisoner. ‘Maybe he was classified as a bigger loon and getting electric shock treatment,’ Page wondered out loud.

  £ £ £

  ‘To all manner of persons who have anything to do before the Queen’s justices at the crown court draw nigh and give your attendance. God save the Queen,’ announced the usher as Judge Rivlin walked in and Court One rose to its feet on 15 April 2009.

  The south London jury chosen for the trial was a multi-cultural affair. Rivlin told them in his soft but authoritative voice that the fraud case they were about to hear wasn’t going to be easy but was ‘an important one’ from a public point of view and would require their attention for the next three months.

  No sooner sworn in, the twelve men and women of the jury were asked to leave the courtroom while the judge heard legal arguments about whether prosecution witnesses could be cross-examined about their police discipline and criminal records. The defence also wanted to specifically question SO14 officers involved with Page about their on-duty antics that were so graphically laid out in his defence statement.

  Rivlin accepted that officers could lose their jobs if the allegations of ill-discipline were proved under cross-examination. Put another way, if an SO14 officer would risk his career by sitting on the Queen’s Throne then it was conceivable he would also engage in high-risk spread betting while on duty.

  With a now alert media watching for signs of an Establishment cover-up, the judge agreed that, although a ‘borderline’ decision, the defence could cross-examine SO14 officers about the culture operating at the time of Page’s hedge fund.

  After a short break, Day opened the prosecution case to the jury at 11.35 am. Page, he told them, had ‘devised and implemented a fraudulent scheme’ and his wife was ‘well aware, or at the very least suspected [her husband] was indulging in fraudulent activity’ when she ‘laundered much of the money through bank accounts in her name’ to finance his gambling and their ‘lifestyle’.

  Page had wanted Laura to show her disapproval to the jury while Day was talking, but she refused. She was livid that her husband had made such a show of her but still managed to keep a poker face.

  Day told the jury the central question facing them was whether people had invested in property or spread betting. He explained in great detail how three hubs of investors were separately conned into putting up money for property largely on the strength of Page’s ‘ability to inspire confidence’ using a ‘bogus’ company and ‘unrealistically high’ returns of anything from 70 per cent to 120 per cent.

  Fifty-five minutes later the opening was over and court adjourned.

  ‘You are going to have a field day!’ Day quietly told the press bench as he walked past on his way out.

  £ £ £

  ‘I thought I was more attractive than that,’ Page remarked to his wife on the morning rush-hour train into London two days later when the trial resumed. He was looking at his picture in the newspaper. Laura had no time to stroke her husband’s ego, even though it was his thirty-eighth birthday. She was too fixated on what her twin was going to say from the witness box.

  Laura’s parents were not coming to court. They didn’t want to take sides and were worn down by the split between their daughters. The DPS was no longer pursuing Laura’s mum but in the run-up to the trial she tried to be a peacekeeper between the warring twins. They would pass messages through her and on one occasion the DPS had to warn Laura to back off because Lisa felt intimidated.

  She hated the way Laura had treated her after lending the couple £35,000 from her divorce settlement. When Lisa needed it back to start a new life with her new man there were excuses. When £30,000 finally came back, Laura told her, ‘You’re lucky you got that, if it was down to Paul you’d have got nothing’. Her mother made up the rest by secretly taking a bank loan.

  That morning, Lisa strode purposely into the court wearing all black. She scanned the courtroom for her twin on the way to the witness box, a small table and chair straight ahead and to the right of the judge. The
defendants were allowed to sit together outside the dock behind their legal teams on the other side of the court nearest the jury. Laura had to crane her neck as Lisa walked in. Their eyes locked fleetingly but neither woman betrayed any emotion.

  Day capitalized on the drama of sister turning on sister when he asked Lisa to explain the fall-out. She described how Page had duped her into becoming secretary for ULPD and the concerns she had as a single mum that it would affect her working tax credits. Her parents had ‘pressured’ her to loan the defendants money, she told the jury.

  It was an accomplished performance. The defence had little to go on but what they had was met with defiant responses. Not once did Lisa look at her sister, including when she left the witness box seventy-five minutes later with a smile for her waiting boyfriend.

  Next up was Adam McGregor. The two defence barristers hoped to score major points with a tag team approach to cross-examining ‘Bald eagle’ on his finances and antics at Buckingham Palace.

  Day, however, had already deliberately undermined his witness during the opening speech two days earlier.

  Unsurprisingly, when the DPS investigation into the fraud got under way, Mr McGregor was arrested on suspicion of complicity in the fraud and interviewed under caution. He gave a convoluted explanation for his conduct: he regarded money paid into his bank account as his own; spread betting was separate from property development and was just a means of hedging; lenders were fully protected by a large portfolio owned by Mr Page. It is unlikely that these notions were products of Mr McGregor’s own mind. Mr Page had managed to dupe Mr McGregor into questionable conduct, which could have got Mr McGregor into serious trouble. In the event, Mr McGregor was not charged with any offence.

  His comments to the jury had left the impression that Day half believed McGregor should also be in the dock for twice taking investment money ostensibly for property and putting it into a spread-betting account for Page.80

  McGregor had been promoted to sergeant in 2006 and was now working at Westminster police station. He glared at the defendants on his way to the witness box.

  Day’s template for getting evidence from his witnesses was to allow them to explain how they got involved with Page, who they had brought into the scheme and how excuses for non-payment began and affected their lives.

  McGregor warmed to the task. He told the jury he was still paying back investors. Of his own circumstances, he said:

  I trusted Paul and to my detriment I didn’t for a second think that he was lying. I thought at some point he would be true to his word … I lost my house. I had a nice big four-bedroom house, which I was forced to sell because I had so many debts. It was a choice of selling my house or going bankrupt.

  He admitted there was a blurring between property and spread betting when it came to his own investments. ‘As long as I got that money back at a later date that was all I was concerned about … I didn’t ask for documentation because I trusted him … I’ve had money from Page, I’m not going to say I didn’t.’

  The more important point was what he had done with other people’s money. Under cross-examination by Rupert Pardoe, Laura’s barrister, the jury was told that McGregor had earned up to £3000 per month working at Buckingham Palace and £4000 if he was sent to Balmoral.

  However, between May 2003 and May 2006, £310,000, almost a decade’s worth of police income, had gone through his bank account for spread betting from investors who thought they were investing in property.

  McGregor admitted he was ‘very naïve and very stupid’ to have done this, but Page was ‘very charismatic’ although he accepted that ‘greed’ had also played its part. He said he never refused a request by Page to transfer money, didn’t bother to keep records and was aware that other bank accounts, possibly controlled by policemen, were being used in this way. He admitted that he had withdrawn investors’ cash to give to other investors or to pay for their holidays.

  ‘So in overview, at Paul Page’s instructions you received and put out more than £300,000 to spread-betting organizations?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘On Paul Page’s instructions you withdrew cash sums to give to those who contributed to the investment scheme?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You made specific representations to investors?’

  ‘I approached colleagues, friends and family members.’

  ‘You made it clear you thought it was a good thing?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘No records were kept of money coming in or out of your account?’

  ‘Other than my bank accounts.’

  ‘You say you’ve done all this because you utterly trusted Paul Page?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely.’

  ‘You say all prospect of criminal and discipline [proceedings] came to an end, you got a clean slate [in 2008]?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘At the end of this the outcome for you was you were promoted to sergeant.’

  It was then the turn of Page’s barrister, John Cooper, to cross-examine McGregor about high jinks at the palace. First blood was an admission that the witness had provided an armed police escort into London for Anjam Kahn carrying £35,000 of syndicate money. The jury tittered when McGregor tried to explain that this wasn’t an inappropriate use of police resources because the escort was only for a few minutes and he was on a refreshment break.

  McGregor accepted the proposition that his job at SO14 was to keep the Royal Family safe and secure. But out of the blue, as if he knew it was coming, he admitted having fallen asleep on post in the middle of the night with the radiator on. He agreed that there was a ring-round system to alert officers when the sergeant was doing the rounds.

  These were easy scores. The prize would be getting McGregor to admit he had sat on the Queen’s throne. Cooper had come up with the wheeze of cross-examining while holding what looked like a photograph in his hand.

  McGregor happily agreed it would be unacceptable for a SO14 officer to sit on the throne with one’s feet and thumbs up in a comical pose, but said he couldn’t recall anything like that happening during his five years at BP.

  However, moments later, with a little nudging from Cooper, McGregor suddenly coughed that he may well have sat on the throne, but not in a comical way and certainly without causing any criminal damage to the seat of power.

  ‘There are hundreds of rooms in Buckingham Palace always empty … I may have sat on the throne,’ he told the gobsmacked jury.

  ‘That would certainly be inappropriate and disrespectful?’ Cooper probed.

  ‘This maybe at 2 am,’ McGregor replied.

  ‘The time matters?’ Cooper enquired, giving one of his theatrical semi-turns to the jury.

  ‘It’s not an ideal scenario. I don’t recall doing it. I’m not going to sit here and say I’ve not done it.’

  ‘Photos?’ asked Cooper with the piece of card in his hand.

  ‘I don’t recall.’

  ‘Could you have done?’

  ‘Possibly … I’m not going to say I may not have done that because I might have done that in the past.’

  ‘Why do it?’

  ‘Perhaps to say you’ve done that, maybe to your grandchildren.’81

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  The throne admission made all the newspapers and was the talk of SO14 officers waiting to be cross-examined. They were minded into court by a representative of the Royal Protection Squad.

  First on was Constable Mark Copley. He was still at St James’s Palace. Asked by Day if he or his wife would have invested £155,000 in spread betting, Copley said: ‘I’m not a gambling person and my wife doesn’t gamble on religious grounds. So no, we wouldn’t gamble.’

  The repossession of the barns by Mortgage Guarantee had a devastating effect on his family, he told the jury, especially as ‘all our life savings were with Page as well’.

  Cooper laid a trap, which Copley fell into like a green officer not used to giving evidence in court. It concerned the letter the witn
ess had written to Page in 2005 after Copley’s building society had raised concerns over the highly unorthodox financial arrangement to buy one of the barns. Copley had claimed to his bank that his £155,000 investment with Page was a deposit on the barn. A further £160,000 had to be borrowed from the bank to complete the purchase. But the ‘deposit’ had not been paid to a solicitor or ULPD and the bank suspected money laundering.

  From the witness box, Copley assured the jury there was never a concern in anyone’s mind that the barn purchase might involve the laundering of dirty money. But when Cooper produced the letter, it must have dawned on the police officer that the evidence he had just given was at odds with what he wrote in 2005.

  Copley looked uneasy as he read the letter. It took him an embarrassingly long time to admit that he had written it with his wife’s knowledge. The hiatus was understandable when considering this troubling sentence: ‘I think [the building society] suspect that we are using dirty money as part of the cost of the barn and the “extra” £45,000 is dirty and you are laundering it into the deal.’

  Not only did the letter contradict Copley’s court evidence it also showed that he had been willing to dupe the building society by offering to provide them with ‘changed or backdated’ documents and had stressed that the two Royal Protection officers needed to ‘tell the same story’ if it was Page’s intention to put £45,000 from elsewhere through the barns purchase.

  Copley’s conduct was never subsequently investigated by the DPS. But it must have raised questions in the jury’s mind about whether the line between spread betting and property investment was really as sharply defined as Copley was suggesting.

  Constable Surinder Mudhar had left Jimmy’s and was now at Buckingham Palace when he gave evidence. He too had invested in the barns without going there first and knew Page had bought the property with a large mortgage.

  Mudhar said he was ‘confused’ about the money he had given and received during his investment period. He admitted it was possible that he took a cut for transferring stranger’s money through his bank account, including from a former BP officer who was in Australia doing a diving course at the time.