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

by Michael Gillard

  Page next turned to the Wingrave briefing. Prentice put the blame squarely back on the DPS. He said the briefing was not overly detailed but recalled recording later in a note references to ‘large amounts of cash’ going through Page’s account but ‘no criminal or improper activities’ revealed.

  Prentice said the DPS did not mention the possible risk of a gambling-addicted SO14 officer in hock to bookies, and therefore vulnerable to a corrupt approach from criminals.

  ‘DS Wingrave was surprised you didn’t do anything.’

  ‘He’s got a right to his own opinion,’ Prentice replied. He said his chief concern was whether Page should be armed on his return from extended leave and be in a post that could ‘bring embarrassment to the Met’.

  ‘I was told to move my operation away from the palace to avoid embarrassment,’ Page explained. Prentice said he was unaware of the Currency Club or that Page had well exceeded his leave period.

  The last line of cross-examination produced a remarkable exchange between the former constable and his boss.

  ‘Have you ever covered up anything at SO14?’ Page asked.

  ‘Such as what?’ Prentice enquired.

  ‘The forging of firearms tickets?’ Page was referring to claims that some officers at SO14 had apparently forged their certificate to carry a weapon and when discovered by management it was covered up to avoid scandal.

  ‘I can’t remember,’ Prentice replied.

  ‘I know of two who were moved.’

  ‘I had 400 officers over six to seven years.’

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  The prosecution case ended when Prentice left the witness box. Clearly there was evidence against Page; some of it came from his own mouth.

  But Laura’s team believed none of the evidence from prosecution witnesses had proved her guilt and told the judge he should therefore acquit. Pardoe also argued that earlier comments made by Rivlin amounted to a formal undertaking to let Laura walk. The judge reluctantly agreed and on 29 June she was acquitted.

  That evening, Page told me: ‘I don’t give a fuck anymore, Laura’s off.’ She had been terrified of going to prison. Now she could dedicate herself to home life, which had suffered greatly during the trial. The family’s benefits had been stopped and the electricity company had put them on a meter for non-payment of bills. Laura was once again having to tap up her mother.

  More importantly, James had been excluded from school and was playing up at home. Page realized he needed to spend more time with his eldest son as the couple had openly discussed in front of all the boys that it would be a miracle if Dad got off.

  Page was only going to call one witness in his defence: himself. He had worked out his ‘final sales pitch’ to the jury but the following day jettisoned a structured speech in favour of a freestyle machine-gun delivery that gripped the jury for two hours. It was like watching an amateur underwater escapologist trying to wriggle free against the clock. Entertaining, sad and ultimately hopeless.

  Throughout the trial, the jury had picked up hints that Page had something to say about Prince Andrew. Twelve minutes into his flow about the rule-breaking culture at SO14 he mentioned the Royal Family. ‘It was not just the police who misused their position, members of the Royal Family also did,’ he told intrigued jurors. Without naming which prince, Page described how ‘instructions were given to let women in at certain hours of night without being put in the book’.

  Like a jack-in-the-box in a black cape, Douglas Day QC sprung up and said to the judge: ‘I’m not sure this has got any relevance.’

  ‘It’s about senior breaches of security and being told by senior members of the Royal Family to do it,’ Page replied.

  Rivlin agreed with Day but Page didn’t care anymore about courtroom etiquette.

  ‘If you are told to break the rules, we broke them and that happened on frequent occasions,’ he told the jury.

  Later on, when Page was again head to head with Rivlin, he raised the spectre of Prince Andrew. ‘I’m fighting for my own corner now, the gloves are off. I’m going to make substantial allegations against Prince Andrew that I’ve seen with my own eyes and if I have to drag [other officers] here to prove it I will … it will go down like a bomb,’ he told the judge.

  When Rivlin slapped him down, Page took off his belt and tie and told the judge in which case he better send him down for contempt of court. The judge suggested a tea break instead.86

  Page returned to bait Day that the prosecutor and DPS had only got a ‘snapshot’ of what had gone on in the Currency Club. There were other investors and bank accounts. ‘You only got the tip of the iceberg’, he said. Day seized on the comment to ask if Page was hiding money in an offshore bank account.

  ‘Me personally? Not a bean. I’ve got nothing … If I had [other accounts] I would have given it to other people. I don’t want to be in this situation … I want to get it over and done with,’ Page explained.

  Day told Page he’d sought out new victims to feed his ‘gambling addiction’. This was the first time the prosecution had suggested a motive. ‘In my eyes,’ Page replied, ‘at no stage was I addicted to gambling. But the [DPS] did decide that and said I needed to be stopped but did anyone stop me? No they didn’t, Mr Day … I’ve done wrong and I’ve disgraced my unit but I didn’t intentionally [do it].’

  Page said only a few close colleagues, he named McGregor, knew the truth about his betting record but other investors never asked. ‘There was so much money swilling around people were drunk with money. They didn’t want to ask.’ Day pointed out that if Page thought he was doing nothing wrong why was he burning syndicate documents. ‘I was dealing in cash, I was paranoid that the taxman would come in and investigate. I thought I had done something wrong in not paying tax and giving people cash,’ he replied.

  This was Day’s cue to draw attention to a particular doodle that had escaped the bonfire. The jury was directed to their bundle of court documents and Day started reading: ‘United Piss Your Savings Up The Wall. Invest With Us And I’ll Kill You When You Want Your Money Back.’

  Page knew it was game over. ‘Yes, mine,’ he said taking ownership of the doodle like a pair of handcuffs. ‘I am pissed, depressed, can’t give any money back … By that time I was on the floor, drinking daily, twenty-four-seven. I didn’t know if I was coming or going.’

  Then in a final flourish, he added: ‘I’m here now.’

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  Fifty days of trial were over. All that remained were speeches from the prosecution and Page, and a summing up by the judge, then the jury could start its deliberations.

  Page necked a can of Stella on his way into court for Day’s closing speech. It was Friday, 7 July 2009 and Laura was still accompanying him on the walk from Fenchurch Street station along the Thames, past Traitors’ Gate of the Tower of London. She hated the commute because of her husband’s death breath from the previous night’s drinking. Today he just smelt of stale booze and fear.

  ULPD was an illusion designed to ‘rescue’ Page’s family from a financial bind and ‘feed’ his gambling, Day told the jury. Investors bought into the illusion because of the lifestyle Page maintained from ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’.

  There was no conspicuous consumption like you see in many single-handed frauds, but a nice house with an expensive car on the drive to maintain the illusion of success. ‘All it needed was for one investor to ask some awkward questions and the whole edifice would have come tumbling down,’ said Day. But his closing speech steered clear of explaining why no one ever piped up.

  Page was dreading his closing speech to the jury on Monday. Plans to take the boys to the Essex coast for their last weekend together were abandoned for making rabbit traps in the fields behind Chafford Hundred.

  Page’s speech turned into a ninety-minute largely incoherent ramble with few periods of lucidity, some invention and patent lies.

  ‘Was I the devious character, slimy money-grabbing, money-spending person I’ve been made
out to be? No, I wasn’t at any stage … I’ve admitted I’ve broken the rules,’ he began.

  I want this over. I’m tired. … I’ve been accused of being a loser. I am a loser but how much has the police wasted … They had ample opportunity to stop it … There’s a constant thing that happens in the Met. It’s called shirking your responsibilities. Not one senior officer came here and took responsibility for their investigation. Not one … This mess was kept in house … The Met do what they do best: they cover up. I know, because I’ve done it … The culture [at SO14]: you cover stuff up. Do what you are told, keep your mouth shut and head down.

  Page raised a laugh when he said those doing the covering up would no doubt be rewarded with an invitation to one of the Queen’s garden parties at Buckingham Palace.

  Next he turned his attention to his investors who’d turned on him.

  How many property companies give a cash return? What property company can produce these types of returns? The Sharmas £11,000 in a day for investment in the barns … Where did they think I was getting returns from – a set of barns that were [not completed] … The money has gone. They knew it and everyone knows it … I tried to do what I thought was best. It went wrong. I blew it. I burned out. You can either close the door or open it. I will always say whatever happens that I’ve not been given a fair trial. That’s all I’ve got to say, my Lord.

  The three of us got into the lift and pressed the button for the ground floor. As the doors closed, the soothing automated voice said: ‘Going down.’ No one laughed.

  At a bar by the train station we all drank our fill. Page said he had ‘no regrets’ about how he ran his defence. Laura joked that she had been secretly preparing his going-away bag.

  ‘That’s some cold shit, love!’

  ‘It’s good to be prepared,’ Laura replied.

  Rivlin took the next three days to sum up the ‘somewhat unusual case’ to the jury. Fraud trials are usually dry and document heavy, he told them, but ‘this is more down to earth. It’s about people and their experiences and whether they’ve been telling the truth.’

  The judge made clear it was not a defence to claim some investors had stolen money or that the Met should have intervened earlier or to use as an excuse one’s alcoholism and gambling addiction.

  As for prosecution witnesses Rahul Sharma and Anjam Khan, ‘it goes without saying that anyone who will threaten serious harm against another person is behaving in a thoroughly reprehensible way and that should never be condoned,’ Rivlin told the jury. And yes, Beatrice Humby had ‘feigned’ a mental breakdown to get her money back and others had got loans on ‘false premises’.

  No, Bimal Lodhia was ‘not an honest witness’ and therefore shouldn’t be relied on. Yes, some other witnesses blamed Steve Phillips, but they all blamed Page; however, it was for the jury to decide if the DPS had been fair.

  Rivlin reminded them that a senior former SO14 boss had confirmed there was an officer with a steroids problem, officers were charged with drink driving and that large sums of cash had been transported by police escort. In addition, McGregor had admitted falling asleep on duty, sitting on the throne and being disciplined and fined seventeen years ago for ‘falsehood and prevarication’.

  But the crucial question, said Rivlin, was did investors put money into property or spread betting? It was for the jury to decide if Page’s returns were too good to be true.

  You may think it is human nature for people to be attracted by a bargain or good deal. You may think that if someone was minded to make money out of others, they would know that. But also there are people who can talk the talk, especially if a police officer is at the helm of an impressive company at the time of a property boom.

  Page, he said, had told so many lies that it was difficult to keep track of them. Some were not evidence of guilt but others, the prosecution claimed, were indicative of a guilty mind.

  On Wednesday, 15 July, Rivlin sent the jury out and told them not to come back unless they were unanimous. Page was planning to shave his head in time for the verdict. ‘I’m tired. Laura’s off, I want closure. I was obsessed … The truth is they trusted me and I fucked up … I was running the show. It went tits up and it’s my fault. I never … I was good Old Bill. I realize I was an obsessive compulsive,’ he told me while we waited for a verdict.

  The next day, on their way into court, Page had been drinking since 6 am and was being particularly nasty to Laura. On the commuter train, between sips of white wine from a plastic bottle, he threw insults at his wife. ‘You’re shit. You never supported me. You’re shit in bed.’

  Laura knew he didn’t mean it. Her husband was afraid and weak and could never handle the pressure. She always picked up the pieces for him and everyone else in their family.

  After lunch and a few beers, the usher announced that the jury had reached a verdict. ‘You know what’s going to happen,’ Page told Laura from the dock, which was separated from the rest of the court by Perspex panels. Page had already warned his wife not to show any emotion in front of the assembled DPS officers.

  After just over three hours, the jury found him guilty of fraudulent trading. Laura started crying as Page handed his cufflinks and tie to a security guard. He looked at his wife in a way that said ‘Stop crying!’ As Page was taken to the cells under the court he mouthed to Laura, ‘This is the end’.

  It wasn’t. The following day he was returned from prison to hear the verdict on the second count: witness intimidation. Not guilty.

  Rivlin had received a number of ‘impact’ statements from victims of the fraud. Former SO14 officer Lenny Thiel had lost over £200,000 and was now living with his mother. He wrote:

  I hate my life now, it is a miserable existence and I can see no way out. I wasted £40,000 of other people’s money. I struggle to come to terms with this. It is my fault. I really did give him my last penny. He took my money, any prospects that I might have and my self-respect. He must have a callous streak a mile wide and I missed it.

  Constable Surinder Mudhar wrote how he lost the money set aside for his children’s future and now had to work harder at Buckingham Palace but found it difficult to focus on his job. Bristol publican David Williams said he lost his business and homes as a result of investing with Page. Meanwhile, Nicola Phillips told the judge how she and Steve came close to separating and how she became depressed and reclusive. ‘I felt embarrassed and guilty due to other investors being friends of mine.’

  On Page’s behalf, the judge was told how much he had lost. ‘In 1998 Paul Page was a man whose life was on the up. He’d made his way from being a lifeguard in a leisure centre to becoming a police officer. He had skills that allowed him to progress. Self-defence skills made him a man in demand.

  Today everything is in ruins. He’s lost his career. He’s gone from being a provider to prisoner. He’s hurt his family. They’ve lost their home. And the reason for this massive fall from grace he knows is his own failings. Page caught the bug of shares. As far as he was concerned he had a talent, a talent to make money. Spread betting was chasing the dream. It’s plain that this is no more than a form of gambling to which he became completely ensnared and enamoured and certainly that which destroyed this man. The lure of money completely buried him. He was a true believer blind to reality, blind to risk. Now his family are in a small flat on state benefits. On the day of his conviction his father had a stroke and is still in hospital. Page knows he bears responsibility for the damage to those who invested and those he loves.’

  Judge Rivlin sentenced Page on 30 July 2009 to six years. He told him the Ponzi fraud was

  breath-taking, relentless and callous and, by a process of countless lies and very cunning manipulation, you managed to create what amounted to a false world of property development, and using this to deceive a large number of innocent victims, you tricked many of them into parting with what most people would regard as huge sums of money. Nearly all of them have been seriously affected, some have been so crippl
ed financially that your fraud led to their virtual financial ruin. I’ve no doubt your personal gain was in excess of £2.5m all of which the prosecution are satisfied you have lost.

  Rivlin was angered by Page’s lack of remorse.

  Underpinning your desire not to go down was the extremely vindictive attitude that if you did you would ensure that those who had the temerity to give evidence against you would suffer most. You accused investors of deceiving their wives, entering into sham agreements with you, making you sign false documents. You accused [the DPS] of dishonesty, gross impropriety and unfairness. All of this rebounded on you – as it must have become clear to the jury, each of these descriptions really applies to you.

  While Page left the court for Her Majesty’s Prison Wandsworth, Rivlin made a point of commending the Operation Aserio team.

  However, outside the court, the jurors were overheard disagreeing with the judge’s praise for the DPS. One juror recalled telling a senior DPS officer in the pub after they had given their verdict that the investigation was ‘corrupt’.87

  Afterword

  At Her Majesty’s pleasure

  In his sentencing remarks, Judge Geoffrey Rivlin found four aggravating features to Paul Page’s Ponzi scheme: it was a blatant fraud, it involved a lot of money, it took place over a long period of time and the human cost was significant.

  ‘I regard this as being an extremely grave case,’ the senior judge told Page before jailing him in July 2009. ‘If ever there was a case which demonstrates that fraud can have dire consequences to the ordinary man, it’s this one.’

  Rivlin’s remarks could as easily have been made to the bosses of any number of City banks, hedge funds, insurance companies and credit agencies for their global Ponzi-type deception and market manipulation. Only no senior suit looked remotely like gripping the rail at Southwark Crown Court, where the UK’s major frauds are tried.