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

by Michael Gillard

  38 Three of the five were Andy Boucher, David Jones and Elaine Davey. On 7 February, Boucher called Page who said he was at his lawyers and couldn’t talk but asked to borrow £40 to unclamp his car. Amazingly, Boucher transferred the money to the NatWest account of Terry Page. ‘I don’t know why but I agreed as I felt that I had to keep this man on my side if I was ever to receive any of my monies back,’ Boucher explained in his witness statement.

  39 According to prosecution figures, Gerry McCallion got back almost £20,000 of his £68,000 investment. His girlfriend lost all of hers.

  40 Page’s leave was coming to an end on 26 July 2005. In early June, SO14 human resources asked if he was coming back to work. Page replied positively on 15 June.

  41 The others are Jason Molen, Rob Pearce and Lenny Thiel.

  42 Mahaffy had a hearing listed for January 2006 at Basildon Crown Court.

  43 Humby told the jury he was playing along to get Page talking and was not like he came across on the tape.

  44 Lenny Thiel and Rob Pearce.

  45 Molen emailed Page on 11 December 2005 asking for his money to pay a hospital bill and help pay off his son’s student loan. The email mentioned the prospect of putting a charge on the barns. Page emailed back: ‘I have to deal with a world of shit … I am making efforts to arrange payments for you all.’ To which Molen responded: ‘All anyone wanted was reassurance.’

  46 Humby denied to the jury that he had recorded this conversation.

  47 The owner of the premises leased by Wicked Wardrobe was owed £10,000 in rent. Laura, he discovered, was sub-letting a space in the back of the shop to a tailor who paid her in cash.

  48 Mark Copley told the jury that he knew Mortgage Guarantee was the lender on the barns because someone from the finance firm would regularly visit the site. However, he denied that Page had told him about the mortgage.

  49 Phillips maintained at trial that he believed he was promoting a property investment not a spread-betting scheme.

  50 Page made sure Marsh got a £5000 cash return quickly. But no sooner had Phillips handed it over then Page was on the phone asking Marsh to hand it back so he could pay Anne Carter her return. Amazingly, Marsh agreed and gave Phillips the cash. However, later that afternoon the Bristol agent returned the £5000 to Marsh with the explanation that Carter had decided to reinvest.

  51 McGregor ended up repaying most of Matthew Bainton’s £10,000 investment.

  52 Pennell transferred £10,000 to Phillips’s bank account on 8 June 2006 and put ‘loan’ as a reference.

  Chapter 15

  Death threats, guns and gangsters

  53 Matthew Smith knew Baree before BAT from another travel agency and had already met Page as a police officer. Smith approached Baree to invest and was shown the brochure. He said he didn’t know Baree was the finance director of ULPD. In July 2005, Smith invested £20,000 by transfer to Baree who put it in his CMC account. Weeks later, Page gave Smith his money back plus a £11,000 cash return. Smith reinvested another £30,000 and his brother-in-law, Mike Beatty, put in £10,000 in September and October 2005. There were no contracts. The money went to Laura Page’s ULPD account.

  54 Baree, Solanki and Lodhia made these admissions and denials during the trial.

  55 Baree’s witness statements (29.3.07, 31.3.07, 4.4.07, 19.4.07, 22.5.07, 4.6.07).

  56 Saeed Khan admitted during the trial that he understood his £10,000 payment was ‘a drink’ or ‘back-hander’ for an employee of the finance firm behind the barns. Saeed transferred the money to Steve Phillips’s HSBC bank account, who transferred it to CMC. In his witness statement, Fahim Baree described the purpose of his £10,000 payment was to ‘sweeten Mortgage Guarantee’. Khan and Baree were never investigated for this. The Mortgage Guarantee employee falsely accused of soliciting bribes complained about Page to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

  57 Mick Hickman refused to answer any questions about his involvement with Page.

  58 During the trial, Rahul Sharma gave details about the call to Laura and accepted it was a ‘death threat’.

  59 In her witness statement (11.06.07) Gina Plowman, CMC client relations manager, calculated losses of over £1.1 million on just six accounts that Page controlled. £397,000 was lost on his own CMC account, £337,000 on Baree’s, £139,000 on the Phillips account and £200,000 on those opened by Page’s father and mother-in-law.

  60 Anne Carter, David and Marcus Williams, and their friends Esther Smith and Jeff Pennell. Marcus Williams had reported the matter to Essex Police who referred him to Avon and Somerset Police on 25 October 2006. Six days later a crime report named Page and Phillips as suspects. Carter, David Williams, Esther Smith and Adrian Marsh said in their witness statements to Operation Aserio that they believed Phillips was part of the deception.

  61 Thiel told the jury that he didn’t notice the date of May 2005 until much later. He signed another strange loan agreement, apparently to placate Laura’s bank over a recent £80,000 deposit. Thiel wrote in this agreement: ‘I have agreed to make a personal loan of £80,000 to my good friend Laura Page on 21 November … to be repaid at my discretion.’

  Chapter 16

  Royal Protection: the Osmans

  62 Before the killings, Potter, the teacher, had spread false rumours that Osman junior and his neighbour, a fellow student, were in a gay relationship. Consumed with jealousy, Potter changed his name to Osman by deed poll, something he had done before when infatuated with another schoolboy at a different north London school. A psychiatrist had examined Potter and described his relationship with Osman as ‘reprehensibly suspect’ but said he should remain teaching at the school. Then the Osmans had their windows put in and tyres slashed. After a further psychiatric assessment the teacher was transferred to another school. Attacks on Osman’s property continued. Potter was also suspected of deliberately ramming a car with Osman’s neighbour and school friend inside. The teacher claimed his foot had slipped on the pedals. The police continued to deny receiving warnings from school authorities. Potter, it emerged, had told the education authorities he was going to do a ‘sort of Hungerford’, a reference to Michael Ryan’s massacre months earlier in August 1987 of sixteen people before he turned his automatic weapon on himself.

  63 In 2008, the Crown Prosecution Service wrote to Page’s solicitors that: ‘Paul Page’s business interest was not reviewed after it was first approved (in November 2003) and the questionnaire that should be completed each year before the annual review is not on the file and does not appear to have been submitted.’

  64 The judge ordered the prosecution to make inquiries with the DPS about who was behind the threat to Page. Anjam Khan was named in a prosecution note disclosed to the court. Page’s solicitors were also trying to establish links between Khan and the Essex underworld figures who they claimed had invested £20,000 in the scheme. Khan, who denies any connection with the Essex underworld, was interviewed under caution on 31 March 2009. He denied any involvement in a plot to harm Page and his family. No further action was taken.

  Chapter 17

  Royal hunt of the Sun

  65 Page had been trying to return to paid police work since late 2005, but his application for an armed officer’s position at London City Airport was turned down on 14 February 2006. Two days later, the SO14 human resources manager wrote offering the option of a five-year career break. But Page ducked several meetings until 20 July. The official told him he could no longer remain on special leave, as this was only meant to be for a year and he was well over. It was agreed he would have to apply for a career break until 31 December. The official also demanded a report from Page about what he had been up to because there was nothing on file since 2004. Page never produced the report and no document was ever produced showing he was on a career break at the time of the Lakeside gun incident.

  66 At Page’s trial, Lodhia denied he had kept any investors’ money.

  67 The Met also paid for Page to have counselling. But he sa
id it didn’t help him much.

  68 Nigel Gore didn’t make a witness statement.

  Chapter 18

  Annus horribilis

  69 Page said of the ledgers: ‘The first one had names of all the people – civilians and police and military and [Royal] Household, chefs and cooks – names of all the people who put money in, how much they put in, what their deals were. The second one was the holidays – who’s had what holidays.’ The third ledger contained members who had use of a leased car, he said.

  70 During the Osman Gold group meeting the Met discussed rehousing Page. Shortly after handing over documents to the DPS, Anjam Khan went to Page’s house on 24 March to check it had been repossessed. He was considering buying it to recoup his losses. When the property was sold, Jim Mahaffy recovered £27,000 and Mike Tinsley recovered £40,000.

  71 On 20 June 2006, Baree asked CMC for more time. They had been waiting for money since November 2005 and were now threatening solicitors. Baree wrote: ‘I am on the verge of losing everything or gaining much from an investment made last year on property, however I have a third party involved who has complicated matters and I may need to take further action against him to retrieve my money.’ On 31 July 2006 he emailed CMC that he could not clear the debt because the re-financing of a development property investment had fallen through. ‘I am desperately trying to resolve this without having to go legal. It’s a very awkward situation as he is a close friend and he has used my remortgaged money so I cannot even draw any more equity to cover my debts. This situation is causing immense stress and anguish in my family as I face the possibility of selling my flat. I have dependents and I will do what is necessary to recover my money and pay my debtors. At this stage I have no other means to submit even a token gesture as my credit cards cannot be extended and my wages are just covering my two mortgages.’ By early 2007, Baree still hadn’t named Page or provided CMC with the December 2005 letter indemnifying him for the gambling debt. He did say that the person responsible was awaiting trial on a ‘sensitive’ matter. Finally, in late March 2007, he wrote naming his former best friend as responsible for the gambling debt. ‘Mr Page was known to me as a trusted childhood friend and has used my personal details to spread bet with your selves [sic]. I have been advised not to protect him any longer and he has admitted the debt in the supporting letter. I apologise for the inconvenience that this may cause but Mr Page has caused me extreme financial hardship and I cannot cover the debt.’

  72 The News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks admitted that the newspaper paid police officers for information when questioned by a committee of MPs in March 2003. The tabloid had gone to great lengths to mislead Operation Caryatid that the accessing of royal voicemails was the work of a rogue reporter. Meanwhile, Operation Aserio was building a rogue-officer narrative, which would protect its senior officers and the Palace from criticism.

  73 A recently retired Beck told me by phone on 22 July 2011: ‘It’s history, at the end of the day I did something [invest] that I thought “OK, in for a penny in for a pound”. It didn’t come to much so I didn’t worry about it. Paul phoned me and said “Do you know someone?” And I can’t remember who it was. We used to come into contact with loads of people from the press, I have done through my career from Downing Street in 1985.’ Beck admitted being a member of the Currency Club, but said the Page scandal ‘didn’t affect me’. Others had been ‘done quite badly’. Beck said he had put in some capital, not that much, over a two-month period and the return was ‘next to nothing’ so he didn’t get further involved. He knew that a lot of the witnesses against Page were from St James’s Palace but said the DPS never approached him. He said he had never taken money from any journalist and only the PPOs had access to the Green Book and must have been ‘desperate’ if they sold it for just £1000. He put the phone down when asked if he ever had access to other phone books in the control room at St James’s. Beck has never been investigated in connection with any of these events.

  In his 2014 trial for allegedly paying policemen for information, Clive Goodman denied that ‘David Farish’ and ‘Ian Anderson’ were Met officers. At the time of writing, Goodman is awaiting a retrial.

  74 During the fraud trial, Khan denied any involvement in the kidnap plot.

  75 Anjam Khan contacted me after seeing my Sunday Times Insight article on 6 July 2008 about the scandal. We met on 29 July. Khan wanted money for his story. He got nothing. Page said Khan had asked him for £250,000 to undermine the threats to kill prosecution. Khan told me he had offered to withdraw his evidence in return for his money back.

  Chapter 19

  God save the Prince

  76 The Page story bore many of the trademarks of a similar chancer centuries earlier whose antics were described by Charles Mackay in Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. John Law came from nowhere to beguile and rob the establishment with his bogus housing and gambling schemes. ‘He soon became a regular frequenter of the gaming houses, and by pursuing a certain plan, based upon some abstruse calculation of chance, he contrived to gain considerable sums. All the gamblers envied his luck, and many made it a point to watch his play, and stake their money on the same chances … The extraordinary present fortune dazzled his eyes, and prevented him from seeing the evil day that would burst over his head, when once, from any cause or other, the alarm was sounded … After he had been for nine years exposed to the dangerous attractions of the gay life he was leading, he became an irrecoverable gambler. As his love of play increased in violence, it diminished in prudence. Great losses were only to be repaired by still greater ventures, and one unhappy day he lost more than he could repay without mortgaging his family estate. To that step he was driven at last.’

  77 Erin Arvedlund, Madoff: The Man Who Stole $65 Billion, Penguin, 2009.

  78 Madoff was arrested on 11 December 2008 for America’s biggest financial fraud. On 12 March 2009 he pleaded guilty. Madoff was suspected of secreting funds in London and Switzerland.

  79 Michael Gillard, ‘CPS acts to strike out claims about royal protection squad made by former officer’, The Times, 5 December 2008. A spokesman for Prince Andrew refused to comment on the matters contained in Page’s statement.

  Chapter 20

  God save the Queen

  80 A source close to Day told me that when the prosecutor took over the case he was ‘surprised’ at the decision not to charge McGregor and questioned whether the DPS had put the full facts before the CPS.

  81 McGregor was never disciplined for any of these admissions.

  Met Sergeant Steve Tree, who McGregor had brought in after a round of golf, told the jury, ‘I blame Adam. I don’t know how much he did and didn’t know.’ Tree accepted that his £60,000 investment for a 30 per cent return was down to greed. ‘It’s that old cliché: if it seems too good to be true, it is too good to be true.’

  82 James Mahaffy, Gerry McCallion, Lenny Thiel, Surinder Mudhar and Adam McGregor all admitted involvement in the movement of cash returns. Phil Williams claimed there was a special system whereby friends and family members of Royal Protection officers would be allowed to park in the palace on weekends to go out on the town or shopping. He said it was an ‘unwritten rule’.

  83 Before the trial, Baree told me on 30 July 2008: ‘I’ve got family members that really are out for him [Page] at the moment, and I said, “You can’t do that because it’s going through the system. Let it go through the system.”’

  Mubasher Hussain and Abishake Gill told the jury they had no involvement in threats against Page and his family. Gill said, crying: ‘I’ve lost my marriage over this. I can’t see my son. I don’t care about the money.’

  84 A relative of Lodhia, Mrs Madavani, told the jury she was waiting for the trial to end before making a criminal complaint against Lodhia for the alleged theft of £27,000.

  85 DS Mark Beckett told the jury he hadn’t gone to Bristol to keep the focus on Page, even though investors there had also implic
ated Phillips in deception. Beckett denied Phillips was treated with ‘kid gloves’ and said Orchard had made the decision not to treat him as a suspect.

  86 The prosecution believed Mick Hickman had lost £100,000. He never made a witness statement. Page warned Day during the trial that if he continued to ask questions about his relationship with Hickman, he would start talking about Prince Andrew. Rivlin warned Page that the Prince’s antics were irrelevant to the case. Page spat back that the same applied to Hickman. Consequently, his involvement with Page was never fully explored in court. At the time of writing he was still employed by the Met and refused an interview request.

  87 The jury were unanimous on their first vote that Page was guilty of fraudulent trading. However, they felt that some prosecution witnesses also should have been in the dock. They didn’t believe that every witness had invested in property only. They were unimpressed by most DPS officers’ evidence and did not believe the prosecution had made its case of money laundering against Laura Page. They felt that others should have been charged on the same evidence.

  Acknowledgements

  My first thanks go to renaissance man, Alistair Fraser, for his support, insight and the inspired title; followed by journalists, Mark Olden, who also laid his fair eyes on the manuscript and The Sunday Times Insight editor Jonathan Calvert, with whom I wrote the original newspaper expose in 2008.

  More recently, I have had the pleasure of working with scriptwriters and funny men Michael Holden and David Whitehouse who also saw the potential for a dramatised version of the Paul Page story and an aftershave called Folly for men.

  A special thanks goes to Fleet Street legend, Alastair Brett, who gave the manuscript its first legal going over followed by barrister, Lucy Moorman.