EXCLUSIVE – INVESTIGATION INTO INSOLVENCY ABUSE AND CORRUPTION
The Insolvency Service, under control of the Secretary of State and BEIS, are actively engaged in corrupt practices, most of their officials are dishonest, they reverse engineer insolvency law designed to recover assets for creditors of insolvent estates, to defraud and asset strip creditors and innocent civilians. Thousands have fallen victim to this insolvency abuse and the ones that are sworn into office to protect us from tyranny, have become the tyrants.
The 7-principles of public life underpins the Ministerial Code. The principles are to be adhered to by all ministers, public officials and authorities who must evoke leadership skills, acting at all times with integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and selflessness in the public interest. This article proves that the Conservative establishment defy all those principles on many levels. Concealing fraud is not only unconstitutional, immoral and unethical, it degrades the rule of law and everything that was once great about Britain. Their actions in refusing disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to conceal wrongdoing affronts all the principles together. They have all breached the Ministerial Code, for which they should resign.
The function and purpose of the Insolvency Service and its Ministers
They purport to act in the public interest, using the slogan; “Delivering economic confidence“, purporting to recover assets for creditors of insolvent estates. The slogan itself is misleading, these tyrants act for fellow members of the Conservative kleptocracy and their affiliates, unscrupulous lawyers, insolvency practitioners and corrupt corporations, abusing the law and their duties to keep assets beyond the reach of creditors, whilst, more often than not, the office-holder applies disproportionately inflated fees, unlawfully profiteering from their role as fiduciary trustees. It’s all about cronyism and impunity for fellow members of the cabal.
It is the duty of the insolvency office-holder to report any suspected criminal offences to the Secretary of State at BEIS and it is the duty of the Secretary of State (Alok Sharma, the Conservative MP), in the public interest, to instruct his department, the Legal Services Directorate, to investigate and prosecute any such offences against creditors, including those committed by insolvency office-holders, as is the case with Hannon, the Official Receiver of London. Of course, Hannon is not going to report himself, but even if he did, the ones he reports to are the ones doing the corrupting.
We wrote to Sharma in January 2020 with our detailed letter of claim setting out Hannon’s abuse of position, he did not even have the courtesy to acknowledge the letter, let alone reply.
Hannon has a long established publicly available track record of complaints against him by other creditors who have fallen foul to his dishonesty, but the corrupt public authority and its ministers shield him from prosecution, in detriment to the public interest. Flagrant breaches of duty and a cesspool of corruption.
“Hannon’s false and unproven allegations were an attempt to get at me personally by attacking my family”
In one such complaint, from March 2007, a company director and creditor provided testimony of his dealings with Hannon, formerly the Official Receiver of Cambridge:
“Hannon falsely alleged that my son had threatened him. Although there were seven other witnesses to the alleged incident, the police only took statements from Hannon and his two work cronies. My son did not threaten Hannon and he pleaded not guilty. I believe Hannon’s false and unproven allegations were an attempt to get at me personally by attacking my family”.
“At the Court hearing, and only after reading the statements of Hannon and his cronies, hearing their conflicting and inconsistent evidence, and reading the statements and hearing the evidence of my son’s witnesses, the District Judge dismissed the charges.
The actions of Hannon in making these false allegations was a clear and flagrant abuse of his position and it is outrageous that this man still remains in his job”.
“In the course of his duties Hannon has been shown to have lied on a number of occasions“
An example of Hannon lying: At a meeting attended by myself, his boss and colleagues (a meeting that was recorded), Hannon denied any knowledge of a loan repaid by the Company, the implication being that the Directors have spent the money. Following the meeting, when again challenged with the truth, Hannon confirmed in writing that he had checked his files and stood by his statement. However, Hannon had submitted correspondence clearly detailing the loan and its repayment to the Court a few weeks earlier. Hannon’s bosses have done nothing about the fact that their employee lied to them.
The October 2017 letter to the Parliamentary under Secretary of State
Since October 2016, when he was appointed by the Court as liquidator, Hannon and the Insolvency Service have been abusing their positions, acting under orders, using fictitious claims, contrary to the public interest to deprive creditors of their democratic rights in law under the Insolvency Act 1986. On 12th October 2017 Mr Millinder, the investor and developer of the project, wrote to Lord Prior of Brampton, the former Parliamentary under Secretary of State for the Insolvency Service at BEIS setting out this abuse in clear terms.
Lord Prior walked out of office after reading the letter, finding that Greg Clark MP, the former Secretary of State, Middlesborugh born and bred, and an associate of the Club, wanted to sustain the false claims to assist the Club in defrauding creditors, to keep the asset, the claim, founded by unlawful forfeiture beyond reach of Mr Millinder and his fellow creditors.
The bottom of page 2 and page 3 of the letter, set out in lay terms that no claims could possibly be established by the Club, yet their claims (proofs of debt) grew from circa £256,000, to £541,308.89 and then to over £4.1 million in less then 3 months, after they refused the connection for the turbine, preventing energy from being supplied. It was this lunacy, outrageous fraud and abuse that was encouraged and covered up ever since by the Insolvency Service and BEIS ministers, who “closed the door” and refused to correspond with Mr Millinder, otherwise requisite majority creditor as a means of concealment.
The Insolvency Court of the High Court of Justice was also “got at” by the Conservative ministers who coerced the judiciary to further assist in providing impunity to Steve Gibson and his associated white-collar criminals.
Our request for disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 in the public interest
In March 2021 we made a request for information to the Insolvency Service, BEIS and the Cabinet Office to expose internal correspondences in the matter to find out what the Department has been up to. All three public bodies were involved in the main subject, namely the February 2021 “Ministerial Briefing Report” and the request for the ministers and their representatives to attend a Zoom call with us to address the serious issues raised in two high profile, multi-million pound cases of insolvency abuse.
The request asked for disclosure of “The Times article” related material showing what action was being taken in the public interest to protect creditors and civilians from abuse by corrupt insolvency practitioners and central government officials who abuse their positions. The key parts and scope of the request was that:
“We request to inspect all documentation to establish what the Cabinet Office and its ministers are doing in the national public interest to perform on their statutory duties”.
“The scope of the request is from 12th February 2021 until 25th March 2021 and we request to inspect all information, in whichever form such information is available, including any oral recordings or handwritten notes, throughout that period in relation to the matters raised”.
We request to inspect each and every single correspondence between ministers and officials within the Cabinet Office and BEIS to identify whether in fact ministers are performing on their duties under section 3(1) of the Constitutional Reform Act.”
We tracked all the emails we sent to the ministers using sophisticated tracking software and we installed pixel tracking into various documents so we could gain intelligence on what our opposition were doing. Lord Callanan himself, Parliamentary under Secretary of State at BEIS and minister responsible for the Insolvency Service opened the email we sent titled “Scot Young estate & Times article: Insolvency firms put under investigation – Inter agency collusion” , 459 times between 12th February 2021 and 26th March 2021. He was clearly concerned about its contents, but what did they do about it we ask? That’s why we made the request.
Unsurprisingly, given that the ministers have been covering up to allow this abuse to prevail, the Insolvency Service, BEIS and the Cabinet Office all refused to provide information under the Act, providing various, nonsensical reasons for failing to disclose that affront the supremacy of the law in the Act itself. The responses to the requests we made can be viewed by following these links:
A. BEIS Response dated 26th April 2021 – 1
B. BEIS Response dated 26th April 2021 – 2
C. Cabinet Office response dated 26th April 2021
In A and B, the responses from BEIS and Insolvency Service, its Ministers of whom have been knowingly concealing, had the audacity to state:
“Your requests and related correspondence make accusations against BEIS Ministers and Insolvency Service employees that are not substantiated. Ministers have received numerous emails where you have repeatedly accused them of various offences, including fraud“.
Here at Intelligence UK, we don’t make allegations unless we can substantiate them. The core of the disclosure request was in relation to the actions of Insolvency Service office-holders, who pose significant risk of financial and emotional harm to civilians they encounter, effectually breaching their fiduciary duty by accepting false claims they know to be false in detriment to the estate and the creditors of whom they owe a duty of care.
“Hannon accepted 3 obviously false proofs of debt”
Hannon was acting as liquidator at the time when he accepted the 3 false proof of debt claims from his co-conspirers, the corrupt law firm, Womble Bond Dickinson, acting for Middlesborugh FC. Mr Millinder was to construct, connect to the grid and operate a wind turbine. He paid the Club £200,000 to Lease the land for 26-years that was to be occupied by the turbine. When time came for Mr Millinder to connect the turbine to the grid, the Club made a ransom demand in the sum of circa £256,000 and when Mr Millinder refused to pay, because the money was not owed, but offered to deposit the money in Escrow pending resolution by an independent arbitrator, the Club refused the connection, rendering the project entirely useless.
After preventing Mr Millinder from performing on the rights granted (to operate the turbine needs the connection), the Club and their conspirers used insolvency to defraud and evade justice. It may be no coincidence that the Airport, now owned by the quango we refer to below, also caused the delay to the project in the first place, demanding that Mr Millinder paid them £700,000 for the problem to “go away” whilst using the planning system, controlled by Middlesbrough Council to leverage pecuniary interest by deception. It was during that “impasse” that Ray Mallon was residing as Mayor of the Council, whilst occupying a dual role at the Airport. Mallon now sits with Gibson and Bloom (below) on the Middlesbrough Football Club Foundation.
The motive – Providing impunity to Steve Gibson OBE a fellow member of the kleptocracy
The motive for this out of control fraud and concealment is that the Conservative corrupt establishment have been assisting and preventing justice being served on one of their fellow members, Steve Gibson, the Chairman of the Club. Gibson sits on the board of the South Tees Development Corporation, with Houchen, the lawyer and Conservative mayor, also closely affiliated with the former Secretary of State, Greg Clark MP. The Conservative quango uses taxpayer’s money to acquire privately owned infrastructure projects that could be put out to private tender, for their and their affiliates own personal gain. A recipe for corruption in its own right, hundreds of millions of taxpayer’s money has been pilfered off to acquire the former Tata Steel site and the failing Durham Tees Valley Airport, all of which, could have been acquired and regenerated by private inward investment.
Another case of the kleptocracy providing impunity to one another and feeding their affiliates at the expense of the public purse and the trust placed in the leadership. Again, the quango, using public money, employs Gibson, who they know to be immoral and unscrupulous to manage public money, whilst the corrupt Ministers at BEIS have been coercing the judiciary and the Insolvency Service they control, to ensure Mr Millinder is defrauded in the name of law and justice. Deployment of fraudulent claims that anyone else would be jailed for, was part of their strategy.
We disclose the Ministerial Briefing Report at the heart of the information request
The Ministerial Briefing Report substantiates, in detail, the malfeasance on the part of the office-holder and the public authorities who have concealed the wrongdoings against the public interest. The report also addresses further corruption in relation to the high profile case of Scot and Michelle Young. Page 2 of the report contains an active table of contents for ease in reference. Page 5, section 2.1 deals with the duties of the office-holder in insolvency. Page 6, paragraph H cites that:
“A liquidator has a duty to creditors, in addition to his/her duty to the company, to not act in such a way whereby a breach of that duty might cause creditors some loss”.
Page 7, paragraph K, L and M focused on Hannon’s obvious and proven breach of duty in admitting false proofs of debt to defraud creditors he owes a fiduciary duty:
‘It has long been the law that an office holder is under a duty to examine every proof and consider the validity of the debt which is sought to be proved: Re Home and Colonial Insurance Co [1930] 1 Ch 102.
“He should require satisfactory evidence that the debt on which the proof is founded is a real debt“: Re Fraser, ex parte Central Bank of London [1892]
2 QB 633 QB. And the obligation is not negated even where the proof is based on a judgment: Re Van Laun, ex p Chatterton [1907] 2 KB 23, CA.’
The cheating colluders at BEIS and the Insolvency Service have the audacity to state that our allegations are not substantiated, knowing that they are. They knew however that even the Court found the claims to be false on 5th February 2018, yet they were still retained thereafter to assist the Club in defrauding Mr Millinder and his fellow creditors.
Nugee J: £541,000 and then 4. —
Ms Jones: Yes, and then 4.1 million.
Nugee J: Yes, I don’t think I know how those sums are made up.
Ms Jones: No, I’m not sure I do either –
But actually, they all did know they were just that, made up, fraudulent claims that their own barrister, Staunton admitted in writing were false by virtue of “Force Majeure having effect”. Exactly 24-days later, on 2nd February 2017, Gill of Womble Bond Dickinson solicitors submitted that fraudulent claim exceeding £4.1 million. of which over £4 million was pursuant to the conditional Energy Supply Agreement.
BEIS ministers and the court they have coerced have consistently. since October 2017, concealed the fraud committed by Hannon. along with other unscrupulous members of the Insolvency Service. including Dean Beale. David Chapman, the Senior Official Receiver, Janet Hallamore. the Deputy Official Receiver, Anthony Campbell and Barry Gould, another Deputy Official Receiver. The Conservative Party ministers are the puppet masters, the public authorities and officials they control are the puppets, dancing to their tune of deceit, fraud and concealment.
We gathered substantial intelligence across a number of cases where the same parties have been involved, inflicting their acts of corruption on innocent parties contrary to the public interest. Our statement at the top of the information request was clear;
It is the overarching duty on ministers to comply with the law and to protect the integrity of public life. All ministers are expected to observe the Seven Principles of Public Life, which underpins the Ministerial Code. They are sworn onto office to behave in a constitutionally proper way.
Lord Callanan of BEIS and other ministers have been concealing acts of corruption by officers of the Court harbored by the Department within the Insolvency Service.
The UK establishment is absurd, they describe Ministers as “Right and Honourable” when the majority are in fact wrong and dishonorable.
Our disclosure request focused on tab_28, in particular, along with the transcript of the call between Mr Millinder and Hannon of 15th August 2018.
Ulick “U-turns” on the claims he admitted were false over a year and 10-months prior
The evidence we referred to in our disclosure request specified that fact that on 12th November 2018, Ulick Staunton, the barrister instructed to act for Womble Bond Dickinson and Middlesbrough FC, “U-turned” on the claims. Tab_28 (below) that we asked BEIS and the Insolvency Service to disclose, contained the definitive admission from Staunton himself. In his skeleton of 12th November 2018. Staunton is stating “R’s, meaning Respondents (Middlesbrough FC and Womble Bond Dickinson) do not bring any claim against “A” meaning Applicant, Mr Millinder, “Empowering” meaning Empowering Wind MFC Ltd, the company they made insolvent with their fraudulent claim in the sum of £256,269.89 or “Earth Energy” meaning Parent Company:
Prior to “U-turning” on the claims that Staunton himself admitted were false on 9th January 2017 (Hannon had a copy of the admission on the same day), Staunton, Hannon and Womble Bond Dickinson, acting for Middlesbrough FC had attended court to defend the fraudulent proof of debt exceeding £4.1 million, which grew from their first claim of £256,269.89, then 20-days later, to £541,308.89 and then to over £4.1 million, whereas, of the first claim, £181,269.89 was for energy supply they prevented from being supplied, of the second £456,308.89 was for energy supply and of the third, £4,026,874.75 was for energy supply.
Anyone that was not entirely insane and utterly corrupt, could easily determine that no claims could possibly be established, owing to the fact that aside from Force Majeure, which nullifies the claims anyway, no claims could possibly be established pursuant to the conditional Energy Supply Agreement.
It was the first claim, used to unlawfully forfeit the Lease that Sir Geoffrey Vos, the now head of civil justice and former Chancellor of the High Court was concealing, knowing it was false, asserting in his judgment that it’s a “quantified claim for rent”, knowing that neither were owed, When Mr Millinder drew the Chancellor’s attention to the U-turn admission by Staunton, he asked him to retract and replace his skeleton prior to the hearing. Blatant dishonesty and interference with the proper administration of justice.
It was that application that came before Vos, that asked the court to remove the £4.1 million fraudulent claim, but they sustained it to assist the offenders with their fraud. The corrupt Ministers of BEIS, the Insolvency Service and the Law Ministers, control the judiciary, so naturally, fraud, dishonesty and concealment prevails.
At paragraph 37 of Staunton’s skeleton, he himself admits that “the assertion that R’s did something wrong in respect of the wind turbine project is one that may provide a foundation for a claim by Empowering Wind, not A“, knowing Hannon was sustaining the £4.1 million claim to prevent Mr Millinder and his fellow creditors from calling a meeting to replace him.
On 15th August 2018, during a recorded call (watch the illustrated video of the recorded call below), Hannon admitted his intent:
“Middlesbrough Football Club are the overwhelming majority creditors they have more than 75% and therefore unless you can get Middlesbrough Football Club to support, er, er a request, er, you cannot garner the necessary support”
Hannon was referring to the fact that he admitted the fraudulent claim, to defraud Mr Millinder of his rights as requisite majority creditor, because, in order to call a meeting of creditors, one requires 25% or more of the voting interest in the alleged insolvent estate.
We are lobbying the Information Commissioner, who has been invited to comment on this article, to exercise his powers and obtain all the information that has been withheld by BEIS, the Insolvency Service and the Cabinet Office so that the public can scrutinise the conduct of the ministers, as intended by the Act.
The recorded call between Mr Millinder & Hannon of 15th August 2018
Please be sure to sign our petition, comment, like, share and donate what you can afford to our cause in restoring the rule of law that underpins our democratic society. Exposure and transparency is the cure for corruption.
UK rogue establishment of lying fraudsters