UKIP News

Former CEO of Lord Pearson's PWS insurance, pleaded guilty to funnelling payments of £1.2m to officials in Costa Rica

From The Guardian:

The former chief executive of a City firm founded and chaired by former Ukip leader Lord Pearson today admitted paying "very substantial bribes" to win contracts overseas.

The 50-year-old chief executive, Julian Messent, pleaded guilty to funnelling corrupt payments of £1.2m to three officials in Costa Rica, although he claimed other senior managers at the firm knew about the bribes.

Messent had run the PWS insurance firm from which Lord Pearson, who stepped down as Ukip leader in September, made his fortune.

Hodge Malek, QC for the Serious Fraud Office, told Southwark crown court in London that the "very substantial" bribes were paid in 41 instalments between 1999 and 2002.

The covert payments were routed through bank accounts in the names of the wives of two of the Costa Rican officials and through accounts in Panama and the US, and a travel agency in Florida.

David Perry, Messent's QC, said he had not concealed the illicit payments from other PWS staff.

He added that the details were known to the heads of the finance department and the compliance unit, the internal watchdog responsible for monitoring the conduct of staff.

He said it was clear that "the corruption could not have been conducted by Messent alone".

He also claimed that arrangements for the corrupt payments had been "inherited" by Messent when he became head of the firm's Latin America department in 1996.

Messent was appointed the firm's chief executive in 2003 and resigned three years later after investigations into the payments began.

Lord Pearson was chairman of the company when the corrupt payments were made. The peer was not suspected of any wrongdoing by the SFO. Last year, he told the Guardian that he knew "absolutely nothing about the alleged payments".

Malek told Judge Geoffrey Rivlin that the exposure of the bribery was "one of the factors" in the firm going into administration in 2008. He said that the SFO had decided not to prosecute PWS because the firm, which has been sold, had a "substantial deficit" in its pension fund. The only penalty the firm would have faced was a fine, and the SFO decided that any fine would only have been paid out of the pensions of the staff.

He added that the SFO believed that Messent, of Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, was the "directing" mind behind the corruption. He said the three Costa Rican officials "were in an ideal position" to select which firm would get the contracts.

Messent is due to be sentenced on Tuesday. It is the latest prosecution by the SFO, which is struggling to crack down on foreign bribery and rid Britain of its reputation for being lax over this kind of offence.

Margaret Thatcher made Pearson, an old Etonian, a peer in the 1980s. He and two others founded PWS when he was 22.

To see the original: LINK

Nigel Farage & Jill Seymour

So Farage does have a sense of humour! How we laughed when we heard the news!

Farage told some UKIPPERS at the West Midlands hustings that Jill Seymour would make a good UKIP Party Secretary!

Ms Seymour is a former barmaid who had the good luck to marry a very rich customer. She is best known for being bloody useless on the NEC. Her husband financed the disasterous HMS Belfast UKIP fund raising event.

She did work for Nikki Sinclaire but her inability to write even a single coherent sentence forced the West Midlands MEP to let her go.

Ms Seymour is sadly infatuated with and by Nigel. Nigel regards her as a good nodding donkey.

We sincerely hope that Farage’s suggestion was in fact a joke or just a ‘sop’ to buy leadership votes in the West Midlands!

And yet more dire election results


UKIP's vote continues to collapse.

Chiltern District - Ashley Green, Latimer and Chenies: C 399, Lib Dem 92, Lab 47, Ukip 11. (May 2007 - C 501, Lib Dem 113, Lab 52). C hold. Swing 1.1% C to Lib Dem.

Chiltern District - Great Missenden: C 306, Lib Dem 281, Ukip 90. (May 2007 - C 536, Lib Dem 214). C hold. Swing 19.6% C to Lib Dem.

Hampshire County - Andover South: C 1183, Lib Dem 1111, Lab 245, Ukip 233. (May 2009 - C 2102, Lib Dem 961, Ukip 916, Lab 303). C hold. Swing 12% C to Lib Dem.

Junius says: 233 votes sounds good until you realise that UKIP's vote has collapsed since 2009. In 2009, they got 916 votes.

Medway Borough - River: Lab 695, C 631, Lib Dem 92, Ukip 42, Green 36, English Democrats 31. (May 2007 - Two seats Lab 791, C 770, Lab 712, C 660, Lib Dem 161, Ukip 131, Lib Dem 127, Medway Ind Party 119; August 12 2010 by-election - C 617, Lab 544, Lib Dem 104, Green 45, BNP 39, English Democrats 33). Lab gain from C. Swing 1.1% C to Lab.

Mole Valley District - Capel, Leigh and Newdigate: Lib Dem 618, C 558, Ukip 97, Green 61. (May 2010 - C 1193, Lib Dem 1034, Ukip 169, Green 112). Lib Dem gain from C. Swing 5.4% C to Lib Dem.

Oxford City - Barton and Sandhills: Lab 837, Lib Dem 334, Green 119, C 86, Ukip 48, Ind 42. (May 2010 - Lab 1239, Lib Dem 815, C 661, Green 188). Lab gain from Lib Dem. Swing 9.8% Lib Dem to Lab.