Letter from Mr Ian Greer to the Parliamentary
Commissioner for Standards
Further to my holding reply of 3 February in
response to your letter of 30 January 1997, I am writing, as
required in response to the various points that you have raised,
prior to giving oral evidence before you.
In so doing, I should like to make the following
points at the outset:
(i) This statement is made by me personally,
without the benefit of any formal legal advice which, as you
know, I am unable to afford. It is clear that Mr Fayed, on the
other hand, has been able to call upon the best lawyers that
money can buy.
(ii) I reserve the right to add to the
statement in the light of the foregoing.
(iii) I would be happy to respond to any
general financial questions that you may wish to raise, although
it is fair to say that I am not particularly numerate and will
require assistance if you are minded to raise any detailed issues.
1. Allegations against Members
I have prepared a brief note on the above, which
I attach herewith. I believe that my sworn witness statements,
prepared in anticipation for the libel trial, cover most of the
ground and I did not feel it would be necessary to repeat what
I have already said.
2. "Demand for Cash"
- I have never made any demand for cash
to either Mr Fayed or his staff, nor have I received any cash
from him or from them.
- There was no arrangement entered into
between Mr Fayed and myself to pay any moneys to me, my company,
or any Parliamentarians, beyond the annual contractual fee that
was agreed between us at the time of my company's appointment,
of £25,000 per annum, for the provision of political consultancy
advice.
- There was never any discussion between
Mr Fayed and myself about the need for Members of Parliament
to be paid for any Parliamentary activities undertaken in the
interests of the House of Fraser.
- The much-quoted phrase "you can
rent MPs like taxis" is not mine and it is a fabrication.
- Mr Ali Fayed was present at my first
meeting with Mr Mohamed Fayed when I agreed the contractual terms
and where I am alleged to have made the remarks about hiring MPs.
I note that he has not provided a statement supporting his brother's
allegations and I imagine that plans have been made to call him.
- Over 25 years as a political consultant,
I have acted as advisers to between 300 and 400 companies and
organisations. I would be happy to provide you with a list to
enable you to approach any or all of them to ascertain whether
I have ever suggested that it would be necessary for them to make
either payments through me or directly to Parliamentarians, in
order to achieve their objectives. You will find that they will
confirm that I have never done so. This is in stark contrast to
Mr Fayed's allegation.
Insofar as the witness statements and oral evidence
given by Ms Bond and Ms Bosek, may I make the following observations:
(i) Mr Fayed did not allege that I had
ever received payments in cash until a full two years after he
made his original allegations that MPs were paid to ask questions.
Some three days before the trial was due to commence, he produced
two witnesses, making this extraordinary statement for the first
time.
(ii) Ms Bond and Ms Bosek suggest that
considerable sums of money were handed to me - £5,000 (and
more) per quarter, in cash. (Possibly a total of £200,000
over the period that I acted for House of Fraser/Harrods). It
seems highly unlikely that such vast sums of money could have
slipped Mr Fayed's mind for two years.
I believe that the concept of my having
had cash, was introduced as part of Mr Fayed's allegations in
order to plug the gaps in his witness statement and the interview
that he provided to The Guardian. He became aware at this
late stage, that cheques in the sum of £12,000, £6,000
and £13,333 (which he alleged had been used to pay MPs),
could be fully accounted for and indeed have been. He therefore
had to fabricate new evidence to sustain his position.
(iii) It seems surprising that if, as is
alleged, quarterly payments in cash were made and that I had
frequently telephoned to demand such payments, only one such note
exists, that the message was taken by an unidentified "junior"
and that there are no telephone messages taken by either Ms Bond
or Ms Bosek, both of whom allege that I left messages of demand
with them on "numerous occasions".
(iv) In any case it is not my practice
to discuss a client's financial matters with anyone other than
the principals concerned - in the case of the House of Fraser,
Mr Fayed or Mr Royston Webb.
(v) The allegations of cash payments to
me were made some three days before the trial was due to commence
and there was concern about their impact. I was advised that a
seemingly respectable professional (Ms Bosek, a trainee solicitor),
prepared to give evidence on oath, would be taken seriously by
the court. This, I believed, had to be balanced against the fact
that Mr Fayed invariably found it convenient to produce employees,
past and present, who were prepared to give evidence on his behalf,
testifying to the most bizarre happenings that regularly defied
belief.
Mr Hamilton, I understand has since discovered
the close relationship between Mr Fayed and Ms Bosek and also
the fact that if Mr Betterman's evidence is correct, she seems
to have been prepared to lie in the past.
(vi) Ms Bond, in response to questioning,
says that she remembered me because I was allegedly close to
the Prime Minister. There were no such reports about this until
the early 1990s (probably in 1992, when there was a piece in
the Diary column of the Times). Her "recollection"
therefore predates this.
(vii) It is further suggested that, from
time to time, cash payments were delivered to my office. Presumably
no record has been produced by Mr Fayed of such deliveries, or
indeed to whom these huge sums of money were handed. This is
hardly surprising, as no cash deliveries were ever made by him
to my office.
It is also suggested that my secretary
made calls from time to time requesting cash due to me. This
is untrue. My former secretary will, I am sure vouch, if called
upon to do so, that she made no such calls, nor did she at any
time receive on my behalf, any envelopes containing cash from
Mr Fayed.
(viii) The allegation that either my secretary
or I called Mr Fayed's office on 4 November 1988, demanding cash,
is simply not true. I neither demanded cash nor received any.
3. Method of commission payment to Mr Neil Hamilton,
MP
You say that I have "accepted" that commission
payments were made by me to Mr Neil Hamilton, MP. You will appreciate
that this was made clear by me in my witness statement prepared
for the libel action against The Guardian, which was made
of my own volition. Moreover, I wrote to you on 14 October 1996,
informing you of this fact.
Insofar as the method of commission payments
made to Mr Hamilton, Mr Hamilton was due £10,000 for two
new business referrals that he had made to my company (US Tobacco
and National Nuclear Corporation). Mr Hamilton requested that
the payment should be made partly by cheque and partly in settlement
of two or three bills. I did not see anything wrong in meeting
his request, as long as the amount paid did not exceed that to
which he was due and as long as an invoice for the amount was
submitted, which Mr Hamilton did in fact do. The cheque payment,
together with the settlement of three invoices were duly entered
in the company's books.
4. Peter Jones Invoice
As your team of accountants will have noticed in
examination of the company's records, a number of initials are
used beside invoices due for settlement. "IGA" would
denote that an invoice was the company's responsibility, "N/R"
would mean that an expense incurred was not rechargeable or recoverable
from a client, "NNC" would mean an expense incurred
on behalf of the National Nuclear Corporation and was therefore
rechargeable to them. "P" means an item of personal
expenditure, to be recovered by the company from an individual.
In the case of the bill to which you refer,
it is perfectly understandable given the goods in question, that
the bookkeeper should enquire whether the invoice should be allocated
to the company, or if it was an item of personal expenditure.
5. Submission by Mr Fayed
SCOPE OF THE INQUIRY
I have, I believe, dealt fully with the commission
payments made by my company to Mr Hamilton. Insofar as gifts
and payments are concerned, the garden furniture, air fares and
paintings were, as has already been clearly stated, part of the
commission paid for the referral of two clients - UST and NNC.
Insofar as the allegation is concerned that Mr and Mrs Hamilton
had "access" to shopping accounts held in the company's
name at London stores, this is not true. The purchase of garden
furniture for Mr Hamilton is recorded in the company's books,
from which you will also see that there are no other purchases
on any other store accounts, at any time, by Mr or Mrs Hamilton.
Mr Hamilton, when a Minister at the DTI, behaved in a scrupulously
honest manner insofar as our clients were concerned. He showed
neither my clients nor IGA any favour, nor did he at any time
divulge any information relevant to my clients' interests to me
nor any member of my staff.
For the record:
Prudential Mr Hamilton
lunched with the company's Chief Executive and Board Members.
I was not present. The invitation to the Minister was issued
by the Prudential. It must be remembered that the insurance industry
was part of his Ministerial responsibility and therefore it is
not surprising that he met them, along with other insurance companies.
Tony Berry, Blue Arrow I have at no time
met Mr Berry nor had any contact with Blue Arrow. It is true that
Mr Michael Ashcroft, the Chairman of ADT (an IGA client) was
on the Board of Blue Arrow. I met Mr Ashcroft very rarely and
at no time was the subject of the DTI Investigation ever discussed
with him or his staff. The work undertaken by IGA for ADT was
principally related to possible acquisitions. On no occasion did
I discuss with Mr Hamilton the investigation into Blue Arrow.
Trafalgar House was a client of IGA.
I cannot remember discussing the company's interests with Mr
Hamilton, nor am I aware of any action which the former Minister
may or may not have taken, which affected the company's interests.
Accountancy Firms - The Big Eight it
is true that arrangements were made for Mr Hamilton, to meet
representatives of the country's leading accountancy firms, which
were IGA clients. The issue of limited liability, with a view
to Government legislation, was the reason why IGA had been appointed.
The meeting that the Minister had with the representatives of
the Big Eight was no different to that of any Ministerial meetings
with industry representatives. I was not, however, present at
the briefing, although it is possible that a member of my staff
attended. This would in no way be unusual.
House of Fraser
I have already dealt with my company's appointment
by the House of Fraser in my statement prepared for the libel
trial and believe I can add little. It is interesting to note,
however, that in the submission made to you, no mention is made
of my allegedly famous remark that MPs can be rented like taxis,
nor is the statement relating to the initial meeting supported
in any way by Mr Ali Fayed, who was the only other person present.
It is accurate to state that Mr Hamilton was
one of the first Members approached by me, after my company was
appointed on behalf of the House of Fraser. The fact that within
two days of our appointment I had spoken to Mr Hamilton, was
a demonstration of our efficiency and nothing more. He was in
fact, the correct person to approach in the orderly conduct of
my business.
The fact that other Members subsequently
tabled Questions, wrote letters to Ministers, signed the EDMs
etc., proves the strength of feeling of many Members who took
an interest in the Fayed/Rowland battle. It does not appear to
be suggested by Mr Fayed that Mr Ian Wrigglesworth, MP, Mr Bryan
Gould MP, Mr Harry Greenway MP and Mr Teddy Taylor MP, were paid
by Lonrho; they are simply depicted as Members who were actively
engaged in fighting the Lonrho corner, presumably for the reason
that he had convinced them, rightly or wrongly, of the rightness
of his case. It was no different as Mr Fayed was concerned. Members
were prepared to fight his corner, without payment.
Finally, I must say that it has been very difficult
to keep up to speed with Mr Fayed's changing allegations.
The Guardian on 20 October 1994, carried
the headline "I (Mr Fayed) paid MPs to plant Questions".
The initial allegation was that Mr Fayed paid me "tens of
thousands of pounds" to give Mr Hamilton and Mr Smith for
asking Parliamentary Questions "at £2,000 a time".
Mr Fayed said "every month we got a bill for Parliamentary
services and it would vary from £8,000 to £10,000 depending
on the number of Questions".
Six weeks later Mr Fayed said that the
invoices did not vary, but that he had "handed over three
cheques for £12,000 and £6,000 in May 1987 and £13,333
plus VAT in 1990 to place Ian Greer in funds so as to make payments
to, amongst others, Neil Hamilton for work that was being undertaken".
(Fayed's solicitors, 5 December 1994.)
Two years later "Mr
Greer approached Mr Ali Fayed and said he needed money for some
of the MPs who were going to be fighting the 1986-87 General
Election". (Michael Cole, Fayed's press spokesman, ITN, 1
October 1996.)
Guardian, Amended Defence
"Fayed made cash payments to Greer at the rate of £5,000
in cash on a quarterly basis". (27 September 1996.)
Mr Fayed's submission to Sir Gordon Downey
Not only were payments made to Mr Hamilton and Mr Smith, but
also to Sir Andrew Bowden, Sir Michael Grylls and Mr Gerry Malone,
and Sir Peter Hordern knew of such payments.
Why wasn't this allegation made at the beginning?
It seems clear that whenever I have been able to disprove any
allegations, Mr Fayed has had to make up new ones. His latest
allegation of cash payments is perhaps the most impossible to
disprove and it is the reason why he had made it. It is totally
false.
I believe that there is very little that I can
add to what I have already said on numerous occasions. If, however,
you would like any clarification of the points above, I would
be happy to do so in oral questioning.
Ian Greer
12 February 1997
ALLEGATIONS MADE AGAINST MEMBERS
General points applicable to all Members
1. The phrase "a group" of Members of Parliament
is regularly used by Mr Fayed in his allegations. No group existed,
in spite of the fact that interest groups, both formal and informal,
are an integral part of Parliamentary life. The reason why the
five independent Members referred to in the allegations became
interested in a similar cause is very simple. The House of Fraser
controversy was a DTI responsibility. Three were elected Members
of the Conservative Party Trade and Industry Committee, regularly
in touch with DTI matters, Sir Michael Grylls, Tim Smith and
Neil Hamilton. It was therefore important that their active support
was canvassed.
Sir Peter Hordern was the paid adviser to the
House of Fraser. It would therefore have been foolish and discourteous
not to keep him informed of Parliamentary activity that was being
undertaken in the interests of the company.
Sir Andrew Bowden was a friend of many years,
an independently minded campaigner with good personal links to
Edward du Cann, the Chairman of Lonrho.
It should be noted that the Chairman of the
Finance Committee, Sir William Clarke, along with 40 or 50 Peers
and Members were all regularly briefed or written to.
2. No cash payments or material benefits were
ever requested of me by any Member, nor were any made at any
time.
3. Invitation to the Paris Ritz. It is true
that at the specific request of Mr Fayed, I issued an invitation
to six Members of Parliament to visit the Duke and Duchess of
Windsor's home in Paris. Mr Fayed wanted to demonstrate his investment
in preserving British heritage both at home and abroad. I have
no record of any MPs accepting or declining the invitation, prior
to the trip being cancelled.
4. Cheque payment to Ian Greer Associates in
the sum of £12,000, £6,000 and £13,333 were allegedly
to pay Mr Hamilton, Mr Smith, Sir Andrew Bowden and Sir Michael
Grylls. As my witness statement in preparation for the libel
action sets out, and as the accounting records show, the £18,000
was for individual candidates' fighting funds at the time of
the 1987 General Election. The Constituency Association of Mr
Neil Hamilton, Mr Tim Smith, Sir Michael Grylls and Sir Peter
Hordern did not benefit from any donations.
The £13,333 was for additional work
undertaken by IGA at the time of the DTI Report's publication.
I am surprised that Mr Fayed persists with this allegation (that
such moneys were for the purpose of putting MPs in funds) when:
(a) there is a letter on record from me
to his brother requesting funds for the General Election in 1987;
(b) his own spokesman on Independent Television
on 1 October 1996 said: "Mr Greer approached Mr Fayed and
said he needed money for some of the MPs who were going to be
fighting the 1986-87 General Election". (Michael Cole, Mr
Fayed's press spokesman). The cheques totalling £18,000
were Mr Fayed's response to my request for election donations
to constituency fighting funds.
Mr Neil Hamilton MP
See remarks above, correspondence and witness statement.
Mr Tim Smith MP
See remarks above, correspondence and witness statement.
Sir Andrew Bowden MP
It is alleged that a cheque for £5,319.90
was allocated to the Andrew Bowden Constituency Fighting Fund
at the time of the 1987 General Election. This is true. The donation
was made from moneys that I had raised from two sources. It is,
therefore, impossible to say that this money came from Mr Fayed.
Equally important, neither Sir Andrew nor any other candidate
was informed of the sources of my funding. As far as I am aware,
it was for the purchase of constituency office equipment "Other
fees" - I have already referred to this in my earlier submission
to you (16 December 1996).
Sir Michael Grylls MP
The above Member received a number of referral
payments for the introduction of new business to IGA. Sir Michael
was identified at the time of the Select Committee Inquiry in
1990. When I was asked how many payments had been made to him,
I relied upon the information provided to me by the company bookkeeper.
In good faith, therefore, I stated that there had been three
referral payments. Up until discovery, in the preparation for
the libel action, I believed this to be an accurate statement.
The Guardian's accountants had access to my company's
accounts with my full permission. In going through the relevant
ledgers and working papers, it came to light that the referral
payments made to Sir Michael were more than we had originally
thought. This was the first I knew of the error that had been
made. You will recall that I wrote to you in early October advising
you of the error by the company bookkeeper which had come to
light.
In retrospect, it perhaps would have been
wise for me to have kept a record of the exact number of commission
payments IGA had made to Sir Michael. At the time however, it
was impossible to conceive how important an issue this was to
become. Although I believe that the new business referral payments
to Sir Michael amounted to six, I have not been able to verify
this, as I no longer have access to the company's books and records.
However, these have been made available to you (and previously
on discovery, to The Guardian). I believe however,
that it should be recognised that having informed the Select Committee
that I had made introductory payments to Members of Parliament
(then identified as A, B and C), the principle had been established
and there was no advantage to me in understating the number of
referral payments made.
It was acknowledged by the Committee that there
was no wrong doing on my part to make such payments - their interest
was only in the matter of a Member's declaration. I fully accept,
however, responsibility for the carelessness on my part in not
having personally checked the number of referral payments made
to Sir Michael, or having asked my accountants to verify the
information with which I had been provided.
As I am sure you are aware, Sir Michael acted
as an adviser to the Unitary Tax Campaign (UTC), the Secretariat
of which was IGA. The campaign was undertaken by a group of major
British companies and stretched over a period of more than 12
years. Sir Michael was paid a fee by the campaign. However, the
amount of time that he was forced to spend on Parliamentary activity
and on the business of fighting the Campaign, both in the UK
and the US, in support of British industry, was very substantial.
At an early stage, Sir Michael sought my advice
as to whether his UTC fee could be increased to cover this extra
time. In spite of the fact that the companies concerned enjoyed
substantial resources, they were not able to provide the funds
to do so. At the time, the campaign was an important and prestigious
one to IGA. I was therefore happy to agree a regular "top
up" fee of £10,000 per annum to allow him to spend the
necessary time in furtherance of the campaign.
The fee was specifically for UTC work. It was
naturally Sir Michael's decision as to how he chose to declare
the payment. The UTC declaration made by him appeared appropriate,
which is why I assume he made it.
It should be recognised that the UTC campaign,
as declared by him, encompassed some sixty member companies.
It was not considered necessary for him to declare each and every
one of them which were, by their contribution to the campaign,
paying his fee.
Sir Peter Hordern MP
It is suggested that the above Member knew that
payments were being paid to his colleagues and that he did not
disclose the fact to the appropriate authorities. I did not receive
any cash to make any payments, nor do I believe did any Member
receive payments directly. It is therefore understandable why
Sir Peter did not make any disclosure.
Mr Gerry Malone, MP
I have known Mr Malone for a number of years. I knew
his constituency to be highly marginal, having worked with Iain
Sproat (the former MP for that constituency) at an earlier General
Election. I donated from the funds raised by me, an unsolicited
contribution to Mr Malone's fighting fund and received an acknowledgement.
I cannot ever remember discussing the matter with Mr Malone, and
it was in no way a reward for any Parliamentary activity he had
undertaken in the interest of the House of Fraser, nor was it
in expectation of any favour. As was expected, Mr Malone lost
his seat at that election.
Lady Olga Maitland MP
I have already dealt with this matter in my submission
of 10 December 1996.
Mr Michael Brown MP
Mr Brown received a referral payment for the introduction
of US Tobacco. It should be noted that the commission paid by
me was unsolicited by him. The payment was five per cent of UST's
first year's fee. (Five per cent was also paid to Mr Hamilton,
as you are aware).
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