Examination of witness (Question 200-219)
TUESDAY 1 MAY 2001
MR GEOFFREY
ROBINSON
200. Yes.
(Mr Robinson) The merger was in May 1991.
201. It was in May?
(Mr Robinson) The principle was agreed. We knew there
would be one about November/December.
202. When did it actually occur?
(Mr Robinson) May.
203. So when we are actually talking about this
cheque, we have got all these companies which therefore are linked
in, are they not?
(Mr Robinson) This cheque?
204. Yes. We are actually trying to find this
out.
(Mr Robinson) Where the cheque went, yes.
205. We are trying to find out about this cheque
which you say you never received. You say none of the companies
you were associated with ever received the £200,000?
(Mr Robinson) Absolutely.
206. So you can say with certainty that, for
example, Apex, Dunn, Sarclad, Roll Centre, Lock—all these
companies which are now more or less pulled together because of
this merger, and subsequently still calling themselves Transfer
Technology—
(Mr Robinson) Subsequently calling themselves.
207. They are nothing to do with this £200,000?
(Mr Robinson) Absolutely. No company—I have
always said—I own, no company I know about. The issue we
have before the Committee is where did that cheque go? That is
what it all comes down to.
208. Yet you would agree that Transfer Technology—you
are a private company—did give loans to your other company,
Roll Centre, in the USA?
(Mr Robinson) Yes.
209. And there is this amount of £200,000—
(Mr Robinson) Yes.
210.—linked between these two companies
somehow?
(Mr Robinson) Yes, the one owed £200,000 to the
other.
211. Can you see how the Committee, as we go
through the documentation here, keep finding several references
to £200,000?
(Mr Robinson) Yes. No, I think the most compelling
thing—that is the word that the Commissioner uses, I do
not—the problem, is that we have this cheque paid in at
Tavistock, going to Colmore Row, which is where we banked, at
around the same time as Roger makes an entry, but unfortunately,
of course, two things: one, there is a day between the two possible—I
think, on any realistic assumptions—amounts being the same,
because it would have arrived on the 11th and Roger's entry is
the 10th, to which the Commissioner says, "Well perhaps Roger
was putting it in in anticipation of." Of course, that could
be right, but her other supposition—and some of these things
are highly offensive—is that I was working for somebody
else to put it through a third party account, which would have
delayed it even more, it would not have been then the 11th, which
everybody assumes it was, it could have come in on the 14th or
15th into the TransTec account. When the Commissioner raises the
issue that he could have anticipated it, of course it does raise
the issue, did it ever come? I do not raise this issue, the Commissioner
herself does. What I can assure you is that the two are totally
unrelated. I did not have that cheque, neither did TransTec, absolutely
not.
212. The Roll Centre debt, the £200,000,
is not linked in with that?
(Mr Robinson) No, absolutely not. Whatever happened
there, it is absolutely not linked in with this cheque of £200,000
being paid.
213. If we could go on to Annex CC, this is
the cashbook voucher with a payment payable to Orchards, again
for £200,000, Orchards being your home?
(Mr Robinson) Yes.
214. Having looked at your invoices, I can see
how, as you have written "Orchards" at the top in capitals,
people could possibly interpret that as a company and thus pay
a cheque to Orchards. Is that what you think happened in this
case?
(Mr Robinson) No, no, because they could not pay a
house.
215. But they could actually have written a
cheque out to Orchards which then obviously would not go anywhere?
(Mr Robinson) You mean send it home to me?
216. Yes.
(Mr Robinson) No, the evidence is that we know that
is not the case, because we know the cheque was paid in over the
counter, as we said before. This was reconstructed, if I may say
so, in 1991. You see the date "31.12.91". It is just
reconstructed by the receivers. I do not think the Commissioner
refers to this, but it is done by Arthur Andersens trying to make
things come together, that is all.
Mr Levitt
217. It is a different cheque number as well,
is it not?
(Mr Robinson) Yes.
Shona McIsaac
218. Yes, it is a different cheque number, but
you can see again it is another amount for £200,000?
(Mr Robinson) You can see at the end of that, certainly.
It is unrelated.
219. This amount of £200,000 keeps cropping
up, and we cannot find where any of it goes.
(Mr Robinson) We know where it comes from when we
go back to that statement that it was paid in the management accounts
in October—which is totally incorrect—1990. That is
where it all starts, and it has all followed through from there.
The same people who did those accounts prepared the statutory
accounts, and that is how it got carried on into them.
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