Letter to the Chief Executive of the British
Council from the Director of International Education Connect Limited
Thank you for your letter of 21 August.[20]
1. With 20 months to run in the cooperative
agreement between my company and the British Council, the British
Council signed an agreement which put it in direct competition
with my company, and which provided a financial incentive to take
over our market and thus our business. This was not revealed;
my signature on the competition waiver was demonstrably obtained
under false pretences.
2. The British Council claimed in a circular
(15 January 2002) and on its web site (ECS News 29 January 2002)
to have contracted a consortium consisting of Hotcourses, UCAS,
CSU and Yahoo. In fact your organisation contracted a £100
company "Education Websites Ltd", a company which has
since been "buried" by using the ploy of renaming a
different company (Remone Ltd). In the contract, "the entire
agreement between the Client and the Contractor", it states
that UCAS and CSU have "no liability whatsoever in respect
of the contract, tender or otherwise". There is no reference
to Yahoo. These British Council communications, and others on
record, were aimed specifically and damagingly at my company's
client base.
3. The Council claimed repeatedly that the
database model that emerged in the late summer of 2002 was the
product of "independent research". In fact independent
research of the matter was never planned, mooted, discussed or
carried out. The database model, a clone of the one we had developed
over 12 years, was put together by the two British Council managers
with whom I was obliged to liaise for the purposes of our cooperation.
Since, by arrangement with your IT division in Covent Garden,
our database was at this time installed on all BC computers worldwide,
independent research was not a credible option anyway. The so-called
investigation of 2004, as confirmed to me personally by the nominal
author of the report, involved only these same two managers. Your
assertion that the exercise was "thorough and comprehensive"
is demonstrably mistaken.
4. My one-sided correspondence with the
British Council and trustees shows that I have been seeking an
honest appraisal of the facts for six years. For reasons that
by now should be obvious (see 1, 2, 3 above etc), I have no confidence
in the British Council's ability to look into this professionally.
The NAG report's recommendations however, if implemented, hold
out the prospect of the emergence of the truth. It is my hope
that the NAG will hold you to your stated response with an early
timetable.
26 August 2008
20 Not printed. Back
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