A Conservative councillor and former banker has branded an attempt by opponents to bring up his business history as “gutter politics” — despite serving on Gloucester County Council as executive member for, erm, finance.
Cllr Ray Theodoulou was head of the Hong Kong arm of Standard Chartered Securities between 1992 and 1994, during which time a market-rigging scandal emerged. Despite claiming that it had started before he joined, Cllr Theodoulou resigned and was publicly reprimanded by officials for “failing to exercise proper management, supervision and control”.
The details, disseminated locally by Lib Dems after appearing in Private Eye, seem to have ignited a debate over Cllr Theodoulou’s business credentials, but the embattled councillor insisted:
“Theirs are gutter politics of the worst kind; I am sure they will be unacceptable to voters”
With the current financial crisis hitting voters in the pocket, Scrapbook suspects it’s market-rigging that is “unacceptable to voters”.
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Gutter politics it may be nevertheless another example of the revolving door that continues fuel the incestuous nature of all thing political and regulatory. Ever hopeful something fruitful comes out of the current promises of a clean up, I wrote this in the hope of raising the profile of the impact the banking scandals have on the victims of their money spinning scams.
Winston Churchill once said, “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results” http://lifeafterdebts.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/talk-and-tokenism.html
Banks, too big to fail, too big to manage!!
Well spotted. Cllr Theodoulou and his Tory chums also presided over the sale in 2008 of a valuable council-owned 85-acre country park to a holiday home developer for the princely return of just £1-a-year to the county’s taxpayers.
It later emerged that a crooked environmental charity boss who brokered that deal also wrote a four page letter to Cllr Theodoulou setting out a detailed scheme to sell a council-owned lakeside outdoor education centre to the same developer for what was termed “much needed holiday homes.”
When the compromising letter was leaked to Private Eye, Cllr Theodoulou had a lapse of memory until it was pointed out that the magazine actually had a copy. Funnily enough he kicked up a big fuss at that time as well, whining that it was all defamatory.
The charity boss, Dennis Grant, was later jailed for four years and four months for pocketing the proceeds of the country park sale but, strangely enough, Gloucestershire Constabulary decided not to probe too deeply into allegations of high level corruption in local government. At the time the county council was involved in a uniquely incestuous deal with the local police to pay millions in sponsorship for a large number of beat bobbies.
Fortunately, an outside team of detectives from the City of London Police descended on Gloucestershire last November to do the job properly and the word locally is that a file is about to go to the Crown Prosecution Service.
Who will be whining then, I wonder?
Gutter politics? Gutter filth from these disgusting people. If he doesn’t like the heat then he can get out of the kitchen, can’t he? Odious man wants his cake and eat it. Wants the money from dodgy dealing and then doesn’t want to be reminded of it. Tough? Just get on with it. Joe Public is suffering from the antics of the banks – playing roulette with our money – and so should he but I bet he still walks away with his millions unless of course it is in an offshore piggy bank!!!!
That will be because bankers are in the gutter.
Look, we don’t want to go on and on about bankers but they keep on being caught out at new fiddles.
Maybe over the next few weeks we’ll be concentrating on what a pile of utter crap the police, the football authorities and the Tory government of the 1980s was as more and more is revealed about all the cheats and liars from the police to the prime minister.
But I’m sure that when the press tires of that the bankers will provide them with another reason for headlines.