Clegg

Belgians spring tax surprise on Mrs Clegg

Jason Lewis and Bojan Pancevski Published: Sunday Times 28 April 2013

Nick Clegg and his wife, Miriam Gonzalez (James Glossop)

BELGIAN bureaucrats have left Nick Clegg and his wife baffled over claims that she failed to pay tax for domestic staff the couple employed at their former home in Brussels.

Miriam Gonzalez, the Spanish-born wife of the deputy prime minister, was ordered in absentia to pay €1,000 — £840 at today’s exchange rate — after being taken to court over unpaid social security contributions for “up to four domestic staff”. The Labour Court in Brussels issued two judgments against her, one in December 2006 and another in May 2007.

However, the couple — who had lived in the city while he was an MEP and she worked for the European Commission — had moved to London in 2005.

The Liberal Democrats last night blamed “an administrative error” by the Belgian authorities and said that Gonzalez, an international lawyer, was attempting to establish “the full facts”.

“Miriam has attempted to establish why she was never notified about either the tribunal proceedings or the judgments, which both happened long after she had left Belgium to live in the UK,” said her spokesman.

A lawyer who represented the tax authorities in one of the hearings against Gonzalez said she deals with hundreds of similar cases each year. “Disputes like this are common in Belgium,” she said.

Gonzalez’s spokesman said that the National Social Security Office, the Belgian equivalent of the Department for Work and Pensions, had confirmed in writing to her last week that she did not owe it any money. All the same, she would repay anything she owed “if that were ever to be the case”.

“The first time that either Miriam or Nick were aware of these judgments was when they were brought to their attention by The Sunday Times,” the spokesman added.

“Miriam was never notified of the proceedings or the judgments and was therefore not represented and the facts were never challenged or checked. The validity of the judgments must be considered in that regard.”

Court documents reveal that the authorities in Belgium brought two cases against Gonzalez for defaulting on taxes.

The writs alleged failure to make payments for staff employed at the couple’s 19th-century townhouse in the heart of one of Brussels’s most prestigious districts.

Gonzalez was working as a senior adviser to the EU commissioners Chris Patten — the former Conservative cabinet minister and now BBC chairman — and Benita Ferrero-Waldner of Austria.

According to documents seen by The Sunday Times, she registered her household as “employers of domestic personnel” with the Belgian equivalent of Companies House between 2003 and 2005. She was found in default of tax for her employees in 2006 and 2007 after she had left Brussels.

Belgium judgment: Miriam Clegg's name was removed from the copy due to privacy laws

Kazakhstan

Blair aide reopens bitter feud with axed 'mad cow' mandarin - in speech to Kazakh dictator's cronies

• Jonathan Powell gave speech in oil rich former Soviet state Kazakhstan
• But he launched personal attack on Sir Richard Packer
• He previously compared Blair’s government to Hitler’s Third Reich

PUBLISHED: Mail on Sunday 23:17, 20 April 2013 | UPDATED: 23:17, 20 April 2013

Tony Blair’s former chief of staff flew 3,000 miles to an oil-rich former Soviet state run by a brutal dictator to tell them how they could learn from Britain’s long history of democracy.

Jonathan Powell started out by explaining how Kazakhstan would be a vastly better country if it could have its own Rolls-Royce-class Whitehall civil service system, free of corruption.

But he ended up reopening an old domestic feud by launching a personal attack on a fellow former British mandarin who compared Mr Blair’s New Labour government to Hitler’s Third Reich.

Feud: Jonathan Powell, right, reopened an old domestic feud by launching a personal attack on former British mandarin Sir Richard Packer, left,  who compared Mr Blair’s New Labour government to Hitler’s Third Reich

After complaining how hard it was to get rid of troublesome civil servants in Britain, Mr Powell said the Government was forced to give a £1 million payoff to the official who was ‘to blame for the mad cow  disease’ crisis in the early days of  Mr Blair’s Premiership.

He did not name the official, but he didn’t have to: Sir Richard Packer,  permanent secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture in the late Nineties, last night said he had no doubt Mr Powell was referring to him.

Mr Powell, along with Mr Blair,  has been advising Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev in a deal reportedly worth up to £16 million.

Kazakhstan has faced widespread concern over human rights abuses, the treatment of the president’s political opponents and brutality and murder by its police force. Its civil service is riddled with corruption and nepotism.

Speaking at Nazarbayev’s State Management Academy, Mr Powell told his audience of the dictator’s apparatchiks: ‘When we came to power in 1997, there was a high-ranking official in the  Agriculture Ministry who was fully accountable for the outbreak of mad cow disease in the country.’

Aide: Jonathan Powell is pictured with Tony Blair in 2007

According to a Kazakh news agency, Mr Powell said: ‘Nothing happened when we asked him to resign. We were told it was impossible to fire him and the best option was to promote him off this position. 

'In the end, we had to pay him £1 million worth of termination fee. It is very difficult to get rid of such unwanted officials.’

Sir Richard told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I have come across reports of Jonathan Powell bad-mouthing me before. It is something he has got in his head for some reason, I don’t know why. I might have spoken to him twice.

‘It all seems very strange and is also quite factually wrong. He seems to be accusing me of being responsible for BSE. I don’t see how anyone who knew anything, which doesn’t include  Powell, could say that. The BSE report says something completely different. Mr Powell should check his facts.’

After leaving his Whitehall job, Sir Richard was fiercely critical of the Blair government. He told the BBC: ‘In one respect . . . [the Blair government] reminded me of the Third Reich where . . . nobody would know where ultimate responsibility lay.’

Last night, Sir Richard denied having received a £1 million payoff, saying: ‘It depends how you add it up. I was there for more than 30 years (and) you can make up a very big figure with pensions and what have you. 

‘The implication of the £1 million is that I was paid over and above what  I was entitled to. It was fully within the rules. Once again, Powell’s rhetoric is completely at variance with  the facts.’

Mr Powell was unavailable for  comment.

Horse Meat

Imported horses ‘missing’

The Sunday Times Published: 7 April 2013

Horsemeat on sale in Germany: thousands of imported horses may have ended up in British food (Ingo Wagner)

Thousands of horses imported to Britain from Europe have “disappeared”, fuelling fears that they ended up in our food.

Britain usually imports about 8,000 horses a year, including thoroughbreds for the racing industry and ponies for young riders. Many are slaughtered, however, and the UK exports horsemeat worth more than £4m a year.

New figures from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs show that in two exceptional years Britain imported huge numbers of animals.

In 2009, 22,209 arrived and 15,611 in 2011. At the same time, there was no noticeable increase in the number slaughtered or in the amount of horsemeat exported.

Mary Creagh, shadow environment secretary, said: “Where did these animals go? It was a recession, British people were getting rid of their horses and yet huge numbers of animals were brought in and simply disappeared.”

The figures add to mounting evidence that criminals played a major role in contaminating beef in food with horsemeat.

Police and food safety officials have tracked consignments of meat to Britain concluding, “it arrived as beef and, in some cases, left as something else”, according to a source with detailed knowledge of the inquiry.

Tony Blair

Tony Blair, Kazakh police and human rights questions


Tony Blair is helping Kazakhstan reform its brutal police force after widespread concern that it is at the forefront of human rights abuses in the country.

Tony Blair with the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, inside 10 Downing Street in 2006 Photo: AFP/GETTY

By Jason Lewis, Investigations Editor
8:00AM GMT 17 Mar 2013

The former prime minister agreed to help as President Nursultan Nazarbayev attempts to quell international criticism of a massacre of oil workers which threatens his hopes for a new international trade deal.
The dictator’s police and special forces shot and killed 15 striking oil workers and wounded more than 100 during an industrial dispute in Zhanaozen, in the south west of the central Asian country.
Mr Nazarbayev had praised their actions in “restoring order” before video evidence emerged on the internet showing the police massacring unarmed civilians.
The incident, in December 2011, led to criticism from international human rights groups and, crucially, the European Parliament, threatening to undermine his plans for membership of the World Trade Organisation, which would mean lower customs tariffs and a place at the international negotiating table.
The country is a key client of one of Tony Blair’s multi-million pound consultancy practices, with a contract reportedly worth £16 million. After the massacre, the president asked for help in managing the crisis.
Mr Blair did not take part in discussions directly but last March, as MEPs put the finishing touches to a resolution urging “the Kazakh authorities to make every effort to improve human rights” and “strongly condemning the violent crackdown by police against demonstrators”, the former prime minister sent his most trusted long term adviser, Jonathan Powell, the ex-Downing Street chief of staff, to Astana, the Kazakh capital.



Riot police patrol in the town of Zhanaozen in Kazakhstan on December 18, 2011

 He arrived as the EU linked its demands for Kazakhstan to “rapidly improve their respect for the freedom of assembly, association, expression and religion” to “the road map for WTO accession”.
Mr Powell, the man who negotiated with the IRA and helped shape the dossier of evidence for the first Iraq war, now runs Inter Mediate, a charity addressing “poverty, disease and economic stagnation that are the inevitable by-products of violence and political unrest”.
In Kazakhstan, he found himself sitting down with the hard line interior minister, attempting to reform the repressive police force to satisfy the EU and those backing Kazakhstan, with its rich mineral deposits and £27 billion of foreign investment, in its bid to become a full trading partner with the West.
In the meeting Mr Powell and the minister, Kalmukhanbet Kasymov, were said to have “exchanged opinions on … the improvement and democratisation of the police”. Sources said that the consultation covered all aspects of policing including the Interior Ministry’s special forces troops – modelled on the Soviet system – which were deployed in Zhanaozen.
A Kazakh government spokesman said they also discussed “regulation of police work, training, upgrading equipment”.
Mr Powell was most recently in Astana last month talking to President Nazarbayev’s advisers but is not thought to have played any further direct role in police reform.
But there have been at least three further sessions with Mr Blair’s team – which includes a Harvard educated lawyer and a former UN human rights official – including one at the offices of Blair Associates in Astana, on fighting crime and “maintaining public order and security”.
A Kazakh source said the sessions were “full of mutual understanding and efficient dialogue”.
But last night this was dismissed as a “smokescreen” by Kazakh opposition leader Zhambolat Mamai, who has led calls for Mr Blair to resign from his advisory role. He said that the trigger for Mr Blair’s involvement was the threat from the European parliament and Western governments.
“They invited these experts and are now able to say work is going on, they are improving everything, but in fact they are creating a smokescreen,” he said.
He added: “The Interior Ministry is very much in control of the situation in Kazakhstan, and believe me they will never let these Western consultants get close to understanding the real problems of our system.”
The December 2011 violence erupted after the government ignored protests from striking oil workers over pay and conditions. Police claimed that they were defending themselves until internet footage backed witness accounts of the security forces shooting indiscriminately at unarmed demonstrators.
Earlier this year Human Rights Watch said that in 2012 Kazakh authorities intensified “persecution of outspoken government critics” without having “seriously tackled long standing, grave human rights abuses”.
A spokesman for Mr Blair’s office said: “As is well known, we work to support the government of Kazakhstan on key areas of social, political and economic reform.
“This has included discussing aspects of police reform – something which was publicised by the government at the time.
“This work is entirely in line with the work of other international organisations and Western governments and follows the direction which the international community wants Kazakhstan to take.”
He added: “Zhanaozen was a tragedy, but there are indications that the government is addressing the underlying causes. This includes police reform, plans for local government reform and economic measures to help improve the lives of people living in these types of towns, which are a hangover from the Soviet era.”

Russia

Spying claims against top British diplomat threaten Anglo-Russian détente


As William Hague and Philip Hammond prepare to meet their Russian counterparts in London this week, Jason Lewis reveals how a very suspicious spying slur is threatening to derail the reconciliation.


Denis Keefe, right, in the Caucasus, at Black Cliff Lake



By Jason Lewis, Investigations Editor
9:00PM GMT 09 Mar 2013

To the outside world he is the epitome of diplomatic decorum: polite, softly spoken, with razor-sharp intellect. He has friends all over eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, where he has a record of distinguished service on behalf of Britain, and is known for his keen ear for choral music and love of sailing.
Having joined the Foreign Office 30 years ago, straight out of Cambridge, he has earned a reputation for his brilliant mind and as an unfailingly safe pair of hands.
And yet to the astonishment of those who know him, Denis Keefe, the respected deputy ambassador to Russia, has for the past few months been trailed by a bizarre cloud of rumours and intrigue straight out of a Jason Bourne film.
Wherever Mr Keefe goes outside Moscow, he runs the risk of being accosted by Russian journalists and accused of being a spy.
Regional news reports froth with insinuations that he is something far more subversive than a diplomat, and has been sent by Britain to ferret out information and undermine the government of President Vladimir Putin.
British officials have tried to play down official anger at the hounding of Mr Keefe, which The Sunday Telegraph is reporting for the first time in Britain.
But the accusations, described by diplomatic sources as “an unprecedented attack on a very senior diplomat”, threaten to cast a shadow over a meeting this week in London designed to “reset” the thorny relationship between Britain and Russia.
William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, and Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, will meet their Russian counterparts for a “strategic dialogue” intended to look beyond a series of angry rows that have hampered cooperation between the two countries.
They include the recent decision to grant asylum in Britain to Andrei Borodin, a billionaire former Russian banker accused by Moscow of fraud, Russia’s attempts to hinder investigations into the poisoning in London of the former spy Alexander Litvinenko, and the beginning this week of the posthumous “show trial” of the late Sergei Magnitsky.
Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who worked for a London-based hedge fund, uncovered what is thought to be the largest tax fraud ever committed in Russia, but on reporting it was himself imprisoned, and later died in custody, aged 37.
The allegations against Mr Keefe are being seen in some circles as a deliberate attempt to discredit British officials in Moscow and to undermine efforts to improve relations with Russia.
Last month, the career diplomat, who speaks six languages including fluent Russian, was confronted by a Russian journalist, who demanded: “They say you are a spy for MI6 – tell us, does James Bond exist?”
Evidently irritated, Mr Keefe, 54, replied: “I don’t think this is a serious matter or that it has anything to do with me.”
Another reporter pressed him on his alleged MI6 status: “Can you give a straightforward answer to this question? Do you confirm or deny it?” He was quoted as replying: “Please. This is not a serious question. Please …”
Mr Keefe, a father of six who lists his interests as singing, sailing, walking and learning languages, was also questioned about his links to Russian opposition figures.
One of his first diplomatic postings, on joining the Foreign Office in 1982, was to Prague. Before the 1989 Velvet Revolution, he made friends with opponents of the one-party state, including Vaclav Havel. He later returned to help the newly democratic Czech Republic prepare to join Nato and the European Union.
He was also ambassador to Georgia during the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, and several reports used that against him – accusing him of becoming involved in the dispute over the breakaway region of South Ossetia. One report said he “actively advocated Georgia’s accession to Nato and urged speedy modernisation of its army, presenting Russia as a direct threat to the former Soviet republic”.
Neither episode endeared him to hardliners in the Putin regime and the incidents appear calculated to undermine him. A Siberian television channel, NTN-4, devoted a two-and-a-half minute slot to alleging that a former spy had listed Mr Keefe “as an officer of the secret intelligence service”. It stated that “in MI6, like in our intelligence services, there is no such thing as a former officer”.
The presenter questioned whether it was wise to invite Mr Keefe — “an intelligence service officer of a foreign country” — to Akademgorodok, a university town which is the hub of Russia’s cutting edge science and nuclear research.
In December, Mr Keefe faced a similar attack on a visit to the Ural Mountains to award diplomas to Open University graduates. One report bluntly stated: “Denis Keefe can be described as an undercover spy with his diplomatic position serving as a smoke screen.”
A news website warned students, officials and teachers to be wary in case Mr Keefe tried to “recruit” them. “A person well-versed in recruiting agents like Denis Keefe, bearing in mind his serious diplomatic experience, could easily catch in his net the immature soul of a graduate or a participant in Britain’s Open University programme,” it said.
“And you don’t need a codebreaker to work out what that could lead to.”
Diplomatic sources have told The Sunday Telegraph that the continuing allegations, which appeared to stem from a discredited list of MI6 agents posted online in 2005, were “ridiculous”.
They come after painstaking efforts to rebuild Anglo-Russian relations, following the Litvinenko poisoning in London in 2006.
An inquest into his death will open on May 1, but his murder led to a series of tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions. The then British ambassador, Anthony Brenton, was subjected to a four-month campaign of harassment, with members of a pro-Kremlin youth group interrupting his speeches, stalking him at weekends and banging fists on his diplomatic Jaguar.
In an embarrassing revelation, British agents were caught red-handed using a transmitter hidden inside a fake rock, planted on a Moscow street, so spies could pass them secrets.
At the same time, Russian police raided offices of the British Council, claiming that the body – which promotes British culture abroad – had violated Russian laws, including tax regulation.
“It is a cultural, not a political institution and we strongly reject any attempt to link it to Russia’s failure to cooperate with our efforts to bring the murderer of Alexander Litvinenko to justice,” said a Foreign Office spokesman at the time.
Leading British companies, including BP, faced problems operating in Russia, which had a negative effect on trade for both countries. More than 600 UK companies are active in Russia and Russian firms account for about a quarter of foreign share flotations on the London Stock Exchange.
Two years ago, David Cameron signed a series of trade deals and a symbolic memorandum on cooperation, and this week’s meeting in London was seen as an important “incremental step” towards restoring relations with the Russians.
But the timing of the attacks on Mr Keefe, coupled with continuing pressure to extradite the main suspects in the murder of Mr Litvinenko, a British citizen, provide an uncomfortable backdrop. On Saturday night Whitehall sources insisted that difficult issues, including the murder, would “not be left outside the room” at this week’s meeting.
But MI6 was again accused last week of being at the centre of another anti-Russian conspiracy – this time in connection with Monday’s opening of the trial of Magnitsky.
He is charged with defrauding the Russian state, along with the British-based millionaire businessman Bill Browder, the head of Hermitage Capital Management, which employed Magnitsky. Mr Browder has declined to go to Moscow for the trial.
A widely viewed television documentary in Russia last week accused the two men of being part of an MI6 conspiracy to undermine the Russian government.
An investment fund auditor, Magnitsky said he had uncovered a £150 million tax fraud involving Russian government officials, but was then arrested himself on accusations of fraud.
He died in prison in 2009, having been denied visits from his family, forced into increasingly squalid cells, and ultimately contracting pancreatitis. Despite repeated requests, he was refused medical assistance and died, having been put in a straitjacket and showing signs of beatings. The case has become a rallying call for critics of Mr Putin’s regime, who accuse the state of a campaign of intimidation against political opponents.


German Gorbuntsov was gunned down, Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned, Andrei Borodin was granted asylum

 The meeting equally comes against the background of a “lack of will” by the Russian authorities to help solve the attempted murder of the Russian banker German Gorbuntsov, who was shot six times outside his flat near Canary Wharf in March last year.
Mr Gorbuntsov claimed that the attempt on his life was linked to people close to Mr Putin, and his decision to help the police investigate the attempted murder of his business partner in Moscow in 2009.
Initially, Russian police offered to cooperate, but Scotland Yard later said it was having trouble getting permission to send investigators to Moscow.
A senior Brtitish source said: “The Russians do not understand that our officials and judiciary take independent decisions, that our media asks tough questions and that the British Government insists that British citizens’ rights and lives should be protected.
“It is a major cultural difference. It continues to make our relationship with Russia tricky.”

Silent Calls

Named: British Gas and other major firms making billions of unwanted calls every year


The companies responsible for inundating British homes with nuisance calls can be named.


British Gas alone is making marketing calls to about 4.1million homes each year Photo: PA



By Jason Lewis, Investigations editor
8:00AM GMT 03 Mar 2013

A string of firms, including major household names, are making millions of unsolicited calls to landlines each year in the hope of gaining business.
Some of the calls are silent, causing irritation, fear and confusion, particularly for the elderly and vulnerable.
Until now the scale of the problem, and the companies behind it, have been unclear. However a Sunday Telegraph investigation can disclose:
* British homes are receiving up to 3.2billion nuisance calls every year;
* Companies making the calls include British Gas; TalkTalk, a broadband provider; Homeserve, a plumbing and heating firm; and a series of companies selling everything from double glazing to financial services;
* British Gas alone is making marketing calls to about 4.1million homes each year;
* Ofcom, the communications regulator, allows silent calls as long as they exceed no more than three in every hundred calls made, opening the way for large companies to hang up on people hundreds of thousands times without breaking the law.
Marketing calls are hugely profitable for those involved in making them and their use has increased dramatically because of computer equipment which allows hundreds of numbers to be dialled at once.
These computerised diallers ring a householder’s number and are then designed to connect a member of staff in the call centre when the equipment registers that it has been answered by a person.
However, if no operator is available no one answers, causing silence at the other end of the line. Some play a message apologising for the call, others simply hang up.
MPs are increasingly concerned about the problem.
Alun Cairns, a Conservative backbencher, said: “Certain groups of people, particularly the elderly who may be at home all day, will not answer their telephone unless they recognise the number because they are so concerned about nuisance calls. Some people tell me that they are getting five or six of these sorts of calls every day.
“And when these calls are silent that causes real concern for the elderly whose first thought may be that it is someone they know who is in trouble and can’t speak or that it is someone out to frighten and intimidate them. This simply cannot be allowed to continue.”
The Sunday Telegraph can provide the most detailed analysis yet of the leading firms behind these calls.
Calls received by 20,000 households with a special answering unit attached to their telephones called trueCall, which allows people to block unwanted incoming numbers, provide a snapshot of which companies are making the most unsolicited calls.
In the past 12 months 5,000 trueCall machines were connected to the internet to send an electronic record of all calls they received to a central database, including the telephone number of the firm behind the calls and how many times it dialled individual customers.
The trueCall users were also invited to comment on who was calling them, providing further evidence of which company was involved and, over 12 months, built a “top ten” list of nuisance callers.
Our analysis highlights how British Gas, the energy company, made almost 7,000 calls to 900 of the homes using a trueCall device – more than seven calls a year to each of them. If that pattern is repeated to all UK homes, it represents 28million unsolicited calls each year.
A British Gas spokesman said: “This is a highly regulated area and we take our obligations extremely seriously. When we do call customers it is always with their permission or when we have undertaken all relevant checks to confirm consent.
“We uphold the highest standards of customer service and when calling it is to offer people information on products and services that may save them money or offer peace-of-mind, such as boiler care.”
British Gas registered the highest calls rate from a single 0800 number. But evidence suggests that other well-known firms are calling British homes as much, if not more than, the energy firm. Homeserve, TalkTalk and Npower used a series of numbers, possibly related to different call centres.
Our surveyed homes received 892 calls from Npower, 1,038 from Homeserve and 10,396 calls from TalkTalk. Although it was not possible to analyse these calls in the same way as those coming from a single number to see how many individual homes were called by the companies, it would suggest that they are calling millions every year as part of marketing campaigns.
However, most of the firms that appear to be making the greatest number of calls to consumers in our survey are not household names.
The firms included Curved Air, a telemarketing firm in Blackburn and Nationwide Energy Services, a Swansea-based firm offering ways to save on household bills. Between them, our survey suggested they called about six million homes last year.
Other companies identified included Ismart, a firm offering to pursue claims for mis-sold payment protection insurance; and DLG Surveys, which carries out consumer lifestyle surveys.
All of the firms that responded to our questions insisted that they did not break Ofcom rules and that consumers benefited from their calls.
The regulator last year imposed fines of £750,000 on Homeserve and £60,000 on Npower, for making “an excessive number of silent and abandoned calls”.
Ofcom’s investigation found that Homeserve exceeded the “abandoned call rate” on 42 occasions during the period between February 1 and March 21, 2011, resulting in an estimated 14,756 calls.
Ofcom rules forbid companies from making repeat calls within 24 hours, but Homeserve was found to have made 36,218 of these calls.
However our investigation raises significant questions over the role of Ofcom. It allows operators to “drop” 3per cent of all calls made, which can run into hundreds if not thousands of silent or incomplete calls every day.
Ofcom levied fines on the companies whose marketing campaigns involved silent calls, but refused to disclose the names of the companies which made the calls, because in both cases they had been subcontracted by household names. It means firms that hire the outsourced call centres would not know they have infringed the rules before.
Ofcom said that because it was up to the company on whose behalf the calls were made to stay within the rules it would not name them, adding that it would be “prejudicial” to the call centre firms.
A spokesman said: “It is a company’s responsibility to ensure that if a third party makes calls on its behalf, it complies with Ofcom’s rules on silent and abandoned calls. We may of course, in future, decide to investigate outsourced call centres and, if we do so, this information would be published subject to the legal restrictions on disclosure.”
TalkTalk, one of the firms under investigation by Ofcom for making excessive silent calls to consumers, has named the call centre operator that it used in the marketing campaign which is under scrutiny.
Ofcom said that it has “reasonable” proof that TalkTalk persistently broke the rules between February and March 2011 at two call centres, one in the UK and one in South Africa.
TalkTalk said that the calls were made by workers at Teleperformance in Cape Town, South Africa, after it ended a contract with the French-owned call centre operator.
Alistair Niederer, chief executive of Teleperformance UK, said: “This was a very regrettable, extremely rare incident which was the result of human error by 14 employees in South Africa, a tiny fraction of our global workforce of 135,000.”
Last night MPs called for Ofcom to change its approach. Mr Cairns said: “It is about time that the regulators remembered they are there to protect consumers rather than the commercial interests of the firms involved.”
He said that he hoped to persuade the Government to tackle the issue of nuisance calls in legislation.
Mr Cairns said that current regulations were too weak, with responsibilities divided between Ofcom and the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Mike Crockart, a Liberal Democrat MP who is setting up a House of Commons all-party committee on nuisance calls, said: “For these people the phone might be the only real contact they have with the outside world. If, every time they answer a call, they find themselves asked to answer a survey or persuaded to sign up for a service they don’t need, it makes them reluctant to answer – cutting them off from the outside world.”
Steve Smith, director of trueCall, who carried out the research, said “Older people are particularly vulnerable; they may be confused by telemarketing calls, agree to order products they don’t need, or may be taken advantage of by persistent and unscrupulous callers.”
David Hickson, of the pressure group Fair Telecoms Campaign, said: “The regulatory approach taken by Ofcom is not working. Taking years over imposing sizeable penalties on a handful of big name offenders is ineffective.
“Ofcom should take action whenever it has reasonable grounds for believing that someone is habitually engaged in activity likely to cause annoyance.”
Ofcom said that it had commissioned further research into the problem.



Top 10 numbers most blocked by trueCall users
Company. Extrapolated figure for UK calls

1. British Gas 4.1m

2. Curved Air 3.7m

3. I-smart 2.2m

4. Unknown telemarketing firm using number registered in Leeds 2 m

5. National Moneysavers 1.7m

6. Still active number previously attributed to defunct marketing firm 1st Call Connect 1.63m

7. Nationwide Energy Services 1.6m

8. DLG Surveys, known as 'Consumer lifestyles’ 1.1m

9. Loft Insulation 0.9m

10. Moorcroft debt recovery 0.3m



* Sunday Telegraph analysis based on calls made to 5,407 trueCall homes between February 15th 2012 and February 14th 2013.

Silent calls

Silent calls: how the marketing firms deliver potential customers



Marketing calls are hugely profitable for those involved in making them Photo: Alamy


By Jason Lewis, Investigations editor
8:00AM GMT 03 Mar 2013


Curved Air Marketing Solutions Limited, is a market research company based in Blackburn. It claims it get 20,000 people a week to complete one of its telephone marketing surveys.
Around 800 trueCall users were called 1,176 times by the firm during the last year. If the pattern were repeated across Britain this would represent 3.7 million calls to home phones a year from the firm. The company began trading two years ago and is yet to post a profit.
It is run by William Taylor, a Northwich-based businessman who is also the chairman of a finance company, a Blackburn roofing firm and was previously a director of a series of kitchen design businesses.
According to Curved Air’s website it creates a “database of potential customers that continually grows leads for you, our client” through the people it calls completing 20,000 surveys a week. The company did not respond to requests for comment.



National Energy Services Limited, based in Swansea, telephoned 339 members of trueCall panel 2,135 times in the last 12 months. This would represent 1.6 million calls to British homes during the year.
According to its website, the firm is the “UK’s largest provider of energy efficiency surveys” and, it says, is “dedicated to helping home-owners and businesses claim the government grants available to make energy efficient upgrades to their properties”.
The firm had a turnover of £16 million last year and is part of the Save Britain Money group run by Neville Wilshire, who runs a series of other firms including Fuelswitch.co.uk and Debts Reduced Limited.
The company has gone from six to 600 employees in four years, expanded to have a call centre in Cardiff which was opened by Craig Bellamy, the footballer, and is to feature in a fly-on-the-wall documentary on BBC3 later this year.
Mr Wilshire says that his firm offers energy efficiency surveys, reclaiming payment protection insurance, fuel efficiency advice and debt management.
A spokesman for the firm said: “To help people access the funding available we call potential customers in their homes from our UK contact centre. At NES we have strict processes and procedures. Our technology is Ofcom compliant. Even with all the technology that is available and our very successful quality control methods; it is inevitable that a small percentage of people contacted will not be fully satisfied with the call.”

Ismart Consumer Solutions calls were intercepted 1,284 times by 483 trueCall machines in our survey, representing 2.2 million calls a year across the country.
It says it is “a leading payment protection insurance (PPI) claims company, having helped thousands of customers reclaim mis-sold PPI cover”.
It claims that “customers find us through carefully selected partnerships” or “ purely through word of mouth” but in fact makes large numbers of “cold” calls to canvas for business.
Founded by David Haycock, 33, Ryan Horne, 32, and Dylan Pritchett, 33, its most recent accounts show it had a turnover of £6.5million, and paid the three directors £515,000 in salaries and shares.
Last year it was accused of demanding huge fees for its help with one customer who was reportedly awarded £2,365 compensation ending up getting nothing and receiving a £890 bill for commission from the firm.
Paul Fakley, its marketing director, said: “We take great pride in the fact that many of the calls we make ultimately result in significant financial benefits to consumers who make claims through us. Without our marketing activity many consumers would likely miss out on the opportunity to get back what is rightfully theirs. We abide by all Ofcom regulations that apply to us.”

Horse Meat

British food safety officials were warned of horse meat fraud a year ago

By Jason Lewis, Investigations Editor

British officials ignored three official warnings that fraudulently labelled horse meat was in circulation in Europe and may have been passed off as beef.


The Europe wide confidential alerts were put out by the Italian and Danish food safety authorities as long ago as February last year - 11 months before horse meat was found in beef products on sale in British supermarkets.

The alerts now appears to be the first official evidence of fraud involving cheap horse meat being passed off as more expensive beef. But there is no evidence the warning was ever acted on by British food safety officials who dismissed the reports because the incidents did not involve the UK.

At the same time UK officials failed to notify their EU partners for up to nine months that horse meat destined for the tables of Europe had been exported from Britain containing “bute”, the veterinary drug which is banned from entering the food chain because it is a potential threat to human health.

The Sunday Telegraph can also disclose:

* How official ignored warnings from the Government’s own independent scientists that the “life threatening” drug “bute” was finding its way into meat exports.

* That senior officials from the food safety regulator lobbied for an end to daily inspections at meat cutting plants in favour of giving producers advanced warning of its visits.

* How senior officials from the Government’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) accepted hospitality from some of the food companies at the centre of the horse meat scandal.

The new details underline how the FSA and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) failed to act before the full scale of the horse meat scandal became apparent.

The Sunday Telegraph can reveal that the first warnings on horse meat fraud were sent to senior UK officials on February 1, February 15 and March 7 last year.

They warned of a “suspicion of fraud in relation to horse carcasses and horse meat” from Hungary and Denmark, some of which was processed in Italy.

Categorised in the EU database as “adulteration/fraud”, much of the meat is believed to have been seized but some is reported to have been distributed probably to Belgium, Denmark and France for human consumption.

The confidential alerts, seen by this newspaper, were emailed to a special mail box at the Food Standards Agency, to UK health officials, environmental health officers, customs officers at Britain’s ports and two senior Foreign Office representatives at the European Parliament.

Two of the horse meat fraud alerts, known as “information for follow up”, were a formal Europe-wide “notification of risk” about “a product that is or may be placed on the market”.

The third alert, known as “information for attention”, was designed to warn all European countries about a fraud involving horse meat after the illegally labelled goods were seized by officials in Italy.

The notifications, backed by European legislation, were sent via Europe’s Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) set up to alert EU countries to imminent threats to public health. The network is run by the European Commission and managed in the UK by the FSA.

Last night it was unclear what, if any action, was taken by the FSA or any other British food safety officials in response to the specific warning before routine tests by Irish authorities last month discovered horse meat in beefburgers sold in supermarket chains including Tesco, Britain’s biggest retailer.

An FSA spokeswoman said it was aware of the earlier European warnings on horse meat fraud but that it had not been connected to the UK. She said: “The FSA is aware of these alerts through the RASFF system.

“The country entering the alert is required to give full details of where the product has been distributed. None of this meat entered the UK.”

At the same time, it can be disclosed, British officials have confirmed that they failed to notify their counterparts in France and Holland that horse meat exported from the UK contained phenylbutazone, known as bute, which is a risk to human health.

On one occasion it took Britain nine months to alert officials in Holland that chilled horse meat exported for food from the UK for Dutch consumers contained the banned substance.

FSA officials took a sample of horse meat in May 2012 but they only alerted the Dutch to the “unauthorised substance” in the meat early this month. The chilled meat is sold as “fresh” and is not stored for more than a few days, meaning the contaminated meat would almost certainly have been eaten.

The alerts are supposed to be urgent warnings. According to the European Commission RASFF “Alert notifications are sent when a food or feed presenting a serious health risk is on the market and when rapid action is required.”

It says it is up SFA and other British officials to identify the problem and take the relevant actions. It says: “The goal of the notification is to give all RASFF members the information to confirm whether the product in question is on their market, so that they can also take the necessary measures.”

In four other cases the FSA took between two and four months to alert French officials that samples of British chilled horse meat they had tested before it was exported for French consumption was also contaminated with the veterinary drug. Again it is unlikely, given the shelf life of chilled meat, that the contaminated product had not already been consumed.

Last night the FSA spokeswoman confirmed that five of the horses containing bute had ended up in the food chain. She said: “We are working with the French and Dutch authorities to identify where this meat was consumed.”

She said that in the passed tests for but had taken three weeks to complete and were done at the same time that the meat was exported. She added that since the end of January all British horse meat was being tested and cleared for human consumption before it was allowed to leave the UK.

A senior official from the Direction General de L’Alimentation, part of the French Ministry of Agriculture, told the Sunday Telegraph: “What you have to ask is whether this meat in which the phenylbutazone was allegedly found was then exported to France.

“Under normal circumstances, it would not have left the abattoir after being found to contain the phenylbutazone. If it was exported then this is not a health issue, it is fraud.

“In short. It should have been destroyed, if it wasn’t this is fraud. If meat arrives for human consumption from the UK here in France, we assume it is fit for human consumption. We don’t test it all over again.”

He added: “I don’t believe we should be pointing the finger at the food health authorities in France or in the UK. From experience when they know something they do something about it straight away and any doubt means precaution. It’s when they don’t know that is the problem.”

Britain exports between 8,000 and 9,000 horses for consumption in Europe every year. But until this month, when officials introduced new rules that meant all horse meat had to be tested for bute before it was exported, the FSA only tested a small per cent of the carcasses every year.

According to a report by Defra’s Veterinary Residues Committee last July only 68 horses were tested for bute before they were exported in the whole of 2011.The independent scientific advisory committee said it had “repeatedly expressed concern over residues of ‘bute’ entering the food chain.”

It warned bute had “potential for serious adverse effects in consumers” including the “rare but very serious, life threatening, condition” blood discrasia which is similar to leukaemia or haemophilia.

But its report warned that Defra’s “follow up investigations in recent years have found that some vets are still prescribing phenybutazone (bute) without...ensuring that the horse is subsequently signed out of the food chain.

“Phenylbutazone residues have also been found in horse that have changed owners prior to going to slaughter (which have not) been signed out of the food chain.

“Other residues have occurred because feeding containing “bute” intended for one horse has allegedly been eaten by another horse.”

The report revealed that in cases where bute was found in a horse which had not been declared unfit for consumption the owner and the vet have been “advised about food chain requirements”.

The Crown Prosecution Service said they believe there have been no prosecutions regarding fraudulent trading of horse, or any other meat. However it added that there are no central records of these sort of offences.

Katrice Lee

I just want to know what happened to my Katrice

When Sharon Lee’s daughter vanished from an army base, she expected help and sympathy – not to feel that she was at fault. Thirty years on, the Military Police has finally apologised and is to reopen the case

Sharon Lee: 'I remember that morning. It was the last time I ever held her' 

By Jason Lewis, Investigations Editor, Sunday Telegraph

7:00AM GMT 20 Jan 2013

Every parent knows the feeling. The moment when you turn to look for your child and they are not there. The fear and panic, followed by an intense wave of relief when you find them again.

But for one mother, Sharon Lee, that feeling of relief has never come.

It is now more than 30 years since her two-year-old daughter Katrice vanished without trace during a shopping trip on a military base in Germany. All Sharon has left today are a few yellowing photographs of a happy little girl playing on a swing and smiling alongside her older sister.

As well as dealing with the guilt and heartbreak over the loss of her child, Mrs Lee has also faced a battle with the British Army which, she believes, was intent on blaming her for the little girl’s disappearance while denying that they could have done more to find her.

The Ministry of Defence has now reopened the case, finally acknowledging that its original investigation was “flawed”. It has also apologised for its appalling treatment of Mrs Lee and her family, and promised an independent review by a civilian police force.
Katrice disappeared from a military shopping centre in Paderborn, Germany, on November 28 1981 – her second birthday. Mother and daughter had gone to the NAAFI store to buy items for a party while her father, Richard Lee, a sergeant in the King’s Royal Hussars, waited in the car outside.

“I remember that morning. It was the last time I ever held my daughter,” says Mrs Lee. “Katrice was excited. It was her second birthday. She didn’t really quite understand what that meant, but she’d had her presents and she knew something special was going on.
“My husband drove us. We couldn’t find a parking space, so he waited in the car while my sister Wendy, Katrice and I went inside. It was packed with people as it was the last Army pay day before Christmas. Katrice didn’t want to sit in the trolley – she demanded to be carried, and I held her while we did the shopping.”
Then she disappeared. “We had reached the checkout,” recalls Mrs Lee. “We had started putting our shopping on to the conveyor belt. As I was getting the items out I realised I had forgotten to get crisps for the party. I put Katrice down and said to my sister, 'Just watch her while I nip back and get them.’ ”
“The shop was jam-packed full. Wendy was putting stuff out on the conveyor belt. I didn’t want to push back through the crowds carrying Katrice, so I just asked Wendy to watch her for two minutes. It was as simple as that.

Together: Katrice Lee with her older sister Natasha

“I don’t blame Wendy,” she adds. “How could you blame her? Why would you think that your daughter was going to disappear that morning when you were just out on a family shop for her birthday? It should have been a joyous occasion.
“Wendy didn’t deliberately let her run off. It is just one of those things that children do. Even when they are standing with their parents, children still run off to look at something. When I left Katrice with Wendy she may have seen me run down the aisle and may have followed me. I don’t know. Who knows what’s in the mind of a two-year-old? Maybe she thought Mummy was having a game with her and she followed me. I don’t know. All I know is that after I put her down, I never saw her again. That was the last time I ever saw my daughter.”
When she came back, Katrice wasn’t there. “The panic hit me. I ran around, calling her name. She was gone. Vanished.”
The rest of the day was a blur. A military policewoman was at one of the other checkouts and radioed for assistance. Soon a full-scale search was under way.
“I remember very little else about that day. My life was changed forever; it was the beginning of a waking nightmare.”
From the start, the military were convinced that Katrice had simply wandered off. “They thought I hadn’t kept a proper eye on her. I remember soon after she disappeared, the Royal Military Police came to our married quarters. They were friendly but I’ve come to wish I’d said nothing. They asked me whether Katrice liked ducks and I quite innocently said, 'Yes, of course, don’t all children like ducks?’
“Looking back, that seems to have sealed my daughter’s fate. The Royal Military Police and the local German police decided that she had walked out of the shop and wandered to the nearby river and fallen in and drowned.”
Yet that explanation would have involved Katrice walking out of the shop on her own, down a ramp, across a busy car park, through a hedge, and along the river. “No one had seen her do this,” says Sharon. “But that is the only explanation they would allow. They searched the river, they couldn’t find her, but days and days were lost. They would not acknowledge that there could be any other explanation. Nothing we said would shake them from their conviction that she was a lost child.
“It was six weeks until they interviewed the cashiers in the shop. One of the cashiers came forward 20 years later and said she had never even been spoken to.”
The original investigation never considered the possibility that Katrice might have been abducted. The NAAFI was not inside a military compound, and there was no security surrounding it. It was on a civilian street. But the case has never been classified as a crime by the local German police.
When the theory that Katrice had wandered off produced no leads, Mrs Lee believes the military closed ranks to ensure that there was no suggestion that it failed to investigate the case thoroughly.
“We attempted to raise awareness of Katrice’s disappearance,” says Sharon. “We tried to arrange a collection to put money up for a reward for information. We intended to launch the collection to coincide with a planned visit by Princess Margaret. But at the last minute, the royal visit was cancelled and all the men, who had intended to help us raise the money, were confined to barracks.”
She claims that she has also seen an internal military assessment of the family, written by an Army psychologist, which dismisses Mrs Lee as a “woman of low intelligence”.
“We were treated without empathy or humanity. It was like we were an irritation, interrupting the strict discipline of the military. We had lost our daughter but we were in the way. They thought we should move on. Forget it. Not ask too many questions.”
Sharon, 59, a former HR manager from Gosport, Hampshire, and retired Sgt Major Richard Lee, 63, from Hartlepool – who has described his daughter’s disappearance as an “open wound” – divorced 20 years ago but remain united in their fight for the truth about what happened to Katrice.
They are also heavily involved in a support group for the families of other missing children, which includes Madeleine McCann’s parents Kate and Gerry.

Broken family: Sharon Lee pictured with her former husband Richard and daughters Katrice and Natasha 

Last year they succeeded in getting the case re‑opened. The new investigation is, finally, focused on the theory that Katrice may have been abducted. Officers are interviewing witnesses ignored for three decades. They have produced an aged image of Katrice, who would now be 33, and have taken DNA samples from the family. They are also searching medical records. Katrice had a squint in one eye and would have required an operation. Officers are searching records for a child of the right age with the same eye condition.

Last week, defence minister Mark Francois wrote to the family acknowledging the failings in the case. In a statement, Mr Francois said: “The Royal Military Police have now acknowledged that the previous investigations were flawed, and have sincerely apologised to Katrice’s family for these failings.”
A letter to Iain Wright, her father’s MP and a former children’s minister, goes further. Mr Francois wrote: “As you know, I met with Mrs Sharon Lee on 13 December… At that meeting, Brigadier Bill Warren, the Provost Marshal (Army) acknowledged that the previous investigations were flawed.”
He added: “During the meeting, the Royal Military Police also discussed the current state of play on the work under way to better understand the actions taken by the police in 1981, and provided the family an opportunity to feed in their own thoughts and recollections from this period to the Senior Investigating Officer.”
“Mark Francois has been brilliant,” says Mrs Lee. “He is coming at it as a family man rather than as someone from the Ministry of Defence. He seems to have great sympathy for us as a family and what we have been through. He is the first person from the MoD in 30 years who was prepared to sit and meet with us and listen to what we had to say.”
She adds: “After so long, it is nice to finally hear that I am believed, that I am no longer being dismissed as a crazy woman who won’t go away, won’t move on.
“We still have had no explanation as to why we were not taken seriously, and why the Army tried to put the blame on us. We were dismissed as a family who failed to look after their daughter. From the beginning, there was a lack of humanity, a lack of care. One senior officer, just after Katrice disappeared, actually accused me of a lack of care of my daughter and said I had a 'terrible cross to bear’.
“At our meeting with the minister, we learnt that an investigator who came to our house the day Katrice disappeared to collect her pyjamas – to give her scent to the dogs – claimed that the only person in our quarters was our daughter Tasha. It was officially recorded that we had left our other daughter alone. But it was totally wrong. Our daughter was not alone. We wouldn’t have let her out of our sight. I was there, her best friend was there, other members of the family were there. But by recording this, it was as if someone was trying to emphasise the idea that we were negligent parents. That I was a bad mum, and the whole thing was my fault. That we didn’t care properly for our children.”
Natasha Lee, 38, was just seven when her sister disappeared. “But I still have vivid memories of my sister. I remember she was bright and bubbly. Cheeky. She used to follow me around. We shared a room most of the time. I was very proud of her. I was proud of being a big sister. Then she was gone.
“I remember my mother that day. After Katrice disappeared, I remember how she cried. The terrible sound she made. It haunts me.”
Natasha had stayed at home with her uncle that morning. Not being with them, there to look after her little sister, has left Natasha with an irrational feeling of guilt.
“I have terrible feelings about not going with them. No matter how much I tell myself it’s not my fault, I still feel guilty. That day robbed me of a normal childhood and of my sister, and the chance to grow up with her. She was only just two. Her personality was just starting to come through. Her disappearance has left a hole in my life. I look in the mirror and wonder if she looks like me. If I look like her.”
Both Mrs Lee and Natasha believe that Katrice was abducted. They live in hope that some day they will find out what happened.
“I believe she’s alive somewhere and that one day we might find her,” says Natasha. “She might not want to know me. I’d be OK with that. I just want to know she’s OK.”
“I hope that she was taken by someone who couldn’t have children,” says Mrs Lee. “I hope that whoever took her, loved her like I do, and brought her up and that she is happy somewhere.”
Last night, Iain Wright MP called on the Prime Minister to intervene in the case. He said: “This is not a political question. The answers to what happened to Katrice are almost certainly in Germany. I want David Cameron to talk to the German government and to get their help.
“After 30 years, the family deserve to know what happened to their daughter.” 

Archbishop's family tree

Chief Constable Michael Todd. Greater Manchester Police

New investigation into claims of corruption against chief constable found dead on Welsh mountainside


Corruption allegations against a former chief constable are to be examined by Manchester’s new police commissioner.



Cathy Butterworth, left, and Christine Brereton were among the 'unique' contracts that are being re-examined Photo: REUTERS

By Jason Lewis, Investigations Editor8:30AM GMT 02 Dec 2012

Michael Todd died in mysterious circumstances four years ago as a scandal over his tangled love life threatened to break.

An inquest ruled that the 50-year-old father of three, who had taken a cocktail of drink and sleeping tablets, did not commit suicide but died of exposure on Mount Snowdon while his mind was in turmoil.

Senior police officers are now pushing for a criminal investigation into his leadership of Greater Manchester Police, alleging misconduct in public office.

The claims centre on Todd’s involvement in drawing up a number of unique contracts for favoured staff which guaranteed them enormous payoffs if they were made redundant.

This only came to light earlier this year when the force published accounts showing several senior staff had left with golden goodbyes, including a civilian official whose total redundancy package was said to top £300,000.

There are also allegations that several staff involved in sexual relationships with Todd, or who helped him cover them up, were promoted or paid off and the amounts hidden in the force accounts.

Sources said the true scale of these pay-offs and benefits were not disclosed in published accounts. Senior officers want to know why and if the current management is culpable.

The allegations emerged following the publication of an official report by West Midlands Police, which questioned Todd’s “judgment and integrity”.

It found that he had “liaisons” with 38 women during his six years in Manchester, including at least five in his own force, but cleared him of wrongdoing.

The inquiry concluded that his private life did not affect his duties and cleared him of any misdemeanour in the promotion of staff to senior positions or the use of police equipment. It also cleared him of inappropriate behaviour regarding expenses, hospitality and accommodation.

However, The Telegraph has learnt that some aspects of the inquiry were not disclosed in the report. Among the evidence that was not made public were details of a computer belonging to the late chief constable, on which a series of sexually explicit videos were found.

The films showed Todd with a number of his lovers, some of them GMP staff. The inquiry asked each of the women if they were aware of the films. Most said they knew nothing about them.

At the time of his death in 2008 Todd believed that his three-year affair with Angie Robinson, the head of Manchester chamber of commerce, was about to be exposed.

As well as impacting on his family, it would have revealed his failure to adhere to police vetting procedures requiring him to disclose changes in his circumstances to prevent blackmail.

The 16-page report stated that at least one colleague warned Todd of rumours about him and said: “It is clear that the personal life of Michael Todd was complicated and that some relationships with women, both platonic and otherwise, lasted over many years.

“The effect of these relationships on Michael Todd’s family and the [police] service must not be underestimated and one can only speculate as to their effects on him as an individual.

"However, there is no evidence that these relationships affected the day to day discharge of his duties as chief constable.”

It added that his personal lifestyle brought with it “significant potential” to compromise him and “adversely impacted upon the reputation of the police”.

Since the publication of the West Midlands Police report, a separate internal inquiry has been re-examining some of the decisions Todd took, amid claims of new evidence of false accounting and misconduct in public office.

At the centre of the claims are several “unique” contracts, approved by Todd and given to at least three senior staff. One concerned the promotion and subsequent redundancy of Cathy Butterworth, the force’s former director of development.

Ms Butterworth, 53, rose swiftly up the management ladder under Todd, starting as a clerk at Rochdale police station and ending her career as head of police training, overseeing its firearms and high-speed pursuit training.

She took redundancy from her £87,000-a-year job after Todd’s death, according to Force accounts for 2011-12, and received a pay-off of £117,000 plus extra pension rights. Sources said the total award was around £300,000.

The redundancy package of Christine Brereton, the force’s head of human resources, is also being re-examined. She was given £105,000, described as “other payments”, when she left her post last year. She also received wages of £36,334 before her departure.

A note indicates both these were “termination payments”, but senior police officers questioned the amounts.

Supt Alan Greene, the head of the Greater Manchester branch of the Superintendents’ Association, said: “These concerns were dismissed.

"Spending such monies, way in excess of any normal redundancy, certainly needs to be scrutinised and it is right that the police authority is doing so.”

In contrast, four other senior staff who left the force received significantly smaller redundancy payments.

The IT director and finance director, who both earned about £85,000 a year, received payouts of £40,030 and £37,723 respectively.

The £74,000-a-year director of diversity received £10,210 and the £65,000-a-year forensic services director received £44,627. A note states they were all “redundancy payments”, rather than the “termination payments” received by Ms Butterworth and Ms Brereton.

Last night, Manchester’s newly elected Police Commissioner, Tony Lloyd, the former Labour foreign office minister, said he was awaiting a report from the chief executive of the now defunct police authority into allegations of possible financial malpractice.

He added: “If police officers or anyone else have evidence of criminal offences I would urge them to come forward.”

There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by staff who received the payments. Ms Butterworth declined to comment on the investigation.

She said she believed that the police authority inquiry into her severance deal may have become invalid following the election of the Police Commissioner.

Todd’s widow, Carolyn, declined to comment. She has stood by her late husband even though several extramarital relationships have come to light since his death.

Archbishop

Jews who fled the Nazis: secrets of Justin Welby's family tree


The German Jewish ancestors of Justin Welby, the next Archbishop of Canterbury, were forced to flee the Nazis and then faced internment in Britain during the war as “enemy aliens”.



Justin Welby, the next Archbishop of Canterbury Photo: Geoff Pugh for the Telegraph

By Jason Lewis, Investigations Editor7:20AM GMT 02 Dec 201221 Comments

The full story of Justin Welby’s family, which provides a snapshot of a family caught in the dramas and tragedies of 20th century Europe, can be told for the first time today.

It is a story which his own father concealed from him and it was only last weekend that Bishop Welby learned from The Telegraph of his German Jewish roots and how his family, the Weilers, came to Britain.

But while his father, Gavin, was making his fortune in New York, posing as an aristocrat and selling whisky, his close relations faced persecution in Germany and were forced to flee for their lives.

Gavin Welby’s cousin was Dr Gerhard Weiler, a leading German chemist who ran a Berlin forensics laboratory pioneering techniques in microscopic analysis.

Before Hitler came to power in 1933 and introduced laws banning Jews from many jobs, including scientific work, Dr Weiler analysed samples for police murder investigations and Berlin hospitals.

His wife Dr Grita Thoemke worked with him and was an expert in anaesthetics.

His father, Dr Julius Weiler, brother of the Bishop of Durham’s grandfather Bernard, had founded the Westend Sanatorium, a leading psychiatric centre.

The family lived in a villa in the clinic’s grounds filled with Louis XV furniture, French tapestries, bronzes by Andrea Riccio, and paintings by Old Masters including Francisco Goya, Francesco Guardi and Jan van Goyen.

Martha Weiler, wife of Max Weiler, taken in 1919 with her sisters Emma, left and Louise, right

Julius was one of six sons of a wealthy merchant, Herman Weiler, and Amalie Hermbach. The family had thrived under the enlightened laws of the Kingdom of Hanover and, in the bustling market town of Osterode am Harz, they ran “S.J Weiler”, a small department store, started by their grandfather, Simon.

Herman Weiler sent his sons to the local Latin school and, while his siblings went to work in the family store, Julius went to University in Gottingen and studied medicine, before moving to Berlin to practise as a doctor.

The Weiler family shop taken in the late 1800's

In 1884, following their father’s death, the Weilers sold the store and four of the brothers, Siegfried, Max, Ernest and the Bishop of Durham’s grandfather, Bernard, travelled to London and set up “Weiler Brothers”, importing “ostrich and osprey feathers.

Their mother Amalie, Bishop Welby’s great grandmother, also moved to London, living in a flat in Hampstead with her unmarried youngest son Ernest. She died of pneumonia in 1914 and was buried the Jewish cemetery in Golders Green.

Back in 1920s Germany, Gerhard and his wife Grita had opened Dr Weiler’s Diagnostic Institute. Documents in the Jewish Archive in Berlin show that the family had “renounced” the faith as long ago as 1905.

As a 15-year-old Gerhard had been confirmed, but their conversion to Christianity did not save the family from Hitler’s anti-Jewish laws.

As Gerhard wrote later in his self-published memoirs: “We heard Hitler on the radio, screaming and ranting that the blame for all German ills lay with the Jews.

“It was the Jews’ fault entirely that Germany had lost the war...The Jews were also responsible for Germany’s supposed moral decline. There must only be one course of action to be taken: the Jews must be exterminated like vermin.”

The Weilers’ laboratory was in the basement of a large German villa which they rented to another family.

One of their staff, who cleaned the laboratory, was Communist. Working upstairs was a manservant who turned out to be a Nazi sympathiser.

When Hitler came to power in 1933 the manservant informed on the laboratory cleaner. He was imprisoned and executed.

“Adolf Hitler became Chancellor and the Reichstag (the German parliament) went up in flames’, wrote Gerhard. 'When we heard the news...Grita and I both agreed that we must leave the country’.

Offered a job at a laboratory at Oxford University, Gerhard headed to England and stayed with his uncle Siegfried, the last surviving Weiler brother who had set out from Germany in 1890.

“I stayed with my uncle in his luxurious flat, complete with cook, maid footman and chauffeur...(his) chauffeur drove me to Bedford College in a huge Humber limousine, where I was given a warm reception.

"I left in high spirits with the comforting thought that Adolf Hitler and his Third Reich would never harm either me or my family.”

But, travelling back to Germany to arrange their departure, he had a narrow escape at the border. Secretly carrying cigarettes in his fur coat, he was stopped by a Nazi official but claimed he had nothing to declare.

“Miraculously, they didn’t discover the cigarettes in the lining, otherwise I would probably not be here to tell the tale!”

The whole family, Gerhard, his wife Grita, her sister Kaete, a ballerina, and his father, Julius, left Germany. When war broke out, Gerhard was registered as an “enemy alien” under laws designed to stop Nazi spies and spent several months in an internment camp near Liverpool.

“All exits were guarded by soldiers with bayonets,” he recalled and several Jewish inmates committed suicide.

After the war he lived in Oxford, where he ran a private forensic laboratory, and did not return to Germany for 31 years. Grita died in 1983 and Gerhard in 1995.

He left much of his art collection, including a series of Renaissance drawings, to Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum and a language prize, funded by a bequest, which bears his name at Roehampton University.

The Hanovarian town of Osterode am Harz where Justin Welby's forebares can be traced back to

Other members of the Weiler family, however, did not survive. The Holocaust records at Yad Vashem in Israel record the death of a young boy, Nathan Sommer, from Kassel, close to the Weilers’ hometown of Osterode am Harz. His mother was Gertrud Weiler, in all probability a cousin of the nearby merchant family.

A picture in the memorial archive shows a tiny boy holding a dog and clutching his sister’s arm.

Nathan, who was born in 1934, was “murdered” on an unknown date after being transported by the SS to the Riga ghetto, in Latvia, where most of the 24,000 Jewish inhabitants were massacred in late 1941.

Meanwhile, the Bishop of Durham’s father, Gavin, returned to London from New York after the war and established “Gavin Distillers”, based in Oxford Street. He exported whisky to America and even had his own blend, “Gavin’s Gold Label”.

As a 19-year-old Alison Wilkinson, then Cowie, began working for Welby as his personal, business and social secretary shortly after he had stood unsuccessfully as a Conservative candidate in the 1951 election.

Gavin Welby

Mr Welby had a reputation as a ladies’ man. Briefly married before the war to factory owner’s daughter, Doris Sturzenegger — a fact which he later kept secret from his son — his second wife, Jane Portal, who is Bishop Welby’s mother, divorced him on the grounds of adultery. He also had affairs with actress Vanessa Redgrave and President Kennedy’s sister, Pat.

“I remember one time he had got this great stack of letters from a girlfriend and he said he wanted me to just tear them all up and throw them all away,’ recalls Mrs Wilkinson. 'There were girlfriends in the background but I never met any of them or knew who they were’.

Gavin Welby, who died in 1977, took many of his secrets to his grave, and his son desperately wants to know whether, unbeknown to him, he has a half-bother or half-sister.

However, The Telegraph has learnt that there were no children from his short-lived 1934 marriage to Miss Sturzenegger.

She later re-married, to Alfred Henry, a corporate accounting executive, and the couple moved to Los Angeles, where they had two children, but the family confirmed her first marriage was childless.