Corrupt Money Launderers HSBC bankrolled David Cameron and George Osborne’s trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2009, it has emerged.
The controversial lender lent the gaffe-prone billionaire bookie and former Tory Treasurer Michael Spencer £200 million pounds just a day before the massive Iceland Crisis that wiped billions of pounds off the balance sheets of many UK Local Authorities.
Many of these cash strapped Local Authorities had invested in Iceland because of advice given to them by one of Michael Spencer’s firms — Butlers.
Shortly after getting a £200million bailout from HSBC and narrowly avoiding bankruptcy because of the Iceland debacle (unlike his local authority clients), Spencer donated a million pounds to the Tory party.
It was around this time that Spencer’s holding company IPGL paid for Cameron and Osborne to fly to Davos by private jet.
This revelation is all the more galling given that Cameron and Osborne are known to have shaped regulation to favour HSBC and Spencer’s ICAP and torpedoed investigations into both firms both in the UK and the USA.
Some anti-corruption researchers and campaigners raised this issue with the HSBC board at the Bank’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) in London on Friday but were sidelined.
The Canary have run a piece on the scandal which has received zero pick-up in the mainstream press.
For more info on Spencer read this article by the excellent I am Incorrigible :
Charlotte Hogg, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England (BoE), was appointed the Bank’s Chief Operating Officer in 2013 but never, despite being asked about potential conflicts of interest, disclosed that her brother is a Barclays director.
When she appeared in front of the Treasury Select Committee (TSC) to discuss her recent promotion Hogg said she was well aware of the Bank’s code of conduct — quite apt given she wrote it.
Charlotte Hogg’s mum Sarah Hogg aka Viscountess Hailsham was head of John Major’s Policy Unit in the 1990s — where the controversial Private Finance Initiative (PFI) that has virtually bankrupted the NHS was pioneered.
Here she is speaking at a Business Department Select Committee on Executive Pay and Diversity in the Boardroom.
She opens by stating that she is a member of the Takeover Panel, Lead Independent Director of HM Treasury and a non executive director of John Lewis Partnership (since 2011).
Is it right for public institutions in a so called democracy to be run by such a tiny clique?
Hogg was able to draw on the knowledge and contacts she had built up when pioneering PFI at John Major’s Policy Unit.
Their joint venture eventually became University Partnerships Programme (UPP) — now known to be rip off merchants who market and lobby for increased student debt under the guise of enhanced choice and high quality student experience :
It turns out that Hogg was first recruited for the Chief Operating Officer role at the Bank of England by Virginia Bottomley’s headhunting firm.
Former Health Minister Bottomley is current Health Minster Jeremy Hunt’s Aunt.
So there you are. A very brief tour of the Hogg’s interests.
Below are a few more articles about Charlotte Hogg.
Guardian Piece from 2013 on Charlotte Hogg’s Connections