A regular look at the world of business, compiled by INSIDER DEALER. THE TROUBLE with cheques is that they are so damn traceable, don't you agree? This week I bring you three examples to prove that when it come to bribery and corruption, you just can't use that old favourite - a big bag stuffed full of used readies.
The Sun recently carried claims that Norman Tebbit, while chirman of the Conservative Party in the mid-eighties, was offered £250,000 in a suitcase by 'an unnamed incause, in the words of 'a source, the Chingtord Skinhead ' didn't like the smell of it.
Given that the Tories are perfectly happy to take backoverseas slush funds, rightwing free enterprise pressure groups and sundry crooked buinessmen, the mind bogAnd while Central Office has repeatedly cecied that the government is running a straightforward knighthoods. for-dosh scam, the paper quotes 'one ex-Tory official' thus: 'People give money. and then they receive an honour. Draw your own conclusions.' CHECK THIS extract from an affidavit notarised by the Bombay Hgh Court on February 24 mony of Harshad Mehta, the stockbroker at the centre of a dal in India. 10.45am in the morning, in the company of my brother Ashwin and a Congress Upper House member, the late Mr Satpal Mittal, at the Race Course Road residence of the Prime We had brought to the Nothing like a bagful in it? ANOTHER affidavit, submitted to the London High Court by Alan Sugar, Amstrad boss and Chair of Tottenham Hotspur plc, in his boardroom battle to oust Spurs chief executive Terry Venables.
Sugar claims therein that Brian Clough, manager of Nottingham Forest, liked 'a bung' to ensure that transfers of player went smoothly. Normal procedure, apparently. is to meet Cloughie in a motorway service station and hand over a bag of loot.
Our Brian denied the charges in the following immortal words: The last time I was in a service station, i went NOW, a novel case of a affiliate of Norman Lamont's erstwhile employer NM Rothschild in Heer reckons he was set up. and has made a series of astonishing allegations to the press. Rothschild, he claims, was involved in the payment of the murders of 'God's Banker' Roberto Calvi, found hanging dead under Blackfriars Bridge in 1982.
it has also been operating a 'criminal' tax-dodge HOME NEWS scheme for rich Italians, and has had to liquidate hidden reserves after running up losses of 200 million Swiss Francs on a capital base of just 185 million Swiss Francs, Heer alleges.
Footnote: While advising Jacob Suchard during a takeover bid for the chocolate manufacturer in 1991, Roth.
Fill that suitcase, part two