For Queen and Currency: Audacious fraud, greed and gambling at Buckingham Palace

by Michael Gillard

  ‘I’m going to other people and Paresh is working on somebody but everyone knows that our name’s dirt. We’ve given you everything basically that we bloody own.’

  ‘You can tell them it’s gonna come through. I don’t know what you want to do with the first lot of money, if you’re going to keep it or pass it, that’s not my business.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘At least you can give people something if you want to take your cheese last, which I suggest is what you do, if these people are giving you grief.’

  ‘I’m trying to explain to them that you are giving the money to [the man at Mortgage Guarantee plc] to sort out the mortgage [on the barns].’

  ‘Don’t give ’em names for fuck’s sake.’

  ‘What happens if you don’t get the five today?’

  ‘I don’t even thought of that to be honest with ya.’

  ‘Have you tried Anjam and Fahim?’

  ‘No. We’re at war at the moment because they stitched me up with my people, blubbering and all the rest. And basically my people want paying before them.’

  ‘Me and Paresh got loads of money off people, we fuck up and don’t give them anything back we’re fucked.’

  ‘You ain’t gonna fuck up. Look, this has been instigated purely by the cunts who have put charges on the barns or we’d have the money ages ago. Fahim or Anjam, fuck them. They’ll have to wait now because they’ve put me in a position and I’m backed into a corner where I need someone to step forward and do a deal with me.’

  ‘Can I ask Bee if he can raise anything?’

  ‘Don’t ask him ’cause he’s just a trouble-making shit, mate. There’s things on him I’ll tell you about later, mate. He’s fucked a lot of people.’

  Days later, Page still hadn’t found anyone mug enough to give him money. He decided to try Hussain again with a new lie that Laura had kicked him out of the house and he was now in a hotel £5000 short of closing the deal with his fictitious man at Mortgage Guarantee that would solve everyone’s problems.

  ‘I arranged to stay another night in that hotel. My missus has got the hump with me. I’m saying to [my man], ‘sorry mate had something to do’. Well, yeah, sit in my hotel room and fucking cry. I need that five, mate, and I need it now.’

  ‘You still need the whole five?’

  ‘I can’t get Jack shit. I’m sitting on twenty-five. I want to get this done and dusted now otherwise I’m fucked, mate, I’m fucked for another half a mill as well. If you can square this up like now then I will sort out what I’ve said to you, on the basis you don’t tell anyone. You and Paresh keep it to yourself and I will string the others along for another month or whatever.’

  ‘Thing is what happens if we don’t get the five?’

  ‘Fuck knows. He ain’t gonna give me a cheque unless he’s got his money and he’s already getting suspicious, mate.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It’s gonna go bandy ’cause what I’ll have to do is re-finance legitimate and they’re gonna take a massive chunk off of that, mate. Hence why I’m paying out this money. Everyone wants a piece of the fucking pie. It’s always the way. Now I’m sitting here like a cunt. I need a result in the next twenty minutes.’

  With no money coming through, Page tried to raise the stakes with Hussain on a follow-up call.

  ‘At the end of the day you’ve gotta think of yourself,’ he told the IT manager.

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘I’m thinking of myself now,’ Page added.

  ‘Yeah I am.’

  ‘All right? Fuck everyone else.’

  The pair then discussed what was going on with Anjam Khan. Hussain claimed that BAT boss Rahul Sharma had given an ultimatum to Khan and Baree that they must join him in a court action against Page or face the sack. Hussain said Khan wanted to meet the Royal Protection officer for reassurance and to get Sharma off his back. But Page wasn’t worried because he said he had ‘shit’ on the BAT boss and loads of money had gone through the bank accounts of so many BAT employees.

  £ £ £

  ‘Is that Paul Page?’

  ‘Yeah. Who wants to know?’

  ‘It’s DS James Howells from the DPS.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Is everything OK?’

  ‘No. I’ve had a shitty day.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘I ain’t telling you nothing. I don’t like you and I don’t trust you.’

  It was two in the afternoon on Friday, 2 March and Page had been all morning on the Stellas. There had also been a domestic row.

  ‘Well, where are you then?’ asked the anti-corruption officer.

  ‘At home.’

  ‘There’s something I need to talk to you about.’

  ‘If you want to talk to me come here but I’ll only talk with my solicitor present.’

  Howells took the solicitor’s details. But the call was principally to establish Page’s whereabouts before the DPS came to search his house.

  The slim pretext for that search was a complaint from the wife of PC Surinder Mudhar alleging that Page had intimidated her. Manjit Mudhar claimed that she’d seen Page and another man in a car outside her house early that morning when she left for the school run. Her husband had recently made a statement to the DPS.

  The complaint was evidentially weak but the DPS looked determined to arrest Page and search his house that evening.

  At 6.40 pm the search team and a group of Operation Aserio officers led by Detective Inspector Orchard arrived in the rain outside Page’s house. Orchard and Detective Sergeant Mark Beckett were in front and Sergeant Howells behind them, with a pink folder under his arm.

  ‘Who is it?’ said Laura from behind the door when the bell rang.

  ‘Police,’ replied Orchard.

  The door swung open. Laura, wearing a jumper dress and a look that would kill, launched into a tirade of abuse.

  ‘Fuck off outta my ’ouse,’ she shouted. ‘Why do this in front of my kids?’ who were behind her in the hall. Page had by now joined his wife from the kitchen.

  He squared up to the physically matched Orchard. Beckett, who was a lot smaller with a bottlebrush moustache, was taken aback.

  ‘You’re just a bunch of fucking cunts,’ Page told them. ‘What’s this all about?’

  Orchard explained he wanted to talk about an allegation of witness intimidation without naming the complainant.

  ‘Fuck off!’ said Page, edging nearer to the inspector’s face. ‘If you are not here to arrest me then fuck off! Love, call Essex Police, I don’t trust these slimy cunts.’

  Howells had phoned Page’s solicitor and left a message but the call back went unanswered as he was on the way to her client’s house. Page believed his old Essex Police colleagues would protect him from any DPS tricks.

  By now, Page was nose to nose with Orchard and Howells felt an imminent head butt coming his boss’s way. The aggression gave the DPS all the grounds they needed.

  Beckett arrested Page on the doorstep for witness intimidation and read him his rights. Orchard then made a move to come into the house, putting his foot in the door. But Laura, back from calling 999, closed it on him.

  ‘You’ve just jammed my foot!’ the detective winced.

  ‘Good! I hope it hurts,’ she replied.

  Sirens could be heard in the distance. It was Essex Police. Orchard told one of his men to bring the video camera and start filming the ugly scene at the door, correctly fearing that Laura would make a complaint against him.

  Page was calmed by the imminent arrival of his old Essex buddies and yielded to the inevitable that he would be taken into custody while the DPS searched his house. It was agreed he could change into some jogging bottoms before being taken away. When he returned several DPS officers were by now in the hall with Laura and the children. Page decided to leave the anti-corruption squad with a gesture of defiance.

  ‘If you want to search something, why don’t you search this?’ he told the assembl
ed crowd while pulling down his jogging bottoms and parting his cheeks. Annus horribilis indeed.

  In that split second of exposure, Page realized he had gone too far. The upside-down look of disbelief on Laura’s face was one thing; the expressions on the faces of his huddled children was another. There was just silence from the DPS as he pulled up his jogging bottoms.

  Essex officers agreed to escort Page to the DPS car that would take him to Romford police station. He walked calmly and uncuffed out of the house with Beckett alongside him. But before he got inside the car he had some final abuse for Orchard and Howells.

  ‘You cunting slimy bastards,’ he shouted. ‘Don’t let those cunts into the house unless they have a warrant,’ he told Laura.

  On the journey to the police station, Page tried to explain why he had reacted so badly to the DPS knock.

  ‘They gave me a warning my life was in danger. It’s rubbish. It’s a fit-up.’

  ‘I can’t discuss it,’ the DPS detective replied.

  ‘Are you Beckett?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Back at the house, the DPS cameraman was filming Laura at the front door. The left side of her face was inflamed due to a gum infection.

  ‘No point pointing that in my face. See your colleague?’ she said, looking at Orchard. ‘He’s tried to intimidate me. He put his foot in the door and tried to push me.’

  Orchard told her he was going to start the search. Laura conceded. She didn’t want any more of her business aired in public.

  ‘Look how many there are of you. Can you come in so I can shut the door? Where are you going to start?’

  Orchard pointed to the garage, where Page kept his tarantulas and goldfish. She opened the door.

  ‘There you go, help yourself,’ she said.

  By now, Detective Sergeant Tracey Hunt was in the house to deal with Laura and introduced herself.

  ‘Hunt by name, cunt by nature,’ Laura spat back.

  Her parents arrived minutes later to take away the older, distressed children. When they had gone, Laura apologized to Hunt during the search of her bedroom,

  ‘And sorry for the state of the house. It’s going to be repossessed any moment and I can’t be bothered anymore. We’ve got nowhere to go. I’ve lost weight with worry for what is going to happen to my children.’

  While the search continued, Laura bathed Harry, popped another painkiller and called a DPS search officer in the attic a ‘ginger cunt’ for putting his foot through her ceiling.

  Strangely, the DPS did not film the search of the house, which made it difficult later to rebut Page’s complaint that ‘three ledgers’ containing details of syndicate members and their perks were seized but not disclosed in the search log.69

  The DPS had logged the seizure of Page’s Rolodex. It contained the names of many police officers, not all involved in his syndicate. One of the latter group was a former member of the Met karate team, Steve Gwillen, who at the time of the search was a senior officer on the DPS’s Intelligence Development Group.

  Far more damaging to Page was a notebook the DPS found in which the drunk Royal Protection officer had indulged his love of doodling. One in particular gave an insight into his frame of mind. It showed a childlike drawing of a house with a chimney. Inside the house was a British pound symbol. And underneath were words, some of which had been scribbled out as if Page had viewed the note in a moment of sobriety and thought better. It said:

  United Piss Your Savings Up The Wall

  Invest With Us And I’ll Kill You When

  You Need Your Money Back

  When the search finished at 9.10 pm, Laura called Romford police station to learn that her husband had been taken to hospital after complaining of heart pain.

  The next afternoon, Page was fit to be interviewed. He gave a prepared statement to the allegation of witness intimidation. As there was no criminal investigation into his business affairs he reminded the DPS that he couldn’t be accused of trying to stop someone giving evidence against him.

  On his solicitor’s advice and in the absence of the identity of the person he had allegedly intimidated, no further comment was given.

  Soon after Page was released on Saturday, he went to meet the Mirror’s veteran crime reporter Jeff Edwards. He believed the tabloid chequebook would get him urgent cash to save his house from being repossessed. Edwards, however, wasn’t buying.

  £ £ £

  That week, British bank HSBC had just announced a big loss in the US subprime market after homeowners started to default on their mortgages. The US investment bank Bear Sterns also admitted that it was closing its subprime hedge fund and had written off $3.8 billion. Analysts were suddenly predicting that in 2007 over two million Americans would lose their homes and a fifth of all subprime mortgages issued in the last two years would default.

  These early signs that the housing and credit bubbles were bursting appeared as a repossession notice was sent to the Pages for defaulting on their substantial home mortgage.

  It was ironic that half of Page’s last weekend in Hatton Close was spent in a cell. It was typical that he spent the other half getting drunk while Laura held the family together and tried to save the family home she had spent so much money doing up.

  They’d had some happy memories there since 1998, mainly around the birth of the children. But the walls of Hatton Close also carried the scars of violent rows as flying ornaments chipped the expensive wallpaper. There was also plenty of botched DIY as Laura tried to paper over the cracks and holes from other barneys where Page would punch the wall or kick in the banister.

  None of it mattered now. On Monday morning, 5 March 2007 the mortgage company told a pleading Laura that unless the money owed was paid straight away their repo men were coming at noon the next day.

  Page refused to help his wife pack up the house, preferring the company of Stella in an armchair. The more he drank the more belligerent he became, at points forbidding his wife to pack any further.

  ‘I’m not moving and if they come in here then I am going to fight them,’ he told her.

  Laura’s best friend came over to help put everything in bin bags and to give a new home to the hamsters. By Tuesday morning Page hadn’t moved from the armchair except to get more beer.

  ‘I ain’t fucking moving. They will have to move me,’ he told Laura while opening another can of Stella as she came down the stairs.

  ‘Grow up, Paul!’ she replied and continued packing.

  As midday approached, Page went to the kitchen and took the largest knife from the butcher’s block.

  ‘That’s what they are going to get,’ he told Laura.

  In the end, she loaded the bags into the Range Rover, secured Harry in a toddler’s seat and waited for Page to get in without so much as a rude word to the repo men.

  Laura had borrowed money from her mum to put their belongings into storage. There was change for an overnight stay at a nearby hotel. She and the children went straight to the room where they all jumped into the double bed and fell asleep watching the television. Page stayed in the lobby bar getting blind drunk. He was so pissed by the end of his party for one that he had to crawl along the hotel landing to his room.

  His attempt to get inside woke Laura, who watched the last vestiges of respect evaporate as he vomited everywhere.

  ‘Get a grip, Paul,’ she thought to herself. For the first time in their ten-year marriage she was questioning the relationship. Page, meanwhile, was passed out in his own sick.70

  £ £ £

  Three weeks later, on 27 March, Fahim Baree received notice from CMC that he now owed £41,346. He had held them off since his account was closed fifteen months ago with all manner of excuses without disclosing the truth about his mum’s re-mortgage money and his own involvement with ULPD. With the spread-betting firm threatening its solicitors, Baree felt it was time he gave up Page.71

  There was reassurance he was doing the right thing when Baree bumped into Page’s Aunty Pat the
same day that the CMC letter arrived. She was surprised he knew about the £150,000 re-mortgage of her parents’ old Leytonstone house to help Page complete the barns. Pat told Baree it had been repossessed after Page stopped making the re-mortgage payments and she was now living in a small flat with her homeless nephew and his family.

  Aunty Pat’s story evoked painful memories for Baree. His mum could no longer retire because she had to take over repayment of her £150,000 re-mortgage after Page stopped paying.

  Two days later on 29 March 2007, Baree made his first witness statement to the DPS against Page. He described some details of his involvement with ULPD and CMC, a £7000 holiday arranged for SO14 investor Mick ‘the Don’ Hickman, his mother’s re-mortgage and the bribery claim involving Mortgage Guarantee. Baree admitted his own role in providing ‘money to sweeten’ the finance firm, but was never questioned about that.

  Despite becoming a witness against Page, Baree was still in contact with his former best friend because he wanted him to explain to his mum how the £150,000 re-mortgage money was all lost.

  Unaware that Baree had made a witness statement against him, at 7 pm on Friday, 30 March, Page texted: ‘Will be at mums tonight mate as promised what time you meet me.’ When there was no response, Page left a voicemail forty-five minutes later. ‘What the fuck you doin? I need you to know about the info they found in my house about ULPD that’s got your name all over it. I’m waiting for you. I’ll have to come round to yours. Ring me back for Christ’s sake.’

  Baree tried to put off the meeting but Laura had already driven her husband to Mrs Baree’s house because he was over the limit.

  ‘Can’t do another night mate, leave mum to me I’m here now don’t worry I’ll explain,’ Page texted. This worried Baree, who started to walk the short distance to his mum’s house. He could see Page outside wearing a baseball cap. As he approached, Baree could smell the booze on him.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve come to see your mum. What the fuck have you been doing? Why haven’t you answered my calls?’

  Page then removed his hand from behind his back, which was worrying Baree, and patted him down. Baree denied he was wearing a wire.