You can't jail me - I'm too posh
After weeks of handwringing and condemnation from the media, politicians and human rights groups, the death of Enron head honcho Ken Lay and then the 'suicide' of key witness Neil Coulbeck (tied his hands behind his back and shot himself 3 times in the head), the NatWest 3 are finally being extradited to the US to face the music in a US courtroom.
The extradition of the fraudsters has made unlikely bedfellows of the Lib Dems, the Tories and Liberty, the human rights group who are usually to be found accusing the police of arresting people before they've blown themselves up on public transport. The Lib Dems, loopy bedwetting apologists that they are, believe that the government should be doing more to prevent British criminals from being extradited to face justice for their crimes. The Tories, corrupt old boys and friends of the rich that they are, believe that the men should be let off because they’re rich, posh and mates with the Tories (David Bermingham is a neighbour of calculatedly loveable faux buffoon Boris Johnson, adulterer and Tory MP).
The government is under fire from all sides. Even some of the government's own backbenchers have been whining about the supposed injustice of the extradition. Businesmen have marched through London to protest it. Every newspaper has run editorials attacking the government. The Daily Mail briefly stopped banging on about the need for blacks and teenage burglars to be hung to demand Blair lets these crooks stay in Britain. And human rights organisations such as Liberty have jumped on board with the same message. I guess they can’t find any evidence of people imprisoned indefinitely without trial in Guantanamo Bay, or environmental campaigners tortured in China, or dissidents incarcerated in Russia, so they’ve had to move on to defending the rights of rich fraudsters who can afford the finest lawyers and PR campaigns and have enormous political influence.
The government seems to be the only bunch of people taking a sensible stand on this issue. Calling these men the NatWest 3 makes them sound like the Guildford 4 or the Birmingham 6 – innocent men framed for heinous crimes by corrupt law enforcement looking for a scapegoat. These men are not innocent bystanders caught up in Enron's machinations. They are guilty as sin. Basically, they were involved in setting up the complex network of companies and subsidiaries that were used to mask debts and falsely inflate profits at Enron and led to its inevitable collapse. As if this wasn’t bad enough, the men then went on to recommend that NatWest sell its stake in one of these companies for far less than market value. The men then bought NatWest’s stake and sold it for a cool $7.3 million profit – a textbook case of insider trading. Thieving on top of defrauding.
Their defence doesn’t revolve around innocence. They claim that because they were operating in the unregulated Cayman Islands, they could operate as they pleased. And as evidenced by the campaigning from all sides of the political spectrum, from posh Tory capitalists to shrieking lefty humanitarians, there’s a great deal of public support for them. Surely they were smart men bending the rules to compete in a ruthless marketplace? Surely they rewarded themselves with a sliver of money from the companies they administered?
Are you people nuts? These men did not commit a victimless crime. When Enron collapsed, thousands of faultless Enron employees lost their retirement savings. Thousands more investors suffered on a smaller scale as many banks, governments and pension funds around the world had some kind of exposure to Enron – you and I probably lost some money, albeit indirectly. And the fallout across the stock market was felt wider still as investors lost confidence in other companies. The $7.3 million that they siphoned off from their dodgy deals wasn’t magicked up from nowhere – it was stolen from the pension fund of YOUR GRANDMOTHER, who will now have to mortgage her soul to some Carol Vorderman fronted sharks if she wants to have more than one bar on the fire this winter.
Enron is a slur on capitalism. These men didn’t create wealth, they destroyed it. If every company behaved like Enron, we’d revert to state owned socialism in a jiffy. Something for the Tories, supposedly the party of wealth creation, to consider as they condemn Labour for doing the right thing and sending these men to face justice. The sooner these men are rotting in Folsom Prison with the bleeding ringpiece blues, the better.
PS: I know spectra have wavelengths, not sides, but it just doesn’t sound right.
The extradition of the fraudsters has made unlikely bedfellows of the Lib Dems, the Tories and Liberty, the human rights group who are usually to be found accusing the police of arresting people before they've blown themselves up on public transport. The Lib Dems, loopy bedwetting apologists that they are, believe that the government should be doing more to prevent British criminals from being extradited to face justice for their crimes. The Tories, corrupt old boys and friends of the rich that they are, believe that the men should be let off because they’re rich, posh and mates with the Tories (David Bermingham is a neighbour of calculatedly loveable faux buffoon Boris Johnson, adulterer and Tory MP).
The government is under fire from all sides. Even some of the government's own backbenchers have been whining about the supposed injustice of the extradition. Businesmen have marched through London to protest it. Every newspaper has run editorials attacking the government. The Daily Mail briefly stopped banging on about the need for blacks and teenage burglars to be hung to demand Blair lets these crooks stay in Britain. And human rights organisations such as Liberty have jumped on board with the same message. I guess they can’t find any evidence of people imprisoned indefinitely without trial in Guantanamo Bay, or environmental campaigners tortured in China, or dissidents incarcerated in Russia, so they’ve had to move on to defending the rights of rich fraudsters who can afford the finest lawyers and PR campaigns and have enormous political influence.
The government seems to be the only bunch of people taking a sensible stand on this issue. Calling these men the NatWest 3 makes them sound like the Guildford 4 or the Birmingham 6 – innocent men framed for heinous crimes by corrupt law enforcement looking for a scapegoat. These men are not innocent bystanders caught up in Enron's machinations. They are guilty as sin. Basically, they were involved in setting up the complex network of companies and subsidiaries that were used to mask debts and falsely inflate profits at Enron and led to its inevitable collapse. As if this wasn’t bad enough, the men then went on to recommend that NatWest sell its stake in one of these companies for far less than market value. The men then bought NatWest’s stake and sold it for a cool $7.3 million profit – a textbook case of insider trading. Thieving on top of defrauding.
Their defence doesn’t revolve around innocence. They claim that because they were operating in the unregulated Cayman Islands, they could operate as they pleased. And as evidenced by the campaigning from all sides of the political spectrum, from posh Tory capitalists to shrieking lefty humanitarians, there’s a great deal of public support for them. Surely they were smart men bending the rules to compete in a ruthless marketplace? Surely they rewarded themselves with a sliver of money from the companies they administered?
Are you people nuts? These men did not commit a victimless crime. When Enron collapsed, thousands of faultless Enron employees lost their retirement savings. Thousands more investors suffered on a smaller scale as many banks, governments and pension funds around the world had some kind of exposure to Enron – you and I probably lost some money, albeit indirectly. And the fallout across the stock market was felt wider still as investors lost confidence in other companies. The $7.3 million that they siphoned off from their dodgy deals wasn’t magicked up from nowhere – it was stolen from the pension fund of YOUR GRANDMOTHER, who will now have to mortgage her soul to some Carol Vorderman fronted sharks if she wants to have more than one bar on the fire this winter.
Enron is a slur on capitalism. These men didn’t create wealth, they destroyed it. If every company behaved like Enron, we’d revert to state owned socialism in a jiffy. Something for the Tories, supposedly the party of wealth creation, to consider as they condemn Labour for doing the right thing and sending these men to face justice. The sooner these men are rotting in Folsom Prison with the bleeding ringpiece blues, the better.
PS: I know spectra have wavelengths, not sides, but it just doesn’t sound right.
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