Westway
Development Trust: (4/6) "London
property developer in nightclub
swindle"
This research document will
make little sense if you haven't read
Brian Deer's Notting
Hell from The Sunday
Times of June 17 2001. In July 2002 the
trust renamed itself Westway Development
Trust. A Westway
Development Trust index of materials is
also available
<<<go
to the start<<<
(G)
THE TRUST KNEW WHAT IT WAS DOING
The
trust has extensive expertise, both among
its professional staff and among its
trustees. The staff is headed by a
director, Roger Matland, salaried at
more than £60,000 a year, a deputy
director, an associate director,
property, and a substantial finance
function. The volume of material
surrounding this issue alone demonstrates
that we are not talking about amateurs
struggling in a complex environment.
The
trust's chair since 1993 is Gerald
Gordon, a circuit judge sitting at the
Central Criminal Court. His entry in
Who's Who [S19] indicates him to
have been a Conservative member of the
Kensington & Chelsea Council during
19 years, between 1971 and 1990. He was
deputy leader of the council between 1982
and 1988. In 1988 he was chair of town
planning. He was Mayor in 1989-90. In
addition to his seven years as the
trust's chair, he was previously a
trustee and finance committee chairman
between 1980 and 1983.
The
chair of the trust's property and
planning committee for the past 16 years
is Martin Owen, apparently an insurance
broker, residing in Chelsea. He is a
former Conservative councillor and has
been a trustee since 1982 - apparently
the longest serving member of the
management committee. Companies House
documents [20] indicate that Mr
Owen was, among other things, a
co-director of Blackwall Green Ltd (now
absorbed into a plc) and Levergate Ltd (a
£100-capitalized company, now dissolved,
with 3 directors) with, among others, a
Mr John Martin Southern. Blackwall Green
helped establish or finance Saladin
Security, a controversial organisation
which supplies ex-SAS soldiers overseas,
described in the press as
"mercenaries". Mr Southern was
a director of Saladin. In a telephone
conversation with Brian Deer, terminated
when Mr Owen hung up, he said that he had
nothing to do with Saladin. Mr Owen is
party to the Subterania lease and was a
member of the 3-man group (with Judge
Gordon and Mr Matland) which led to the
Ion Bar also being leased to Vince Power.
Nevertheless, despite assigning the two
leases to Mr Power, he told Deer that he
had never met him. The charity's
solicitors have protested to The Sunday
Times about Deer raising Mr Owen's
private business interests, which it says
are not relevant.
Seven
of the trust's 15-member management
committee are appointed by the borough's
Conservative group, which controls the
council from South Kensington, Chelsea
and Knightsbridge. Members of the
management committee have included
mayors, committee chairs, a parliamentary
candidate and other prominent
Conservatives. The chair is effectively
appointed in a similar manner. Over the
years, most of the seven have been
Conservative councillors, amply able to
bring their knowledge to bear on these
matters, if called upon. Other members of
the committee are largely drawn from what
might be called "client
charities" - groups which are either
subsidised tenants of the trust, or who
receive small, but doubtless
eagerly-received, grants from the trust.
Business
rates are an important issue to the
trust, not something easily overlooked.
In its Tenant Directory [S21],
alongside the local police station and
London Electricity, it gives, on the last
page, only two telephone numbers for the
local authority:
General
020 7937 5464
Business
rates 020 7603 7751
The
lease on Subterania was drawn up by
solicitors who hold themselves out to be
specialists in charity law and who have
been retained as the trust's advisors
ever since [S22]. The senior
partner, Mr James Sinclair Taylor,
recently featured on Radio 4 as an
authority on charity issues. His firm
told Brian Deer that three of its
solicitors work on trust business. There
can be no question that, over the 11
years, the trust had full access to
professional advice, as a substantial
volume of correspondence between Sinclair
Taylor and The Sunday Times confirms.
Demeanour
after the fact is not conclusive, but
twelve years after the lease was drawn
up, Judge Gordon - who denied detailed
knowledge of the rates issue as having
been put in place before he took the
chair in 1993, and said that Subterania's
rates had never been raised at the
management committee since then - was
keen in the interview with Brian Deer to
maintain that this lease was in fact
nothing of the sort, but a
"management agreement". Shown
an old annual report designating income
from Bay 63 as "rent" Gordon
strenuously denied that the relationship
was landlord and tenant, which it plainly
is and always has been. Although he
undertook to have this document produced
for Deer (and Matland indeed handed it
over), he maintained his position at the
interview even in the face of the
suggestion that surely a management
agreement implies hiring a third party to
do something for payment, rather than the
situation in this case where the third
party paid rent.
In a
letter to Brian Deer, dated 30th October
2000 [S23], Judge Gordon indicated
that he understood the nature of the
complaints over Subterania. He wrote:
"I
have now had an opportunity
(conspicuously absent before and during
your interrogation) to consider your
allegations that the Trust made unjust
and dishonest claims for rate and Music
and Dancing license rebates and that I,
as Chair, should have stopped it."
His
third itemised observation is:
"I
do not accept your assertion that as
Chair, I have to scrutinise everything
that staff do personally."
As
it happens, this assertion was not made
in these terms. However, the confidential
internal memo referred to above [S8]
from Matland, with regard to the cocktail
bar, concludes with a director's
recommendation that:
"the
chair, chair of planning and property and
himself are authorised to proceed with
the project."
This
suggests that Judge Gordon (with Roger
Matland and Owen) was intimately involved
in leasing the Ion Bar to Mr Power and
presumably had an adequate opportunity,
and indeed a duty, to familiarise himself
with the trust's dealings with Mr Power
and the nature of any existing agreements
between them. Judge Gordon says that he
has never met Mr Power other than to
shake his hand once.
Continuing
to foster the illusion that Subterania
were trust premises managed on its behalf
by Mr Power, in a letter to the local
authority dated 25th September 1998 [S24],
when council officers were challenging
the unlawful exemptions from fees,
Matland wrote:
"It
has been and is a well-known fact that
the Mean Fiddler Organisation have a
management arrangement with the Trust to
provide music and entertainment in the
premises."
Despite
the premises being leased to Mr Power,
Roger Matland has until the recent
controversy acted as holder of the
entertainment license and remains a joint
liquor licensee. To the uninitiated, this
may add to the confusion about the true
relationship. It is sufficient to note
that it was Mr Power's solicitors,
Hodders, who appeared for the licensee at
West London Magistrates last year, not
the trust's, Sinclair Taylor &
Martin. Roger Matland maintains that the
license, among other things, gives the
charity some influence over Subterania.
In fact, it does not. A license confers
nothing but itself. The relationship
between the charity and Mr Power is
governed by contract. More likely, the
charity's name was deployed to obtain and
defend late night music and dancing
permissions that a purely commercial
applicant would be unlikely to secure in
the quiet residential streets around
Acklam Road.
(H)
THE TRUST TOOK POSITIVE STEPS TO DECEIVE
Presumably
due to disproportionate cost, the local
authority does not indefinitely keep
forms completed by applicants for
charitable relief of rates and license
fees. Historically, the forms have
sometimes not asked questions rigorously.
However, sufficient are available to show
that the trust submitted incomplete,
evasive and in some cases plainly
dishonest applications. These forms would
be received, unknown to councillors, by
junior administrative staff in two
different council premises.
In
June 1999, the trust submitted five
standardised application forms for
renewal of discretionary rate relief on
grounds of charitable status [S25].
The forms are distributed by council
staff to the few dozen charitable
organisations in the borough making such
claims and are printed with the bold
heading:
"Information
to be supplied by charitable
organisations for renewal of
discretionary relief from the National
Non-Domestic Rate under the local
government finance act 1988 SS 47 and
48."
The
forms ask:
"Please
answer the questions below as fully as
possible using separate sheets of paper
where necessary."
All
five are completed and signed in the hand
of Mr Chris Ogden-Newton, the trust's
associate director, property. Apart from
one form for the trust's office premises,
for which there can be no doubt, four are
for premises of specialist activity: a
sports centre run by the trust; a fitness
club run by the trust; a skate park run
by a private company and Subterania run
by Mr Power. In the case of the two
trust-run premises, they are
unambiguously described:
"North
Kensington Amenity Trust (Westway Sports
Centre)"
And:
"North
Kensington Amenity Trust (Portobello
Green Fitness Club)"
However,
the commercially-run premises are
incompletely described by Mr
Ogden-Newton, simply as:
"North
Kensington Amenity Trust"
In a
box seeking an "address and
description of property" Mr
Ogden-Newton describes the night-club
simply as:
"12
Acklam Road London W10."
Despite
being asked on the forms to supply clear
information, Mr Ogden-Newton is
selectively silent on the description of
the commercial premises in a way that he
isn't for the sports and fitness
facilities. Nowhere is a night-club
mentioned, or the word Subterania used.
Interviewed
by Brian Deer, Judge Gordon said that he
did not personally know what was at the
premises designated as "12 Acklam
Road". He tried, but failed, to
guess. He said he did not know that this
was Subterania's address. Presumably, if
he did not know, being chairman of the
management committee since 1993,
interviewed a few hundred yards from the
premises, it seems likely that the clerks
in the non-domestic rates office of the
council more than a mile away did not
connect "12 Acklam Road" with
the 600-capacity night-club either.
In
the completion of forms for entertainment
licenses, submitted to a different office
of the council, about half a mile from
the rates office, the trust goes beyond
selective silence [S26]. The
Sunday Times is in possession of four
such forms for Subterania, for the years
1995 to 1998. The forms changed slightly
in the first two years, but all four
include a statement as follows:
"I/We
certify that the use of the premises
under the Council's Music or Music and
Dancing Licence will be solely for
entertainment which is of an educational
or other like character or is given for a
charitable or other like purpose."
The
forms for all four years are certified
"R E Matland", the latest being
dated 9th October 1998.
Perhaps
because the licensing department had
become alerted to a problem of bogus
claims, the forms for 1997 and 1998 ask
more probing questions than in earlier
years. In the face of new obstacles,
Roger Matland climbs a ladder, starting
with obfuscation, moving through
evasiveness and culminating in deception.
Question
5 on both forms is:
"Purpose
for which entertainment is to be
provided, eg Charitable, fund-raising,
educational, community etc. Please give
reasons why the entertainment is regarded
as such."
In
1997, Roger Matland answers on behalf of
the charity in the kind of slippery
half-truth which characterises much of
his correspondence over these issues:
"As
part of the general community activities
and charitable objectives of the North
Kensington Amenity Trust."
Roger
Matland responds to the same inquiry with
more elaborate evasiveness in 1998. He
seems to take great care not to quite
answer the question, but generates an
impression that does not exactly capture
a 600-capacity, wholly for-profit
night-club, taking £1m a year for Mr
Power:
"One
of NKAT's aims is to assist other local
charities. Through us local community
groups can use Subterania for:
fund-raising, profile raising,
dissemination of information, community
parties and meetings (eg AGMs), community
arts events."
Question
6 on the two forms sets a higher
benchmark for those who would deceive:
"State
the type of functions to be held: eg
social function, dance, discotheque,
concert etc"
Roger
Matland's 1997 answer is:
"Socials
and dances, general music concerts,
community group meetings."
The
1998 answer to the same question is:
"Dances,
socials, concerts, meetings, Christmas
parties."
Question
7 on the two forms is yet more
problematic for Mr Matland:
"Who
will receive the proceeds of these
functions?"
Roger
Matland's 1997 answer to this straight
question is a straight lie:
"North
Kensington Amenity Trust".
Roger
Matland's 1998 answer to the same
straight question is a straight different
answer:
"The
charity organising the event".
And
on he goes. Question 8 on the two forms:
"Are
the premises ever rented out to a third
party for any public or private events?
If Yes, does the third party receive the
profits from the event?"
An
inquiry to flush out the situation if
ever there was one. But Roger Matland
answers in 1997:
"Yes
- local charities. Yes - local
charities."
In
1998 he thinks up a cleverer one:
"Only
in the circumstances described
above."
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