Adrian Gatton

Author: Adrian Gatton

  • Family makes private deal to run Iraqi air transport (Flight International)

    Family makes private deal to run Iraqi air transport
    Report claims 75% of industry sold without Coalition Provisional Authority approval
    By Julian Moxon and Adrian Gatton
    Flight International

    The bulk of Iraq’s air transport industry, including Iraqi Airways, has been sold off in a private deal without approval from the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), says a new report from the Open Society Institute (OSI), a watchdog organisation funded by financier George Soros.

    Officially, the US-brokered CPA, which is running the country until the planned elections in July, is working to re-establish Iraqi Airways as a going concern. However, according to the OSI’s Iraq Revenue Watch project, 75% of the industry has already been sold to the powerful Khawwam al Abdul Abbas family. The report, entitled “Controlling Iraq’s Skies”, says the family, which reportedly had close ties with the former regime of Saddam Hussein, is establishing a new airline called al Iraqiyya Air …

  • A booty for the barons of Baghdad (Independent on Sunday)

    A booty for the barons of Baghdad
    The streets may be troubled, write Adrian Gatton and Clayton Hirst, but Western dollars are about to rain down on an elite group of secretive Iraqi families.
    The Independent on Sunday
    08 February 2004

    The television images portray a bombed-out country with its inhabitants living in crumbling houses close to the poverty line. But away from the allied forces’ patrols and the buildings riddled with bullet holes, a small but powerful group of families is thriving in Iraq. With business contacts throughout the Gulf and the Middle East and extending into Europe, Iraq has developed its own powerful set of oligarchs. The Al-Bunnias, Al- Khudairys and Kubbas have become the region’s own Rockefellers, Gettys and Fords …

    Read the rest of the story on The Independent’s website here.

  • Mark Thomas: Debt Collector (Channel 4)

    Mark Thomas: Debt Collector (Channel 4)

    Mark Thomas: Debt Collector
    Channel 4
    22 October, 2003

    Saddam’s gone but the debt he ran up while in power remains. Iraq’s foreign debt stands at $383 billion, roughly $16,700 for every man, woman and child. With the average Iraqi wage at just $150 per year, it would take them 150 years to pay off their share. So Mark Thomas decides to help pay off the debt by trying to raise money from the people and companies who have profited from Iraq. Setting off on a series of stunts to highlight the country’s plight (repossessing an Iraqi-owned bank and attempting to sell it to traders in the City of London; hijacking a busload of arms dealers and asking for donations), Mark does his bit to reduce the balance and also reveals how Saddam’s debt is now, with the IMF’s help, going to be swapped for Iraq’s vital assets. All of which means that the very companies that profited under the original regime now stand to cash in again. (C4 Press.)

    Producer: Adrian Gatton
    Director: Martin Herring
    Executive Producer: Stephen Phelps

    Watch here:

  • Kings of clubland (Evening Standard)

    Kings of clubland
    By Adrian Gatton and Paul Lashmar
    Evening Standard
    24th July, 2003
    The deathknell of the superclub was sounded some time ago. So how is it that Fabric, Bagleys and The Key still reel in 7,000 clubbers a night between them? The two brothers who own these venues let us in on their secret…read

    Interview with Billy and Keith Reilly, club owners in King’s Cross and across London.

  • Sister Ping Snakehead Trafficking Investigation (Channel 4 News)

    Sister Ping Snakehead Trafficking Investigation (Channel 4 News)

     

    Human trafficker’s last days of freedom
    Channel 4 News
    29 June, 2003

    An investigation into Little Sister Ping, the Chinese Snakehead smuggler. Her gang organised the notorious shipment of Chinese illegal immigrants to Dover in which 58 immigrants were suffocated in the back of a lorry carrying tomatoes. This film includes exclusive access to the Dutch police phone taps of Sister Ping’s conversations, and secret filming in Rotterdam.

    Script:

    “I dream I’m returning to China and I am being arrested by the police. I am always having nightmares.”

    These are the words of Sister Ping who was jailed in the Netherlands last week for smuggling people from China into Britain.

    It was her gang that was responsible for the ill-fated operation in which 58 people suffocated while hidden in a truck bringing a cargo of tomatoes through Dover.

    But what emerged from the trial was the sheer scale of Sister Ping’s human trafficking. It’s estimated that she could have been responsible for more than a quarter of all Chinese illegal immigration into Britain.

    Adrian Gatton gained exclusive access to the police phone taps of Sister Ping and reports now on how she made, and lost, a fortune trading in misery of others …

    Read the rest of the script here.

    Reporter: Adrian Gatton
    Director: Rob Lemkin

  • Met corruption remains secret (The Guardian)

    Met corruption remains secret
    By Adrian Gatton and Mark Olden
    The Guardian
    May 30 2003

    The independent body set up to investigate alleged miscarriages of justice has cleared a man who has spent most of the past seven years in prison, after its investigators discovered evidence of police corruption …

    Read the rest of the story about Erkin Guney in The Guardian here.

  • Controversial past of new City bar owner (Independent on Sunday)

    Controversial past of new City bar owner
    Former liquidator, politician and buyer of Ryan’s and The Arbitrageur has fallen foul of the regulators. Adrian Gatton explains
    Independent on Sunday
    04 May 2003
    The new owner of two of the City’s most famous bars – Ryan’s and The Arbitrageur – is a Liberal Democrat politician and former liquidator who was fined for malpractice by accountancy regulators …

  • Lucky Escapes (Inside Housing Magazine)

    Lucky Escapes
    By Adrian Gatton
    Inside Housing
    2nd May, 2003
    Home Office backing for a housing association safe house project will give fresh hope to desperate women sold into the sex industry.

    Profile of a new scheme to house victims of sex trafficking.

  • New Hi-Tech Odour Weapons Will ‘Sniff-Out’ Fugitives (The Big Issue)

    New Hi-Tech Odour Weapons Will ‘Sniff-Out’ Fugitives
    By Adrian Gatton
    The Big Issue
    14 April 2003

    The US government’s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is to award $3.2m for an ‘odourtype detection programme’ to identify our individual odour signatures …

  • Is Russia at last facing up to its image problems? (Independent on Sunday)

    Is Russia at last facing up to its image problems?
    To attract foreign investors, the country must try to shake off comparisons with the Wild West. Paul Lashmar, James Mawson and Adrian Gatton report
    Independent on Sunday
    30 March 2003
    On Tuesday morning, as the extravagant Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky makes his first appearance in the oak-panelled dock at Bow Street Magistrates Court in central London, just down the road in Westminster, the Russian Economic Forum will open with great fanfare. These two entirely coincidental events could not more starkly present the two contrasting faces of Russia on the international business stage.