Britons accused of Guinea coup plot are sued in High Court
By Paul Lashmar and Adrian Gatton
The Independent on Sunday
18 July 2004
An Old Etonian mercenary, a British businessman and a Lebanese oil-trader are being sued in the High Court over allegations of an attempted coup in the West African state of Equatorial Guinea.
Abramovich faces fraud probe over sale of gold mine
By Adrian Gatton
The Independent on Sunday
23 May 2004
Roman Abramovich, the billionaire owner of Chelsea Football Club, is being investigated by Russian authorities over the controversial sale of a mine in his Arctic governorship to London-listed Highland Gold.
Russians apply to raid London offices of jailed Yukos oligarch
By Abigail Townsend and Adrian Gatton
Independent on Sunday
02 May 2004
The Home Office is believed to be considering an application from the Russian authorities to allow them to raid the London offices of oil giant Yukos.
Crash lawyer ‘in fear of Russian spies’
By Nigel Rosser And Adrian Gatton
Evening Standard
30th April 2004
A millionaire British lawyer who died in a mystery helicopter crash was being targeted by the Russian secret service …
Russian tycoon’s British lawyer ‘was a police informant’
By Adrian Gatton
The Independent on Sunday
25 April 2004
The secretive British lawyer behind the jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky became a police informant only days before he died in a mysterious helicopter accident, it was claimed last night.
EXCLUSIVE
What was the British lawyer who died in this crash telling British intelligence here about the struggle between the Kremlin and a Russian oil empire?
When the closest confidant of Russia’s wealthiest man died in a helicopter crash in Dorset last month, suspicions were raised.
While air accident investigators are still trying to find what caused the crash, local police say they have no plans to investigate.
But the National Criminal Intelligence Service is apparently taking an interest in the case.
Channel Four News has learned that shortly before he died, Stephen Curtis contacted officers to offer his services as an informant. And friends told us the millionaire lawyer was afraid for his life in the weeks before the crash.
Watch the Channel 4 News report here.
Reporter: Sarah Smith
Producer: Adrian Gatton
Director: Rob Lemkin
On the Conviction Trail
By Adrian Gatton
Press Gazette
15 April 2004
Uncovering Rhino’s secret was all too easy because of the ready availability of US prison records.
In 1999 US strip-club Spearmint Rhino stormed into London, hitting headlines almost every day as some celebrity was ‘caught’ in flagrante with a lap-dancer.
Amid all the excitement, nobody cared much about the club’s origins. Nor did they ask questions about the Los Angeles strip-club tycoon John Gray, who had shorn lap-dancing of its mafia-tainted image, and brought clean, ‘upscale’, all-look-and-no-touching nude clubs to the British. The club’s billboards became ubiquitous – even appearing in EastEnders and the film 28 Days – and ready to cash in, the credible Mr Gray issued a slick video for investors to help him open 100 clubs across the UK and float on the stock market.
Until Channel 4 News took an interest, that is. The steroid-pumped Spearmint Rhino stumbled in its tracks after a report revealed that Gray – billed as the Ray Kroc (McDonald’s founder) of the no-sex sex business – had been jailed by the FBI and had six criminal convictions. Things he didn’t mention to potential investors on that neat video …
This article was cited by New Zealand’s Law Commission in a 2006 consultation paper called Access to Court Records (New Zealand is now adopting a more sensible and much more open to approach towards public access to criminal court records.) Read it here. If only the English courts would adopt such a sensible approach.
Bacardi and choke: US ruling challenged in feud over rival rum from Cuba
Adrian Gatton reports on the latest twist in the decade-long fight for the rights to the Havana Club label
The Independent on Sunday
11 April 2004
Bacardi, the rum giant privately owned by the eponymous and ultra-secretive family, has appealed against a decision by the US Patent Office dismissing its earlier bid to cancel the US trademark of its rival, the Cuban-made Havana Club rum.
Read the rest of the story here.
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
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.
Adrian Gatton 