Stewart Ford blames FSA for Keydata collapse

They do say that if you throw enough of the brown stuff then some of it will stick.

The anyone but me guv is an often used defence but in this case.......well, we shall see.

Well Mr Ford please explain how you would have continued to pay clients' income seeing as your pal Mr. Elias had absconded with the money?

I know we would all like to kick the Regulator, but perhaps if you had been minding the shop instead of minding your own money being a tax exile in Switzerland you might have prevented the theft of client assets. Or do I have this all wrong?

You do of course have a point when you mention the feast all the hangers on are having at the expense of the investors.

It seems that all these pals of the Regulator - PWC, Deloittes and Ernst & Young are not quite the paragons we are forever being told they are. The latest is the very belated sanction of half a million quid for E&Y.

If my memory serves me right the others have been zapped pretty heavily in the past. But of course they are all in a cosy club with the FSA, swapping personnel and scratching each others back with lucrative ‘consultancy’ mandates.

Oh honestly Mr Fraud... is that the best you can do? YOU handed the money to SLS, YOU failed to check up on them over the years, YOU must have known something was wrong long before the FSA ploughed in and even if they hadn't pushed Keydata into administration, eventually it would have come out because tax bill or no tax bill, all that money would still have been misappropriated by your 'dead' pal David.

Briefing note to media and interested parties

(Issued on behalf of Mr Stewart Ford)

Re: Lifemark/Keydata

Monday,June 7, 2010: The Swiss-based founder of Keydata, Mr Stewart Ford, has appointed a multi-disciplinary investigation team to examine the circumstances surrounding the administration of his company on June 8, 2009.

The strategic partners involved in the investigation will be:-

1. Media House International, a City-based Crisis Management and Political Affairs specialist led by a former News International editor and MD, Jack Irvine. Irvine worked on the Cash for Honours case involving biotech entrepreneur Sir Christopher Evans, the MG Rover Inquiry and most recently devised the successful media strategy for the team opposing the £400million Uralchem placement on the LSE. He is also political and media adviser to Cayman Finance.

2. Aegis Tax LLP, a City-based tax investigation specialist led by Chris Chipperton. Chipperton had a 22-year career with HMRC including 15 years with their investigation division. He has handled major cases including tax evasion, money laundering and drug trafficking. He was UK liaison officer in the Middle East from 1993-98. Chipperton also worked with KPMG and Ernst & Young.

Irvine and Chipperton’s brief is to examine the following puzzling aspects of the Keydata/Lifemark affair.

1. Why the FSA took precipitate action to put Keydata into administration when a mutually agreeable tax solution could have been negotiated with HMRC.

2. Why HMRC was led in a certain direction by the FSA when a routine solution to correct the tax/ISA compliance position was easily possible. Did the lack of a tax settlement prompt the FSA to “manufacture” a tax liability thus imposing administrators on an otherwise solvent business.

3. Who appointed PwC as administrators and allowed their costs to spiral alarmingly? There appears to be a feeding frenzy on their fees- what have they achieved ?

4. Do PwC have a conflict as administrators to Keydata and auditors to SLS in Luxembourg? In whose best interests are PwC acting?

5. PwC had concerns over £103m. of investors’ money yet Keydata Investment Services had over £2.5 billion under its control. Was the PwC action proportionate?

6. Why HMRC lost control of the case.

7. The thought processes behind FSA’s aggressive action when they must have realised that their actions would disadvantage thousands of policyholders.

8. What exactly the FSA are doing to determine the whereabouts and size of the deceased fraudster David Elias’s estate.

All inquiries relating to the Media House/Aegis investigation should be addressed to the following:-

Jack Irvine.

www.mediahouse.co.uk

jack@mediahouse.co.uk

Cellphone: 07860 457 456

Chris Chipperton

www.aegistaxllp.co.uk

chris.chipperton@aegistaxllp.co.uk

Cellphone: 07525 201 868

Isn't it nice that when you are rich enough and out of reach of Canary Wharf you can afford to employ official apologists.

I wonder what sanctions if any the FSA can impose on Mr. Ford?

If any of us lesser mortals belch in the wrong place we get buried alive. Ain’t justice grand?

Mr Irvine

Whilst the idea of a combined PR and crisis management agency makes me shudder - I'm thinking Max Clifford meets Jack Ryan - I would be grateful if you could keep your desperate comments and please to an appropriate forum.

I wish you well in your pursuit of justice via the FSA, PWC, NASA and the Catholic Church - just ensure that I read/laugh all about it via the public press and not an adviser blogsite.

In defence of the auditors (and that is a phrase I use sparingly) at the end of the day if someone wants to commit fraud then they will do it irrespective of the quality of the external assurance. That is why it is a criminal offence.

Dodging and a diving. Pretty much a smokescreen tactic. Hard to imagine it being very successful, but with luck it will cost him a fair bit. Why are the other two Keydata directors not involved? Could they possibly have fallen out? One if them at least sounds a bit bitter.

How is the SFO investigation getting on? Has the seized computer that Mr Ford was so eager to keep out of their hands thrown up any links between the (supposedly) dead David Elias and the director of Keydata (apart from the very large loan and the common interest in associated companies of course)?

This issue is surrounded by sharks and vultures. It's a case study in corruption and greed. Someone should write a screenplay.

Mr. Ford says the FSA is partly to blame (believe me I'm no fan of the FSA either).

However, does this mean he's also admitting to being partly to blame?

If so, he should do the decent thing and send my investment back! (along with the thousands of others).

Mr Ford, I have heard some claptrap in my time, but that takes the biscuit.

As others have opined:

> What of the money to Mr. Elias, currently stacking Wal Mart shelves with Elvis and Robert Maxwell?

> How about the cash that was...er...lent to him personally? What happened to that?

> Why the court injunction over your own PC?

> Why are you not in this country?

> Why are you trying to buy the company back from PWC?

> Why did you lie over the involvement of KPMG in respect of the model in your due diligence?

> Why cover up the payments that were made that were "irregular"?

> How did somebody manage to disappear with £105,000,000 without you knowing?

...and so on