02/05/2018
If there was a good time, I suppose, to bring up the affairs of the Chandler brothers in the House of Commons â and in particular the role of Richard Chandler in supporting the Legatum Institute - it would be in a debate on
sanctions and money laundering.
And this is precisely what Bob Seely, Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight, has done, invoking parliamentary privilege to rake over the coals of past disputes â much to the delight of
The Times, which has given front page prominence to a footnote in what would otherwise have been an obscure debate about a dull but worthy subject.
In what suggests a deliberate stratagem to milk the issue for publicity, we see
Sky News and the
Guardian also pick up the story, the latter headlining: "Founder of pro-Brexit thinktank has link with Russian intelligence, says MP".
Aided by Liam Byrne, Labour MP for Birmingham, Hodge Hill, Seely did indeed seek to show that the Chandlers have some relations with Russian figures who in turn have Russian intelligence links and/or have been engaged in sundry nefarious activities.
But the stuff is incredibly thin, based largely on material
already aired, the author of which has been convicted under different jurisdictions for criminal libel. Almost all of this has already been aired in
The Mail on Sunday (which even used the same photograph that
The Times now uses - see above), and which, when the
Sunday Times also had a pop, provoked a spirited response from the
Legatum Group.
Intervention by the group also got it an easy hit in
Conservative Home and an apology from the
Guardian. It also brought the retraction of a clumsy, error-strewn piece by
Left Foot Forward, which complained it did not "have the resources to mount a legal defence" to Legatum's threat of "legal proceedings".
At the time, though, I noted that my
original piece from July 2017 still stood, unchanged but for the correction of a few minor errors and the addition of a few more fact. Despite
this piece,
this one and many more, I have not been approached by Legatum and none of their staff or representatives have asked me to make any changes.
Oddly enough, the only approach I've had was from Ann Applebaum, who asked me to correct some of the details surrounding her resignation from Legatum, which I did. She explained that there had been a "falling out" after the Institute had suddenly changed its direction on Brexit, going places she could not follow.
The differences between my pieces and the general thrust of the legacy media coverage, however, are that I'm not trying to make a poorly supported case for the Chandlers being Russian "agents of influence", or having some sort of relationship with Russian intelligence.
No one, least of all the Chandlers, will disagree that they were highly active in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet empire but their activities, such that we know of them, are entirely compatible with the pursuit for their core business â the so-called "disaster capitalism".
By its own account, Richard Chandler's business is one that openly stated that it "finds value where disruptive transitions create unique opportunities", with the company acquiring "mispriced asset" which it can redeem later when values recover.
The Chandlers successfully navigated the "choppy markets" in Hong Kong, after the Chinese take-over, and the chaos after the fall of the Soviets must have presented endless opportunities for the accumulation of wealth.
With that background, I averred that it was highly significant that the Legatum Institute, having suddenly received major injection of funds from enterprises closely associated with Richard Chandler, paving the way for its "parent undertakings", to engineer a "disruptive transition" for Brexit.
In this, there is absolutely no dispute that the Legatum Institute was pushing for the hardest of Brexits, creating just the conditions where disaster capitalists can reap profits from the ensuing chaos.
However, no sooner had this agenda been exposed (with very little help from the legacy media), the publicity-shy Richard Chandler was seen visiting his Mayfair premises. Not lot long after, with rumours that Chandler had been discomforted by the spotlight of publicity on his affairs, we hear that snake-oil salesman supreme,
Shanker Singham and his team had decamped to the IEA, to form a new trade unit.
There is no way this team are plying their trade just of the love of it, so the IEA much have been the beneficiary of a significant inflow of funds to enable it to host its new unit. As to the source of those funds, the IEA is silent â as indeed it is on most of its funding.
And that surely is the point. At the IEA, Singham continues to pursue his "disaster capitalism" agenda, only now with no clue as to his funding. But what the Legatum experience showed us what how foreign money can be injected into the UK political process with the aim of distorting the outcome in favour of the donors.
Direct funding of political parties or politicians with foreign money is illegal but what we now see is that think-tanks represent an unguarded back door where money can be "laundered" into the political process. Once it is in their hands, the money can be freely used to pursue a political agenda, in a way that would never be permitted by foreigners acting directly on their own behalf.
That is the real story â one which should have the spotlight now shining on the IEA, with hard questions being asked about the sources of its funds, and what the real agenda of Sankar Singham actually is.
But, instead, we now have the media chasing after the easy shot â enjoying the fruits of "parliamentary privilege" which gives them a free hit to revisit material that has already been done to death. When it comes to the role of the disaster capitalists, and the laundering of foreign money through think-thanks, they are silent.
That, as always, tells us so much about the legacy media â and the politicians who help them play their games. When there is an important issue to hand, the only thing you can guarantee is that they will always grab the wrong end of the stick.
Worse still, they seem only too keen to give space to the nonsense churned out by Singham and his team, with few sustained attempts to debunk what is quite obviously partisan pleading for outcomes which can only damage the health and wealth of the United Kingdom.
