Accountability in Politics

Here are some facts:

1. In 1992, I was appointed Managing Director of a subsidiary of Lintas in London, a company owned by Interpublic.
2. Soon afterwards, I realised the company was being fraudulently managed.
3. I reported this fraud, which I feared was criminal, to the holding company.
4. They fired me – not the protagonists of the fraud.
5. In order to cover up the fraud, they told lies about me.
6. After five long years of forced unemployment, Lintas Worldwide admitted that they had lied about me and that I had been ‘justified in bringing the proceedings’ (lawyer-speak for admitting the fraud).

My lawyer told me that, in his opinion, three Directors of Lintas should have faced criminal proceedings as ‘accessories to the crime’. When I asked him if we should report them to the police he looked at me, shook his head, and advised me not to be so naïve.

Result? Effectively a five-year degree course in the law of defamation. Alwaysuseful if you are in advertising. But I never worked for a major multi-national advertising agency again. Apparently I became ‘damaged goods’.

So, I am sorry, although I received ‘substantial compensation’, I am still really angry.

Today (6 April 2010), the General Election has been called. And the MPs expenses remain up-in-the-air. Unresolved.

Let me give you my perspective. Not facts. But where I stand, what I believe – as they say on TV, allegedly.

Here we go.

Can we really believe that, out of 646 MPs, not one of them was honest enough to blow the whistle?

Were the MPs who flipped their houses acting individually, purely by coincidence, knowing that they could weasle out of paying Capital Gains Tax in this way?

Or was this a scam of which they were commonly aware and pretty much all of them knew what they were up to?

And did none of this ever get near any of the people who are anywhere near the Party Leaders (all of whom have had to repay expenses themselves)?

And, if the Party Leaders were Chief Executives of companies where systematic fraud such as this was taking place, should not they too be accountable for the behaviour of their employees?
I believe they should.For the avoidance of doubt, I am talking about Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg here.

On their way up through their careers in politics, did it never reach the ears of any one of these three – or any of their closest colleagues - that these expenses scams were being perpetrated by any of the MPs in any of their three parties?

Either they knew what was going on and turned a blind eye.

Or they didn't know - in which case are they 'fit and proper' people to be leading their parties? Who is accountable for the financial behaviour of these flipping MPs?

I believe the answers to these questions are as clear as daylight.

And why it is time for people like me to stand up and be counted……