SSLO000116
SSLO000116
Telecon 05 01 2015 RJW AvDB re Carl Page
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Carl Page. Can we have a quick
discussion on this?
RON WARMINGTON: Yeah?
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Are you on loudspeaker, because
I'm struggling to hear you, Ron.
RON WARMINGTON: Yes. Hang on a second. My handset's
not working properly. Is that better?
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Yeah, that's better. Thank you.
RON WARMINGTON: Yes. My concern on that one -- hang on
a sec -- dog trying to chew something up next to me.
My concern on this one is that it's -- as you
know, you know the way we work: we develop
a hypothesis and then we try and disprove it. My
early hypothesis on this case, which I think our
large -- some I have disproved -- is that the
asserted shortfall of originally £650-odd thousand
was a product of Post Office essentially trying to
claim back the profit that it would have made if
he'd been selling at the full retail rate, and I'm
pretty sure that's not what we're looking at.
However, what I --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: A follow-up point, that is the
case because there's an actual loss in this branch.
RON WARMINGTON: Yes.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: It's nothing to do with the
profit between the -- you know, of the exchange rate
of the --
RON WARMINGTON: Have you got a bit of paper in front of
SSLO000116
SSLO000116
you that you can write on? Let's use real numbers
because I've actually -- hang on, I'll get a piece
of paper as well.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Can I just explain before we go
any further, can I explain -- or perhaps you
understand it --
RON WARMINGTON: Yeah.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: When -- Ford money changer -- and
by the way, the files that you got from his
solicitor, that's (unclear) and Neil Hudgell --
RON WARMINGTON: Yeah.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: (unclear) so I've been unable to
find that with me, because it's years ago, is the
office manual (unclear).
RON WARMINGTON: Well, we've -- that was in one of the
files he submitted, wasn't it?
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Yeah, which was great actually,
because that just reaffirmed my -- my recollection
(unclear) it was.
RON WARMINGTON: And I've read that. Obviously, I'm
familiar with what that says.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Yeah. So the revaluation figure,
so regardless of the exchange rate that was used in
the Ford money changer, revaluation figure takes
care of that, it balances it out.
RON WARMINGTON: Yes.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: So there's no issue about there
being a fictitious loss with regards to if you were
selling at a different exchange rate, because that
would just be balanced out at revaluation.
RON WARMINGTON: Okay, here's -- here's what I think --
here's what I am trying to disprove now.
SSLO000116
SSLO000116
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Okay, okay.
RON WARMINGTON: What I'm trying to disprove is that --
is that -- in the example -- one of the examples
listed, and it's kind of like a real transaction,
EUR 150,000 are bought for -- Post Office pays
£101,000. Okay? The actual cost --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Bought by what, Post Office?
RON WARMINGTON: Actually bought by First Rate at
£100,000.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Right, all finance (unclear) --
RON WARMINGTON: So FRTS buys it for 100K and it sells it
to Post Office for £101,000. That £1,000 profit is
what you'd expect the trading house to make, and
that later is shared, I know, because this is a kind
of 50/50 joint venture between Bank of Ireland and
Post Office, that's my understanding, and it's kind
of --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: We have a joint venture with
them, yes.
RON WARMINGTON: Yes, in a sense it's irrelevant. For
the sake of the argument the cost of that currency
is I'm going to take it £101,000. What then happens
is that is then held in the branch records and in
Horizon as though it had cost £95,000, because
that's the buy rate, it's the retail. It's actually
better described as a retail buy-back rate. In that
case, that is a real number that I'm talking about.
Because it was held at 95,000.
He -- his story, Page's story, is that he
thought that was the real cost -- this is more or
less where he's supposed to be coming from -- he
thought that was the real cost and that, according
to the jurati(phonetic), he said -- he could tell
anything as long as he didn't go below the buy rate.
Okay?
SSLO000116
SSLO000116
He sold that, and in the real example I'm
looking at, he sold that for £95,095, so he sold
EUR 150,000 for £95,500, thereby, of course, making
a loss of £5,500 to Post Office. Okay? I've done
all this in tier counts in my working papers.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: (unclear) the relevance of this
actually, because actually at the time that
Carl Page had his branch, he wouldn't even have
known that.
RON WARMINGTON: Known what?
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Wouldn't even have known that --
what the buy rate -- he wouldn't have known the
mechanics behind Post Office getting this money from
First Rate and what that rate --
RON WARMINGTON: No he was told -- no, in a sense he
doesn't need to know that, and it doesn't matter
whether he knew it or not. What matters is that it
is -- is is well described in all of the
documentation in the manuals that the currency is
held at a revaluation rate which is based upon the
retail buy-back rate, which in this case is 95.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Yeah.
RON WARMINGTON: So it is held in the books as though it
had cost 95,000. Now, in order to do that,
Post Office has already booked a loss on
revaluation, because that's described in the witness
statement that's much quoted. It talks about there
being an immediate revaluation loss of 6,000,
because that -- that is specifically the -- I'm
dealing now with --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: It wouldn't have been shown in
branch accounts book.
RON WARMINGTON: No, no, it wouldn't. It would have been
shown on Post Office's books.
SSLO000116
SSLO000116
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Yeah.
RON WARMINGTON: What Post Office does or did was it
booked a £6,000 loss by marking the currency holding
of EUR 150,000 to a value of 95,000 in its books,
and to do that it would have had to take a re-val
loss of 6,000, in addition to the 1,000 cost that's
already been paid out. So it's now got currency
that really cost in the open market 100,000 but it's
valuing it, it's holding it at 95,000. So what he
then does is he sells it not at £103,000, which is
what he was required and meant to do (i.e. that was
the retail sell rate), in which case he would have
made for an apparent profit of 8,000 (i.e. 103 minus
95) but a real profit of 2,000 (i.e. 103 minus 101).
So I know exactly what the figures are and the
profit that should have been made if he had sold
that retail rate would have been 2,000, in addition
to Post Office then getting 50 per cent or its share
of the £1,000 that had been made upfront.
Okay, now what I think -- what I suspect has
happened is that when he sold a quantity of currency
for 95,500, I'm trying to prove whether -- and
I hope this isn't the case -- whether Horizon --
whether what actually happened was that instead of
selling -- instead of being seen to sell EUR 150,000
for £95,500, he was actually seen to be selling
EUR 137,000 for 103 -- at a rate of 103, because
then the amount comes out to 95,500.
If that was the case, then every time he sold at
a discount, there would appear to be, as in that
case, a EUR 13,000 balance remaining in the system,
because the system's saying: you didn't sell all of
the Euros, you only sold -- you only sold 95,500
worth of them and the remainder remain unsold.
Now, set that aside for a minute because that's
long way forward from where we are. What we do know
is that Post Office was alerted to this by
Customs & Excise. It then said: Ooh, hang on
a minute, let's work this out, and then discovered
SSLO000116
SSLO000116
the £650,000 shortfall. It discovered it in the
sense that there had to be a write-off in
Post Office's books of £650,000.
And my argument is: if there had to be
a write-off of £650,000, there must have been an
overcrediting in the profit and loss account up to
that point of £650,000. How did that arise?
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Okay, we're in complete (unclear)
on this one.
RON WARMINGTON: Yeah?
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: So the £6,500 is a red herring
because that is (unclear) cheques on hand, and the
cheques that the quantity (unclear) that was
taken --
RON WARMINGTON: I know that. I know all about that.
But what I also know is that -- is that in the
evidence that's supplied to the courts, to the three
trials, there is a description of the amount that
was actually made by -- by Whitehouse in terms of
profit over and above what he would have to -- what
he'd have got if he paid the retail rates of
£650,000. It is a coincidence that the numbers are
similar.
I know exactly about the ruddy great cheques
that he wrote out, because I've seen them and I've
looked at them.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Right, so if we look at the case
in the branch itself on the day of the order, if
there was actually no foreign currency on hand in
the branch --
RON WARMINGTON: Correct, yes because he'd given it all
over to Whitehouse.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: That's the lot of £282,000.
RON WARMINGTON: Yes.
SSLO000116
SSLO000116
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: And what he did is he plea
bargained it down to £90,000-odd.
RON WARMINGTON: I know that. I know all that. I know
the whole case intimately. I've studied it in
minute detail. What I'm saying is I still think --
here's what I think. I think that Post Office got
this wrong right upfront. I think there was no
theft of 282,000. The plea bargain down to 94 was
because --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Before you go on, how do you
arrive at that conclusion then?
RON WARMINGTON: I haven't. I have not concluded yet.
I'm saying this is my hypothesis at the moment,
which I'm trying to disprove. The problem I'm
having is that everything I'm looking at in terms of
the evidence is proving that my hypothesis is right,
not that it's wrong. Okay?
What I'm seeing -- even if you disregard the 650
and just talk about the 282, I -- it looks as though
Post Office concluded that there ought to have been
£282,000 more in sterling or currency in that branch
than there was, and that's correct.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Because that's what the printout
from -- from both machines told us.
RON WARMINGTON: Yes. Yes. Well, here's my problem.
When a bank does foreign currency dealing -- bear in
mind I'm intimately familiar with that, (a) because
I used to be a foreign exchange dealer, both in
business and for my own account, and (b) because
I worked for many years in banks. Banks have
multi-currency accounting systems, it's like the
Ford money changer on steroids. So if you have, in
a sterling-based bank, loans and -- and -- which are
assets -- and borrowings in different currencies,
which virtually all banks have, each of those
foreign currency assets and liabilities is marked to
market based on the spot rate at the end of each
SSLO000116
SSLO000116
day, and the balance at the variation is processed
into a foreign exchange profit and loss account.
Now, Horizon is not a foreign currency system,
a multi-currency system; it only has sterling. The
Ford money changer has multi-currency accounts, but
the evidence in the documentation shows that the
totals in the Ford money changer system are cleared
every time a command 10, I think -- or every time
a weekly report is produced. Therefore, I strongly
suspect that Post -- that Horizon was maintaining
a local currency equivalent of the foreign currency
balances meant to be held and, by reason of doing
that, it had basically come to the conclusion that
there was more currency left in that branch than
there really was. Why? Because he'd handed it all
over to Whitehouse.
Whitehouse -- I've seen what -- Whitehouse's
bank account. It's all in that stuff. You can see
he was running a balance in his current account of
best part of £400,000 at one point, and huge cheques
were coming in -- or drafts were coming in from
Tommy Cooks, where he was basically arbitraging, as
we'd refer to it, between two financial
institutions: buying his Euros in the Post Office
and flogging them back to Tommy Cooks, and making
more than he could possibly make in his recycled
plastics company.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Yes.
RON WARMINGTON: Now, he was -- you know, police and the
subsequent -- the first trial for conspiracy to
defraud found no evidence of conspiracy between the
two parties. It looks, on the face of it, that this
ex-professional footballer, Page, was a complete and
utter dope and had -- was getting no particular
benefit out of this. He was just handing it over --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: He was getting benefit out of it.
He was getting the -- so we pay him a remuneration
based on the value of the sales.
SSLO000116
SSLO000116
RON WARMINGTON: No, you don't. You pay him £1.16 per
transaction regardless of size. That's in the
evidence.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: But he would have been increasing
his remuneration as a result of selling more.
RON WARMINGTON: Bugger all. He gets £1.16 -- it was
shown as £1.12 and later corrected to £1.16 -- per
transaction, regardless of size. I mean, I'm not --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Why was he going it then?
RON WARMINGTON: I'm coming to that. I cannot see why he
was moronic enough to be doing this. What I'm
getting at is, it is entirely possible in my mind
that he was getting some benefit that hasn't been
disclosed by the court. However, the key issue is
that I do not see any evidence in any of the trials
that any money at all was stolen. Okay? There is
no evidence that I've seen yet -- I'll still got
about 1,000 pages to go through -- but I've seen
nothing in the evidence in the POIR or anything else
that convinces me there was any money stolen.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Right. So whether it was stolen
or not there was an actual loss on the day of the
audit, Ron.
RON WARMINGTON: Yes.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: £282,000.
RON WARMINGTON: Well, I'm not sure it was a loss on the
day of the audit. I think that loss would have been
accumulating every time he put one of these
transactions. What I'm trying to get --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: If that were the case then, he
would have been -- so assuming that's -- what you're
saying is right, he would have been declaring a loss
on his Horizon System.
RON WARMINGTON: No. No, I don't think so. I think he
SSLO000116
SSLO000116
was registering the sales through and Post Office
was for some reason failing to record the individual
losses. Take the example we've just looked at, and
we only need to look at, like, maximum of three.
One would be enough, just this one transaction would
be enough to say: let's trace this transaction
through. EUR 150,000 were bought. Post Office
paid 101,000 --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: No, I think you overcomplicated
this. You have to go into the actual branch itself,
because that's where the accounting is done, in the
branch.
RON WARMINGTON: All right, okay.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: So every week he is required to
check the actual face value of each of those
currencies on hand, (unclear) Ford money machine.
RON WARMINGTON: Yes, I can see that.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Yes, and then what that does is
it generates a sterling equivalent that he puts into
the Horizon System.
RON WARMINGTON: Yeah, I think that's where it was going
wrong. What I cannot see --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: No, but if that were to have gone
wrong --
RON WARMINGTON: Yeah.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: -- that means that his Horizon
System would be generating a loss, because the -- so
at the point at which the bureau de change is
introduced into the branch there's a baseline
figure.
RON WARMINGTON: Yes.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Say he starts off with just
EUR100, let's just make it simple, starts off with
SSLO000116
SSLO000116
EUR 100 face value, whatever happens to the face
value of that in terms of the exchange rate is
covered off by the revaluation figure that goes into
the Horizon System. So the revaluation figure and
the sales figure, sterling equivalent, balance out.
RON WARMINGTON: Well, the problem --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: (unclear) would be on a weekly
basis.
RON WARMINGTON: Here's the problem I've got. If a bank
was doing this, it would maintain perpetually
a running balance, with an audit trail of how it was
derived, of every currency, asset and liability.
All right? We have every asset and every liability
in whatever currency recorded.
So in the example -- which is, frankly, I will
come back to the example that I've got on my piece
of paper, because it is the example that's quoted in
the primary court case, i.e. the third trial. In
that, the money -- the EUR 150,000 is bought for
100,000 by FRTS, Post Office pays 101,000 for it, it
marks it to market to 95, and the evidence -- the
witness statement says that that means that a £6,000
loss is booked immediately by Post Office, not by
the branch. So Post Office has now booked a £6,000
loss.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: No loss booked against the
branch.
RON WARMINGTON: I know that. The branch is then
supplied with currency that -- that has a holding
value, is reval'ed at £95,000. Right? When he
sells it for 95,500, which is exactly what he did
here, but he did it loads of times, Whitehouse walks
out with EUR 150,000, which he goes and flogs at
Tommy Cooks for about £100,000. So he's making
£4,500 or so every time he does this.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Yeah.
SSLO000116
SSLO000116
RON WARMINGTON: Now, meantime, Post Office has already
booked a loss of £6,000 in its books in head office.
Right?
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Yes.
RON WARMINGTON: Or in Hemel Hempstead or wherever it's
doing the accounting
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Yeah, yeah, outside the branch.
RON WARMINGTON: Outside the branch.
When he sells -- if he had sold that for
£103,000, you would expect Post Office's accounting
system to book an £8,000 uplift, i.e. it's booked
6,000 negative, it now books 8,000 positive, which
gives it -- brings it back to 2,000 positive net,
which is the current answer. Okay?
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Mmm.
RON WARMINGTON: Now, I don't think that was being done
right, because if --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Ron, regardless of whether that
was being done correctly or not --
RON WARMINGTON: You cajn't disregard that.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: (unclear) whether or not Post
Office (unclear) making money on that --
RON WARMINGTON: No, you -—
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: -- it transacted through the
branch at nil.
RON WARMINGTON: It doesn't --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: At nil.
RON WARMINGTON: It doesn't matter. What matters is -- I'm
trying address why a -- or how a 282 or £600,000 loss
SSLO000116
SSLO000116
can build up over the course of several years in
Post Office's books without being noticed.
In other words, transactionally it must have been
told -- Post Office must have been told of the sale
that I'm now talking about. It must have been told
that, instead of selling EUR 150,000 for £103,000 he
had sold the bloody lot for a stupid price of 95,500,
thereby making not a profit the Post Office now expects
of 8,000 but a profit of only 500. All right?
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: What you have to bear in mind,
he's in branch of many --
RON WARMINGTON: I know that, I know --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: -- the figures at head office
would have been amalgamated figures.
RON WARMINGTON: Yeah, that's exactly what I think was
the problem. By amalgamating all the figures to the
local currency equivalent, across an entire series
of 1,000 branches that were operating bureau
dechanges, and across probably 20 or so different
currencies, I think what happened was those sales
that he was making did not get noticed.
In other words, it was not noticed that, having
a loss of £6,000 on reval and having -- if you like,
expecting, transactionally, a profit of £8,000, what
actually came in was a profit of only 500, and,
therefore, a residual loss of 5,500 was in the books of
Post Office relating to that transaction.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: (unclear) this branch, it
wouldn't have got passed back to the branch, Ron.
RON WARMINGTON: No. What I'm saying is, if Post Office
now, and I think you'd probably agree, on that
transaction finished up, when the dust settled on
that transaction, with a £5,500 loss, i.e. it had
marked it down by 6,000 on original purchase --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Yes.
SSLO000116
SSLO000116
RON WARMINGTON: -- and it made a seeming profit of 500,
that gives it £5,500 loss, that was still sitting in
the books of Post Office in its profit and loss
account. That loss was sitting there.
Now, what I'm getting at is that -- I think the
sum total of all those £5,500 came to in excess of
£600,000. That's what the evidence shows me.
Now, if that's the case, then if that loss --
sorry, if that extra profit that Post Office had
wrongly been booking to itself had accumulated,
which it clearly had, and was then discovered when
Customs & Excise came in, how could that possibly be
theft by the applicant? It isn't theft, it's an
accumulation of bad deals that he's booked.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Okay. So what you've just
described is head office activity which is outside
the activity of the branch.
RON WARMINGTON: Yes.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Anything that passed through the
branch --
RON WARMINGTON: Yes.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: -- would have been balanced out
to a revaluation figure put into Horizon, therefore
that branch balanced.
RON WARMINGTON: But I find the revaluation process to be
fundamentally unsound in banking terms, all right.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Why?
RON WARMINGTON: Because -- because -- I've probably used
the phrase before -- no more netting. It's
a principle I've employed as a chief financial
officer throughout my career, and bear in mind I've
been a chief financial officer of a global fund
management company, multi-currency, a bloody sight
bigger that Post Office.
SSLO000116
SSLO000116
What I'm saying is, to hold in only one
currency, sterling, the revaluation results of
multiple currencies across multiple branches is
bound to lead to errors of accounting for profit and
loss, and that's what's happened here. Post Office
has --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: No, I think you're missing the
point around the branch. The branch is still
£282,000 short.
RON WARMINGTON: I'm not sure that it was.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: But it was.
RON WARMINGTON: Well, if it was, it's arrived out of
this revaluation process.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: No, no, the revaluation has
nothing -- no, no. So -- so what the person
balancing the currency does at the time is
physically counts each of currency notes on hand and
verifies: I've got EUR 360, and (unclear) currencies
he's got.
RON WARMINGTON: Right, Angela, that would be fine if --
and it may be in the evidence pack, I haven't seen
it yet but it may be there -- if there is a document
that discloses, and it will be a command 10 or
a command 3 report from Ford money changer, prepared
by Page that says: basically I've got £282,000 worth
of currencies in my branch here, and he hadn't, then
we'd have to deal with that. All right? But what
I'm getting at is it is inescapable --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: But he would(?) have done that.
I don't know whether it's in the evidence or not --
RON WARMINGTON: If it is, I haven't seen it --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: (Unclear) a number of printouts
in the evidence, I haven't gone through every single
one.
SSLO000116
SSLO000116
RON WARMINGTON: If it is, it was not mentioned in
Stacey's witness statement or any of the witness
statements that came to us prior to this delivery of
all the stuff from Tom Cleary. So what I'm getting
at is -- I know you are trying to steer me back to
the branch's figures. What I find inescapable is
that Post Office had accumulated an overstatement of
its profits of what, to the evidence I've seen
proves, was around £650,000. It happens to be
coincidental to this nonsense about the cheques that
Whitehouse had produced for about £300,000, because
that's the difference between -- that's how you get
back to the 282,000. But even if you set that
aside, there is a huge overstatement of Post Office
profits which are the accumulation of the failure to
recognise -- sorry to use emotive terms -- the
failure to recognise the --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: That's might be the (unclear),
but that's not the --
RON WARMINGTON: It must be.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: It's not.
RON WARMINGTON: Because if Post Office's central --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: What I think has happened --
RON WARMINGTON: Angela, the books would not balance if
I'm wrong. I tell you why. When he booked that
sale, the one I'm talking about of £95,000, I need
to know what bookkeeping entry took place on Horizon
to reflect that sale.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Well, that actual entry will not
be on Horizon as one sale.
RON WARMINGTON: Exactly, because the answer is --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: It goes through the --
RON WARMINGTON: -- because it goes through the money
SSLO000116
SSLO000116
changer and it's all based on a revaluation total --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Yes.
RON WARMINGTON: -- which makes a melange or
a bouillabaisse of all the different currencies.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: It's the sterling equivalent of
all the (unclear) exchange rate from the day, yes.
RON WARMINGTON: I would never have designed you a system
like that, because you must hold every asset and
every liability in detail in its own currency and
mark them to market daily. That's what -- that's
actually what FAS 23 requires you to do. That's the
accounting standard on how to account for this
stuff.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: In terms of taking this forward
then, Ron, as we've done in other cases then I think
we've got material evidence that -- so we've got
further information that's material to this case.
I think we need to take another look at this in
Post Office.
RON WARMINGTON: I think you do. And at the moment --
horrific as it is, I will give it to you with both
barrels -- I think all three trials were materially
misled by Post Office in the witness statements.
I think that the -- there was a -- first of all, if
I look at that I think Stacey or whoever it is, that
witness statement, it's a complete bloody mess in
terms of lack of clarity.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Well, before I comment on any of
that, I'm going to have look at it in depth.
RON WARMINGTON: Yeah, and I think as a result --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: All I would say here is we would
never willingly mislead anybody.
RON WARMINGTON: No, I know you haven't, but bearing in
mind that the second trial -- the first one was the
SSLO000116
SSLO000116
conspiracy --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: I can't believe that three trials
would --
RON WARMINGTON: Well, I can, because I've looked at the
experts' reports. There was an expert from KPMG --
our first expert was Pannell Kerr Forster, and I've
spoken to them and I've spoken to the expert
concerned. He didn't get it, okay? He didn't join
the dots up and he didn't -- he realised there was
something wrong and he said so. What he didn't do
was he didn't crack it. Neither -- and in fact the
second --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: How can they be called as an
expert witness then, if they haven't cracked the
problem?
RON WARMINGTON: Because, just like everything else,
there are experts and there are experts.
Now, the guy from KPMG made a complete bollocks
of it. He was the one that appeared in the third
trial, the one where Page was convicted, and
there -- that was the most -- it was a completely
useless expert report. I've spoken to the guy that
wrote the better one and he -- essentially
concluding that he didn't really understand what had
happened. He didn't really understand how that loss
had accumulated.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Do you know why Page pleaded
guilty?
RON WARMINGTON: Yes, I know why he did. I know why I'm
told he did. This is by his legal counsel. What
happened was he had lied to the first court. When
he met his girlfriend, that became his wife, he told
her that he was an army hero. He wasn't. It was
a lie. She then supported him through the first
trial, and it was later discovered by Post Office's
prosecution barrister or team that he'd lied and
he'd perjured himself. So he was threatened with
SSLO000116
SSLO000116
a five-year sentence for perjury. The deal that was
struck was that they wouldn't pursue the perjury
charge if he pleaded guilty to the reduced figure of
£94,000 of theft.
He'd said throughout, "I never did -- I didn't
understand where the money had gone. I certainly
didn't steal it but that seemed the best deal
because otherwise I might have got a lot of time for
perjury". So the answer at the end of it is that he
still asserts that, while he was guilty of perjury,
he wasn't guilty of theft. We have one of the
better, probably the best, of the professional
advisers here, with a guy called Tom Cleary of
a company called Frisbees. He did not represent
Page on the third trial. For some reason, they had
a change of defence team. He did defend him on the
first two trials, the conspiracy one and the
subsequent theft one which resulted in a hung jury.
My problem is that, had this matter about the
individual losses been clarified in the witness
statements, I'm -- you know, of course I can't tell,
I wasn't in the jury room, but I would be very
surprised if there had been a hung jury and,
therefore, it would have never got to the third
trial. So --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Okay. As I say, I think we need
RON
to revisit --
WARMINGTON: Yeah, and I'll happily share with you
my -- you know, accountants like myself eventually,
if they get really bogged down in accounting
entries, they revert to tier counts -- you know,
elementary accounting -- and I've done that for: (a)
what he was doing and what I think the head office
accounting would have shown; (b) what he should have
done; and (c) what -- well, I think I've done three
different versions using three different colours to
show what I think the accounting entries were. What
I need to prove is what the actual entries really
were and it's all in this -- taking this example,
it's used in the evidence, take the £101,000 of --
SSLO000116
SSLO000116
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: I've done that bit, Ron. I'm
just not sure that it's actually relevant --
RON WARMINGTON: Well, here's what --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: -- but -- but -- but you have the
advantage of you studied the --
RON WARMINGTON: I've studied it until I'm blue in the
face, frankly.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Therefore, I need to do the same.
RON WARMINGTON: Yeah, we --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: So I think in light of this
conversation, I need to -- I've had -- you know,
I've had the information off you.
RON WARMINGTON: Yeah.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: If you've got any more, then
I obviously need that as well.
RON WARMINGTON: All I've got beyond that is -- I mean,
I've got my draft -- the draft report I'm not
prepared to release yet, but it would be by miles
the worst report you've read in terms of --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Well, I think --
RON WARMINGTON: -- damaging.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: -- the important point in all of
this is we get to what's happened here and that's
what we need to unravel. So I believe that on the
evidence that we had originally, we've come to the
conclusion I think that's the right conclusion. If
there's further information that's become available
RON WARMINGTON: Which there has, yeah.
SSLO000116
SSLO000116
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: -- I need to be able to look at
that to see whether I need to revisit what we said
in our POIR. So I think in terms of process, I'll
drop you a note that's formally requesting any
further information you've got --
RON WARMINGTON: Yeah.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: -- and that I will now reopen the
investigation into this case.
RON WARMINGTON: Good, because I've got it down for
delivery of the draft report on 19th of this month.
I put it back long way.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: -- (unclear) to do it by then,
Ron --
RON WARMINGTON: No, no. Frankly, I don't think this is
an urgent case but it's really important.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: I think, you know, given what
you've said to me and the information, I'm probably
saying four weeks probably --
RON WARMINGTON: Yeah.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: -- to do a proper job and if
I need -- if I need to go in deep, dive in deep, as
I might need to do, it might be six weeks.
RON WARMINGTON: Yeah, but whoever it is that looks into
it, get them to -- you know, I mean, this is
something that I don't want to --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: I don't want to arbitrate --
RON WARMINGTON: I don't want to blow my own trumpet but
there aren't many forensic investigators that were
also foreign exchange dealers and understand -- you
know, remember, I worked for 27 years for the
biggest foreign exchange dealing bank in the world.
So I know foreign exchange dealing like the back of
my head.
SSLO000116
SSLO000116
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Yes. Leave it with me. I'll let
you know today on that basis before --
RON WARMINGTON: Okay.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: -- we suspend(?) any further
activity from you on this --
RON WARMINGTON: Super.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: -- before we've really --
RON WARMINGTON: Well, I'm going to continue to sort of
peruse the -- I'm, you know --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Yes. Yes, I mean formal response
RON WARMINGTON: Believe me, when we formulate
hypotheses, like we have on this one, we desperately
try to prove ourselves wrong, and what I'm trying to
-- it's just that I can't -- I'm trying to work out
whether it is possible that by selling for
95-and-a-half thousand quid, EUR 150,000, somehow
the system, Ford or whatever, somehow got its
knickers in a twist and assumed that he'd sold
137,000, not 150,000, thereby generating an apparent
shortfall.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: The Ford money changer's brain
wasn't that big actually. It's a very simple piece
of equipment.
RON WARMINGTON: Yeah --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: It did what the --
RON WARMINGTON: -- I kind of reverse engineered the --
I do see exactly how it works.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Yes.
RON WARMINGTON: But this business of -- you know,
SSLO000116
SSLO000116
I mean, make no mistake, this guy -- this guy really
was an agent of his own downfall because he wasn't
putting in the rates properly, he was selling the
stuff -- it's hard to believe, and I've spoken to
Frisbee in these terms, you would have to be pretty
profoundly stupid to be selling currency at £95,000
when you could yourself walk down the round and see
other people selling it for 103,000.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: He's gone for a lot of effort for
very little gain supposedly.
RON WARMINGTON: Yes.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: That I find very remarkable.
RON WARMINGTON: Absolutely. But the guy that made all
the -- you know, who knows why he did it. Maybe --
it's facile to think that he would have shared the
fact that he didn't have bucket-loads of money
coming into his bank account means that he wasn't
involved. For all I know, Whitehouse could have
been -- it wasn't so much collusion brought about by
mutual financial gain, it could well have been
threatening him in some way. He could have had some
hold over him to make him do this. Who knows? But
at the moment it's bloody obvious Whitehouse walked
away with what looks like 600,000 quid, much more
than he was ever making out of his RPX recycled
plastics business, and has got away with murder.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Yeah.
RON WARMINGTON: And, far from being stolen by Page, the
money was actually handed over to this guy,
Whitehouse, who at one point finishes up with huge
amounts of sterling in a carrier bag or a sports bag
when arrested outside Tommy Cooks.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Okay. Let's proceed as I've --
RON WARMINGTON: Marvellous.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: -- and I'll drop you a note, Ron,
SSLO000116
SSLO000116
okay?
RON WARMINGTON: Okay.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: And we'll get on to the case,
yeah?
RON WARMINGTON: Thank you very --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Okay. I look forward to seeing
you Friday?
RON WARMINGTON: Yes. Friday? Oh, next Friday, yeah,
the 14 or something, yeah.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: No, we're this week, aren't we,
the 9th --
FEMALE SPEAKER: That's Ian, isn't it?
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: -- for questions --
RON WARMINGTON: Oh, well, at the moment I think Ian's
dealing with that but if --
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Oh, Ian's doing it? Okay, my
misunderstanding --
RON WARMINGTON: Yhat's right.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: -- that's Ian on Friday.
RON WARMINGTON: Yes, exactly.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Okay, sorry.
RON WARMINGTON: Bye for now.
ANGELA VAN DEN BOGERD: Catch you soon, yeah.
RON WARMINGTON: Bye now.
(Recording ends)