Dear Mr Robertson Many thanks. I will draw this to the attention of all members of the Committee. Philip Aylett Clerk Public Accounts Committee House of Commons 7 Millbank London SW1P 3JA Tel: 0207 219 3273 parliament.uk/pac From: wneilgrobertson@aol [mailto:wneilgrobertson@aol] Sent: 24 April 2012 16:53 To: AYLETT, Philip Cc: [email protected] Subject: Fwd: ES1247D Evidence Given by British Councils Emma Sky to The Iraq Enquiry On Recruitment Procedures Dear Mr Aylett, This may be of interest to Margaret Hodge and other members of The Public Accounts Committee interested in UKDfID/British Council fraud. Copying this to Austin Mitchell MP who investigated a similarly frustrating case involving DfID and a Mr Horsley. Yours sincerely, Neil Robertson 4 Glamis Terrace, DUNDEE DD2 1NA, Scotland (UK) Tel: 01382-665586 -----Original Message----- From: wneilgrobertson To: peter.marshall Sent: Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:39 Subject: Fwd: ES1247D Evidence Given by British Councils Emma Sky to The Iraq Enquiry On Recruitment Procedures -----Original Message----- From: wneilgrobertson To: iraq.inquiry CC: m-lowcock ; pspermsec ; kj.transitions.nz ; Bill.Brooke ; fred.jaeger ; K-Grimshaw ; k-sparkhall ; foulkesg ; A-Clarkin ; d-blue ; oacu ; oacu ; mcgovernj ; mingcampbell ; jimmurphymp ; matthew.harvey ; Joe.FitzPatrick.msp Sent: Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:35 Subject: ES1247D Evidence Given by British Councils Emma Sky to The Iraq Enquiry On Recruitment Procedures Dear Ms Goom, In your letter of 28 June 2011 responding to correspondence commenting on recently declassified evidence given to the Iraq Enquiry by The British Councils Emma Sky on Recruitment Procedures in January 2011 you included the phrase that the Inquiry takes note of the points you make, but does not give a running commentary on the issues under its consideration. In this regard can I now draw your attention to this animation which has been posted on You Tube (by person or persons unknown) of evidence given by Ms Sky: youtube/watch?v=ZafSEbuhdFs&feature=relmfu ; EMMA SKY on joining the CPA from British Council youtube/watch?v=cAo3K0cegDE&feature=relmfu EMMA SKY on BANK RAIDS in Iraq I also stumbled across this morning a more comprehensive annotated treatment of Ms Skys evidence which raises further serious questions in my mind at least over this British Council persons earlier role in Palestine where I was one of the victims of her deceit: pearshapedcomedy/Kurdistan_goes_Pear_Shaped_with_Emma_Sky.html In particular I note that on arrival in Iraq British Councils Emma Sky says she reported to John Sawyers the current Head of MI6. I also note that a member of your enquiry team Baroness Prashar was First Civil Service Commissioner when the destabilisation of the £1.9 million UK DfID Public Administration Institutional Development Project (managed by British Council) occurred within 24 hours of Dr Keith Johnson and myself being fielded and that to date no-one in Whitehall has seen fit to give any explanations at all. I must again respectfully ask Baroness Prashar for some sort of explanation for the failure of anyone in Whitehall including her own Civil Service Commission to provide any explanation or response to the complaints made by me about this over the past 12 years? iraqinquiry.org.uk/people/ushaprashar.aspx I also attach for information of The Iraq Enquiry a copy of ongoing correspondence with The City of London Police about this affair and a reminder of the comments made publicly by my designated line manager Keith Johnson who Sky put through the mangle: kjohnsonnz.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/from-new-york-times-november-2009.html I really do think I am due some sort of explanation. Yours sincerely, Neil Robertson 4 Glamis Terrace, DUNDEE DD2 1NA, Scotland (UK) Tel: 01382-665586 -----Original Message----- From: Iraq.Inquiry To: wneilgrobertson Sent: Tue, 28 Jun 2011 10:49 Subject: RE: ES1247D Fwd: Letter to The Chilcott Enquiry Commenting On Evidence Given by BCs Emma Sky On Recruitment Procedures Dear Mr Robertson I acknowledge receipt of your further emails of 23, 25 and 27 June. In your email of 23 June you state that the points raised in your earlier emails relate to the competence and probity of senior officials in the CPA in Iraq, and in particular the disbursement of funds by UK representatives of the CPA in Iraq. Insofar as the points you raise relate to the specific circumstances of Ms Sky’s appointment, they are a matter for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, to whom you have already referred your concerns. As I stated before, the Inquiry is not in a position to investigate the circumstances of individual appointments. Insofar as your email raises wider questions about UK involvement in the CPA, the Inquiry takes note of the points that you make, but does not give a running commentary on the issues under its consideration. In your emails of 25 and 27 June you make a number of assertions in relation to Sir Peter Westmacott who you state had some responsibility for those dealing with your correspondence in relation to the UK’s responsibilities under OECD Conventions. You must appreciate that this has no relevance to the Terms of Reference of the Iraq Inquiry. Any further correspondence from you that does not relate to the Terms of Reference of the Inquiry will be filed without response. I should also remind you that on 12 May, Sir John Chilcot asked that all further submissions from those with insights relevant to the work of the Inquiry should be submitted by 30 June. I have not copied this response to the copy recipients of your emails. Yours sincerely Sarah Goom Legal Adviser * Iraq Inquiry Secretariat, 2nd Floor, 35 Great Smith Street, London, SW1P 3BQ : iraqinquiry.org.uk From: wneilgrobertson@aol [mailto:wneilgrobertson@aol] Sent: 23 June 2011 15:49 To: Iraq Inquiry Correspondence Cc: [email protected]; Brooke Bill - OCSC; [email protected]; Permanent Secretary - DFID -; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: ES1247D Fwd: Letter to The Chilcott Enquiry Commenting On Evidence Given by BCs Emma Sky On Recruitment Procedures Dear Ms Goom, Thank you for this preliminary response. The points raised relate to the competence and probity of the most senior British officials in the CPA in Iraq - who as your enquiry also revealed subsequently penetrated an inner, inner circle round Gen. Odierno and who was during all her assignments in Iraq dispensing, by her own account to the Inquiry, vast sums of public money - some of it undoubtedly from UK, with little or no supervision, experience, appropriate qualifications or prior vetting. It surely is of relevance if she was known by officials in UK DfID at the time of her appointment to Iraq to be facing serious, well-documented charges of serious financial irregularity in Palestine? Had even basic enquiries been made of UK DfID or FCO, National Audit Office, or Privy Councillors, or indeed The Office of The Civil Commissioner (all of whom had received detailed accounts of Skys behaviour and contempt for due process an procedure in Palestine), she should not have been put in charge of anything - not even a cookie jar - no matter how proficient she was in Arabic and/or Hebrew. She certainly should not have been given access to truckloads of British and American taxpayers money to dispense as she saw fit on activities which, as she freely conceded in response to questioning from the Inquiry, involved managing a political process that had little, if anything, to do with reconstruction? I would remind you of that extraordinary part of her testimony where she appears to have been taken aback that an Inquiry Member imagined that reconstruction might have been the intended purpose of such funds. While I appreciate that the Inquirys resources are limited and that you may not be in the position of the auditing authorities in the US who have described the disappearance of funds earmarked for reconstruction in Iraq as the biggest fraud since Madoff, you are in a position, however, to seek supplementary answers from witnesses in respect of the accounting for funds originating from the UK. In the January 2011 oral testimony provided by Ms Sky she confirms that she was central to many of these disbursements. You have also got easy access to MP Rory Stewart who served in a similar role to Ms Sky in the south of Iraq but who has put on record his own considerable unease about both the pressures he was put under to spend (up to $2 million a month) on projects he deemed as being of little or no development value - except presumably to the lucky individuals handed cash by officials. Mr Stewart returned a lot of the money he was sent, I understand, being an honest man with considerable prior experience. Did Ms Sky do any cashback? Few qualms were evident from the tenor or substance of her testimony. And they were completely absent in Palestine where she was caught red-handed, along with her British Council accomplice Mike Hardy, attempting to defend and promote a £1.9m UK DfID project that was later admitted (by Sky herself - in internal British Council and UK DfID files obtained under FOI) - to have been non-existent, after she walked in off the street effectively in a very similar manner to her subsequent trajectory in Iraq and kicked out the appointed advisors for the UK DfID-funded Publica Administration Institutional Development project within hours of our arrival in East Jerusalem. To date there has been no attempt by either British Council, UK DfID or anyone else to speak to the whistleblowers who reported this matter to the appropriate authorities at the time and in the field immediately on discovering serious irregularities. How is that possible? And if all mechanisms of UK DfID accountability broke down in that case, surely that is highly relevant to any account by Chilcott of the disappearance of even larger sums of taxpayers money in Iraq involving one of the same individuals being given bags of money? Can I respectively suggest, therefore, that you go back to Sir John Chilcott and your Commission and tell him that this response is almost as unsatisfactory as the comprehensive failure of Whitehall to address the issues raised by the BC/DfID PAID project over the last 11 years. I put it to you that by failing to deal with well-documented corruption in that instance Whitehall encouraged Emma Sky and a whole generation of UK DfID civil servants dealing with reconstruction in post-conflict areas that there is such a thing as a socially acceptable level of corruption - and nobody in UK will every bother to check-up on disbursements. The death of auditing. I am also waiting, incidentally, for anybody in Whitehall to lift a pinkie to assist those of us who were casualties of such deceptions. Yours sincerely, Neil Robertson 4 Glamis Terrace, DUNDEE DD2 1NA, Scotland (UK) Tel: 01382-665586
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 03:06:28 +0000
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