Denis MacShane – Labour Friends of Israel Stalwart and Smear Merchant

The Guardian's Comment is Free always had time for this hypocritical 'opponent' of anti-Semitism and supporter of Bush's CIA coup against Chavez

Fraud Came Naturally to MacShane   -  a CIA supporter who falsely accused Anti-Racists of ‘anti-Semitism’

The 'expert' on anti-Semitism caught out by his own lies

MacShane - Member of Labour Friends of Israel Policy Council - Suitably well qualified!

CIA Supporter MacShane  featured all over 'left' Zionist anti-Boycott site Engage

They say you shouldn’t kick someone when they’re down, but in the case of Denis MacShane I’ll make an exception!   MacShane, a former President of the National Union of Journalist, was a right-wing turncoast of the first order.  As a Minister under Blair, he supported the CIA and Bush’s coup against Hugo Chavez.  He wrote  in the Guardian that:

Some of the references to MacShane on the Engage site

“While the left in Spain, France, Italy and Latin America has always had doubts about the populist, demagogic style of Chavez, he has had a free run in Britain. Ken Livingstone organised meetings to worship him and got involved in a bizarre oil deal. The NUJ [National Union of Journalists] and Labour MPs have made pilgrimages to Caracas to buy the Chávez line.”

MacShane was a strong supporter of the Labour Friends of Israel - as was Robert Maxwell

Some years I wrote an article for the Guardian’s Comment is Free:  Stop conflating anti-Zionism and anti-semitism that:

“barely a murmur has greeted the report of the all parliamentary inquiry into anti-semitism, chaired by the rightwing Labour MP Denis MacShane, who in a previous life as a junior Foreign Office minister greeted the CIA coup that temporarily overthrew Hugo Chávez of Venezuela by denouncing the latter as "a ranting, populist demagogue" (Hugh O'Shaughnessy, March 12 2007).

MacShane was a right-wing free marketeer and anti-communist of the first order.  It is fitting that someone who supported Bush’s attempt to make Venezuela into another Chile under Pinochet should be the the Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism, as well of course as a Policy council member of the Labour Friends of Israel

MacShane was caught out fiddling his expenses and creating bogus invoices.  His real crime was trying to protect those who steal and defraud the Palestinians of their land in the name of ‘biblical rights’.  That was the real crime, compared to which his other misdemeanours are trivial.

MacShane - Maxwell - Ronson - Madoff  Zionist Fraudsters All

Robert Maxwell - there is nothing good that can be said of the man who stole from Daily Mirror Pensioners - hence his State Funeral in Israel

 Another Zionist fraudster, somewhat more important and influential than MacShane, was Cap’n Bob Maxwell, owner of Pergamon Press and former MP for Buckingham, as well as the ex-owner of the Daily Mirror, whose pensioners he ripped off in a failed attempt to keep his operations afloat.  As the Association of Mirror Pensioners says, it   

Mount of Olives Cemetry where Robert Maxwell was buried

'was formed in 1990 and its spirited existence continues – though it was formed originally simply to make a legal challenge to Robert Maxwell. Memories are sometimes short and hazy but no pensioner or Mirror employee of the time will forget the traumatic news splashed across all the front pages in December 1991. They confirmed what the Association always knew: Maxwell was a crook. It had taken a month since his plunge into the Atlantic on November 4 to discover that more than £400 million was missing from our pension funds.'

Maxwell,  a dedicated Zionist, was given a state funeral: 

On 10 November 1991, Maxwell’s funeral took place on the Mount of Olives Har Zeitim in Jerusalem, across from the Temple Mount. It had all the trappings of a state occasion, attended by the country’s government and opposition leaders. No fewer than six serving and former heads of the Israeli intelligence community listened as Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir eulogized: "He has done more for Israel than can today be said" (Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad, St. Martin's Press, 1999) 

He was exposed as a Mossad agent and by all accounts killed by them too.

There is little doubt that Maxwell was a Zionist agent according to Yitzhak Shamir's eulogy

This photo of Mount of Olives

See a good account of this particular Zionist crook in Socialist Worker Robert Maxwell: who backed the man who stole the pensions?

Paul Foot the most famous Mirror journalist and SWP member, who was sacked by Cap’n Bob, was one of those who lost his pension. 

‘Maxwell, the BBC publicity material state, “is a gripping, dramatised account of how greed and ambition destroyed a man and led him to commit one of the world’s biggest-ever frauds”.

It is a view of the last 18 months of the life of publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell, owner of the Daily Mirror, the New York Daily News and Macmillan Publishing, among a web of more than 400 companies.

Maxwell died mysteriously in 1991, just before the full extent of his fraud, which culminated in ripping off £450 million from the pension funds of the Daily Mirror staff to prop up his media empire, became public.

….

But the essence of Maxwell was not that he was a complex person, but that he was a lifelong bully and thief who ultimately became a monster.
….
long before New Labour, Maxwell was Labour’s businessman. Indeed the whole New Labour operation was about breaking the party’s links with organised workers and bringing in more people like Maxwell.

Among Maxwell’s Labour cronies were Geoffrey Robinson – Tony Blair’s former paymaster general and the man who provided Peter Mandelson with an interest free mortgage.

Robinson was a director of one of Maxwell’s companies. Another crony was Peter Jay, a former ambassador and son-in-law of former Labour prime minster Jim Callaghan.

In 1991, when he was a Mirror journalist, New Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell was so attached to Maxwell that he thumped Guardian journalist Michael White for making a quip about “Captain Bob, Bob, Bob” after Maxwell drowned falling from his yacht.

Maxwell did sterling service for the Labour Party. He used his ownership of the Daily Mirror, to run a smear campaign against Arthur Scargill, leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, alleging he was corrupt.

Scargill and the socialist values he represented were seen as a barrier to the “modernisation” of the Labour Party.

The vile attacks, which lasted for the best part of a year, were baseless, yet they did terrible damage.

Another set of Maxwell’s friends who get off far too lightly are those in the boardrooms of the City of London.

These people had known for decades that Maxwell was a crook, but they cared little so long as they got a percentage of the ill gotten gains.

In 1971 a Department of Trade and Industry report said plainly, “Robert Maxwell is not in our opinion a person who can be relied on to exercise proper stewardship of a public company.”

When the official report into Maxwell’s final fraud was published – a decade after the events – it listed numerous organisations. These included:

Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, which, said the report, bore “substantial responsibility” for letting Robert Maxwell get away with his manoeuvres. The bank made £23 million profit from its Maxwell dealings. It was fined £160,000.

Samuel Montagu & Co, now part of HSBC bank, masterminded the initial stock market launch of Maxwell’s MGN corporation. The report says it included “inaccurate and misleading” details in the share prospectus.

Coopers & Lybrand Deloitte accountants “failed to report abuses” to pension fund trustees.
Labour peer Lord Donaghue, a Maxwell director, ought to have been able to find out what was going on. But he never asked the obvious questions.

City firms Lehman Brothers, Nikko, Capel Cure Myers, Morgan Grenfell and NatWest Investment Management were all found guilty of breaches of rules.

Crooked Zionist Gerald Ronson was awarded a  CBE in the New Years Honours List - Chairs the Zionist Community Security Trust

Ronson - mega capitalist thief

Mr Ronson, 72, pictured with his wife Gail and daughters Lisa (left), Nicole and Hayley, was honoured for his work over more than 50 years raising and donating more than £100million to charities.

The Guiness Four - Ronson second from left

And then of course there is another mega Zionist crook, Gerald Ronson, who owned the largest private company in Britain, Heron Ltd.  He managed to get himself sent down for a year in the Guiness Scandal but still got himself awarded a CBE in the New Year’s Honours Lists for 'services to charity'!  Which just goes to show that money will, literally, buy you anything. 
From prison to the palace: Gerald Ronson, jailed for Guiness scam, picks up CBE 24 May 2012

Property tycoon Gerald Ronson received the CBE from the Princess Royal at Buckingham Palace yesterday, 22 years after he was jailed for his part in the Guinness share-trading scandal.
 
He spent six months in jail after he and three others were convicted over a scam in which the Guinness share price was boosted during a takeover battle.


Once worth £548million, he has bounced back since his release and was 345th in this year’s Sunday Times Rich List with £220million.

It was bestowed upon the great survivor of the Guinness share-trading scandal in this year’s New Year Honours list for his services to charity - amid controversy over rewards to ‘the Tories’ friends in the City’.

He was accompanied by wife Dame Gail Robinson, 65, who received her title when she was herself honoured for charitable services in 2004, and three of their four daughters, Lisa, Nichole and Hayley.

Afterwards Mr Ronson, said he felt ‘very privileged and honoured’ to receive his CBE for his work over more than 50 years raising and donating more than £100 million to charities including the NSPCC, the Prince’s Trust and Jewish Care.

Beaming: Gerald Ronson with his CBE medal at Buckingham Palace, London following an Investiture ceremony hosted by the Princess Royal

Mr Ronson was jailed in 1990 for his part in the Guinness scam. It is rare for a former prisoner to receive such an honour, and one of his co-defendants, the late Jack Lyons, was stripped of his knighthood after they were convicted along with two other top City figures.

Ronson & Daughters

Lyons, who was spared a 30-month term because of his poor health, was knighted by the 1973 Labour government and had his title taken away by John Major.

Ronson founded Heron Group - now Heron International Plc - when he was 17, brought self service petrol stations to the UK in 1960s and was once the 14th-richest person in Britain and worth £548million.

In 1990 he was, along with Lyons, Ernest Saunders and Anthony Parnes, convicted over Guinness’s £2.7billion takeover of the Scottish drinks group Distillers.

The fraud had the effect of boosting the Guinness share price. As it rose, the group’s offer to Distillers’ shareholders increased in value, helping Guinness fend off a bid from rival Argyll and secure the deal.

Ronson was convicted of conspiring to create a false market, two charges of false accounting and one of theft.

He was fined £5million and sentenced to a year, but freed after six months for good behaviour.
Since his release he has bounced back and this year was ranked equal 345th in the Sunday

Ronson became known in the UK as one of the "Guinness Four" for his involvement in the Guinness share-trading fraud of the 1980s, along with Ernest Saunders and occasional business associates Jack Lyons and Anthony Parnes. He was convicted in August 1990 of one charge of conspiracy, two of false accounting, and one of theft, and was fined £5 million and given a one-year jail sentence, of which he served six months. In 2000 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the 1990 trial had been unfair because there had been an improper collusion between the DTI inspectors and the prosecuting authorities.[7] A further appeal to the Court of Appeal Criminal Division, that sought to have the Human Rights Act 1998 applied retrospectively, and claimed that the trial jury had been "nobbled", failed in 2001.[8] A final appeal to the House of Lords (now the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom) failed in 2002.

Ronson now chairs the Community Security Trust charity, which targets anti-Zionists and was responsible for feeding false information to the Home Office on Sheikh Raed Salah. Raed Salah deportation case disintegrates in UK court, but verdict still to follow http://electronicintifada.net/content/raed-salah-deportation-case-disintegrates-uk-court-verdict-still-follow/10935

The Guinness Four (from left): Ernest Saunders, Gerald Ronson, Jack Lyons, Anthony Parnes

Guinness Four fail in fight for acquittal

 Guinness Four graphic


They were convicted in what was dubbed the trial of the 20th century.
But the Guinness Four have failed to win acquittal in what could have been the legal appeal of the 21st.

While the famous black beverage itself may promise rewards to those who wait, Jack Lyons, Anthony Parnes, Gerald Ronson and Ernest Saunders have failed to clear their names after 15 years of legal battles in the UK and on the Continent.

Convictions - achieved thanks to an insider trader who inspired a Hollywood blockbuster, as well as a man once tipped as a Conservative Party leader - have withstood challenges based in part on the evidence of a supergrass who helped sink a £132m drug ring.

Landmark takeover

Friday's decision will come as a particular disappointment to Mr Lyons whose campaigning to "lift a cloud of injustice" prompted the latest hearings.

The Guinness Four

Ernest Saunders: Former Guinness chief executive. Jailed for 5 years, halved on appeal, for false accounting, conspiracy, and theft.

Jack Lyons: Consultant. Fined £3m for theft and false accounting. Stripped of knighthood
Anthony Parnes: Trader. Jailed for 30 months, reduced on appeal to 21 months, for false accounting and theft.

Gerald Ronson: Businessman. Jailed for a year, and fined £5m, for false accounting and theft.

He was in 1986, when asked to advise Guinness on an ambitious takeover proposal, Sir Jack Lyons, a management consultant renowned for his philanthropy, whose acquaintances included former prime minister Sir Edward Heath.

Guinness, with Mr Saunders as chief executive, had hatched plans to buy Distillers, a larger drinks firm which owned whisky brands including Dewars and Johnnie Walker.

The move would consolidate Guinness's transformation, under Mr Saunders' leadership, from a stout brewer into a drinks business of international standing.

And he earned widespread plaudits for pulling off the £2.6bn deal, trumping a bid from foods group Argyll.

'Greed is good'

But, having been the toast of the City, Mr Saunders was within months being grilled by official inspectors.

His downfall was prompted by the arrest for insider dealing of Ivan Boesky, the US arbitrageur who coined the phrase "greed is good", echoed in the film Wall Street.

In a plea bargain, Mr Boesky told US authorities of a share dealing arrangement organised to underpin Guinness's stock price when it was pursuing Distillers, boosting the attractiveness of the bid.

In December 1986, the UK Department of Trade and Industry opened investigations into the takeover, and a month later charged Ernest Saunders with an array of financial offences.
Mr Lyons was charged in October 1997, as a DTI inquiry overseen by promising Conservative minister Michael Howard dug deeper into the mechanics of the deal.

Gerald Ronson, the Heron boss credited with bringing self-service petrol stations to Britain, was charged days later, with the last of the Guinness Four - stock trader Anthony Parnes - charged the following March.

Trial of the century

Companies in Mr Ronson's Heron group were to receive a £5m "success fee" for their support, should the deal come off, the DTI found.

Ernest Saunders in 1996

Ernest Saunders: resumed business career after jail

Mr Saunders had his five-year sentence halved on appeal, and was released from prison after only 10 months when a medical report said he was suffering from the irreversible brain disease Alzheimer's.

Mr Saunders was unable to recall three numbers backwards, or to remember the name of the US president, a psychiatrist said.

Since his release, Mr Saunders has worked as a marketing consultant for the likes of Carphone Warehouse, and is said to consider the Alzheimer's diagnosis an error.

Landmark ruling

Mr Saunders was also, with the rest of the Guinness Four, able to continue a campaign for full acquittal.

While the four suffered rejection in an appeal bought on the basis of evidence relating to City takeover guidelines, Mr Lyons had a conspiracy for conviction quashed in 1995.

And a year later came the landmark ruling which paved the way for the latest appeal.
It was based not on questions of guilt or innocence, but on the way the information presented to the Crown Court had been obtained.

Human rights

For the DTI investigators had, backed by UK law, forced the four men to answer questions under threat of a fine, or two-year jail sentence, if they failed to respond.

European Court of Human Rights: gave key verdict

Yet international human rights guidelines, enshrined into UK law last year in the Human Rights Act, guarantee the accuseds' right to silence should they fear incriminating themselves by talking.

Mr Saunders' conviction was in 1996 ruled "unsafe" by the European Court of Human Rights, which last year issued the same verdict in cases bought by the rest of the Guinness Four.

Further pressure from Mr Lyons saw the convictions of all four men referred to the UK Court of Appeals for this month's hearings.

Supergrass

But while the four said the Human Right Act should apply retrospectively, appeal court judges on Friday cited a precedent rendering the point unarguable.

In any case, "there was and is substantial evidence against the appellants, quite apart from their compelled answers", Lord Justice Rose said.

The judges also rejected claims that the jury in the original trial may have been "nobbled", despite evidence from police informer Michael Michael, who helped earlier this month in the jailing of 34 people.

Relief

So the Four who masterminded a remarkable takeover have proved less successful in achieving a legal coup.

Not that financial regulators will mourn Friday's ruling.

A decision in favour of the Four would have meant that after the two most significant UK fraud investigations of recent years - the Maxwell and Guinness affairs - not a single conviction would have stood.

Ernest Saunders was also remarkable because he is the only person alive known to have recovered from Altzheimer's disease.  Despite being incapable of remembering who he was, he has bounced back into a new business career! [Tony Greenstein]

Bernie Madoff

Bernie Madoff of Ponzi fame - but at least he only stole from thieves

And then of course there is Bernie Madoff, who is in a league of his own, having constructed a Ponzi pyramid scheme which literally raked in billions of dollars.  But Bernie is maybe more deserving of mercy than the rest since his main victims were the rich and Zionist groups like Hadassah and Elie Wiesel. [see It's an Ill-Wind that Blows No Good']