An insolvency practitioner appointed by the British Virgin Islands courts to trace the assets of Oxford Ventures Limited has been granted powers to request information from the British Caribbean Bank (BCB), an Ashcroft business based in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI).
This is the latest saga surrounding the controversial Lord Michael Ashcroft as more fallout and public scrutiny is placed on his business dealing sin the Caribbean and especially the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Oxford Ventures, which collapsed in 2010, is the ultimate parent company of Johnston International, a construction and engineering firm that went bust in the same year with debts of $30m and is now under scrutiny in the TCI and the UK. Oxford’s main creditor was BCB.
Last week, in a libel action brought by Ashcroft against the Independent, the paper’s lawyers claimed the Tory peer was linked to Johnston which, they alleged, had benefited from a property boom in the TCI “knowing this boom was being created through systematic corruption”.
Ashcroft insists he has had no “economic beneficial or legal interest” in Johnston since he sold it in 1999.
Ashcroft’s exact relationship with Johnston remains unclear. In 2010 the company told the Observer through its lawyers: “Lord Ashcroft has had no interest (whether legal, beneficial, economic or managerial) since 1999 when Johnston was the subject of a management buyout from a public company, which was disclosed fully.”
Ashcroft’s relationship with Johnston came under further scrutiny in court last week. The peer is pursuing a libel action against the Independent’s former publisher for a series of stories examining how the company benefited from a property boom in the Turks and Caicos Islands, where the peer is a “Belonger”, a citizen entitled to certain privileges. He has built a school on the island, donated to charity and is credited with delivering much-needed jobs.
David Price, defending the paper, said that “what is being stated” about Ashcroft is “that he funded this boom; he constructed this boom, through Johnston, knowing this boom was being created through systematic corruption”.
Price continued: “He [Ashcroft] is not the corrupter. The corrupter is (Former Premier) Michael Misick.”
Documents obtained by the BBC’s Panorama programme, however, suggest its chief executive, Allan Forrest, who was also a director of Oxford Ventures, reported to Ashcroft and also believed the peer owned Oxford.
Chris Johnson of CJA Associates, the insolvency practitioner charged with unpicking Oxford’s collapse, was last week given new powers by the TCI courts to request documents from Ashcroft’s bank. BCB has previously declined to provide Johnson with requested documents. On Friday the bank confirmed it would hand over Oxford’s bank statements.
“We have now obtained a court order in the Turks which empowers us to receive such documents,” said Johnson.
The Liberal Democrat peer, Lord Oakeshott, said he would be tabling parliamentary questions to establish what British officials in the TCI knew about Johnston.
