Weep for Wales 5

On 08/07/201821/07/2018 By JacIn Colonialism, Colonisation of Wales, Corruption, Public Funding, Welsh Government, Welsh Media84 Comments

Well, here we are again. And why are we here again? Because there have been further developments, that’s why. Some of them encouraging developments.

In addition, I’ve been doing a bit more thinking. Standing back, as it were, trying to take in the big picture, because what confronts us is designed to mislead and confuse. With companies forming and constantly changing names, addresses and directors. People taking out mortgages to buy property from themselves. Buy-outs that are probably nothing of the kind. And a web of lies designed to hide what’s really happening.

All made easier by the gullibility of politicians and media over a wide area and for a considerable period of time.

Fortunately, the fog is clearing.

If you’re new to this saga then to help you better understand what follows, I suggest you read Weep for Wales, Weep for Wales 2, Weep for Wales 3 and Weep for Wales 4.

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NEWS FROM THE NORTH

There’s little official news but snippets continue to reach my penthouse office at Jac o’ the North Towers about how the Williams Gang operates.

The former head chef at the Seiont Manor Hotel was able to provide me with more information on the curious payment arrangements. In his case, pay slips reading £500 every month but much larger amounts – the agreed salary – actually going into his bank account.

He was also able to give me bank details for the source of the money. I won’t use that information here but any official agency interested in seeing the information is welcome to contact me. The head chef and his team were constructively dismissed in order to provide work for chefs moving up from the now closed Radnorshire Arms in Presteigne and the Castle Inn in Wigmore. Other staff were also elbowed out.

UPDATE 09.07.2018: After discussing it with the man concerned I have decided to release copies of the relevant documents. They’re not perfect pictures but they show payslips for March and May this year, with no PAYE or NI paid, and showing net pay of £500, with the corresponding bank entries for those months showing £1,973.00. Click here.

It seems that the Williams Gang likes to have ‘loyalists’ on the books . . . or should that be ‘off the books’? Whatever, another loyalist is the handyman, a local who’s made comments to my Facebook page, some of which he’s deleted. To believe Noel Jordan of Penygroes Wales couldn’t manage without people like Paul, Rowena, Rikki and the gang because we Welsh are too stupid to do things for ourselves. Speak for yourself, Noel.

Though Noel has stopped defending Team Williams, perhaps because it’s finally penetrated even his thick skull that they’re crooks. Now he attacks me for my FWA connections and my political stance, previously unknown facts he’s gleaned from – Phil Parry at The Eye. Well, laff!!

Something else the former head chef told me was that Rikki Reynolds, running Seiont Manor for Paul and Rowena Williams, doesn’t seem much concerned if the business makes money or not. Which I suggest confirms my theory – what’s important is the buildings and the money that can be raised on them or channelled through them, the businesses in those buildings are dispensable, as are the people working in them.

This explains why businesses in buildings owned by Paul and Rowena Williams just limp along or close.

So unconcerned is Rikki Reynolds about the state of the Seiont Manor Hotel that I’m told old furniture, televisions, fryers, and other junk litters the grounds, and the interior’s not a lot better.

And if anything goes wrong you’d better try to fix it yourself because no local tradesman will answer the call until he gets pad for his previous visits. (Thank God for trusty, forelock-tugging Noel!) Bailiffs and others looking for money are regular visitors to Seiont Manor. Though come to that, they’re regular visitors to every Williams’ property.

UPDATE 09.07.2018: Here’s an example of an unpaid bill at Seiont Manor. One of thousands.

Before leaving the north let’s make a quick visit to Plas Glynllifon.

Someone sent me the picture below, which I’m afraid is not perfect, but still . . . it shows the small lake in the grounds of Plas Glynllifon with a sign reading ‘Beware of Sharks’ above a picture of Paul and Rowena Williams. I’m told that the hand behind the sign, reaching up, represents a creditor.

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ANOTHER TRIP TO CORNWALL

On our previous visits to Cernyw we have concentrated on Polvellan House or Manor in West Looe, now we’re going to the community of Seaton, a couple of miles along the coast towards Plymouth.

Like a bundle of other properties this is owned by Leisure & Development Ltd, the company we’re told was sold on 1 February this year to Keith Harvey Partridge, though Paul Williams remains a director.

The property owned in Seaton is listed on this Land Registry title document as The Pavilion, though it’s now known as the Waves Bar. Confusingly, it is also known as The Courtyard according to this Charge from 2016 referring to the purchase by Leisure & Development. It’s definitely the same place because it has the same LR title number. So why three names?

Whatever it’s called Leisure & Development paid almost two million pounds for it on 1 February 2016, which sounds rather high. But if it follows the pattern we found elsewhere then Paul and/or Rowena Williams already owned the place and sold it to themselves at an inflated price in order to get the mortgage money.

Another mortgage or loan was taken out 10 May this year with Together Commercial Finance Ltd of Cheadle, after the alleged sale to Partridge. Which might be taken as evidence of the sale.

Despite having sold the Courtyard/Pavilion/Waves Bar Rowena Williams still has a soft spot for the place, to judge by her Facebook page. Though little else is being posted nowadays.

But the reason we’re in Seaton is because someone assures me that the manager of the Waves Bar, Stuart Cooper, is this Stuart Paul Cooper.

If Cooper the Waves Bar manager is indeed the same man referred to in the article, then that gives us three convicted fraudsters doing business with Paul and Rowena Williams. There’s Keith Partridge, then there’s John Duggan, their accountant, who featured in the previous post, and now Stuart Cooper.

This is no coincidence.

Finally, for those taken in by the Open Days at Glynllifon last month, someone in Cornwall tells me that the same stunt was pulled down there with Polvellan Manor. Now described as one of Cornwall’s most at risk houses.

UPDATE: Soon after putting this piece up I was directed to information relating to the Waves Bar. This information tells us that Cooper threatens to burn down people’s houses with them inside. Paul Williams thinks Cooper is a splendid fellow and defended him to the hilt when Devon and Cornwall Police tried to close down the Waves Bar.

If you want insights into the character of Paul Williams, the kind of people he employs, the way he runs his businesses, and his contempt for all authority, then it’s all here. Just scroll down to the section on Waves Bar. It’ll take a while to read it all, but believe me, it’s worth it.

UPDATE 09.07.2018: Here’s another worrying insight from Cornwall into Paul Williams’ modus operandi.

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THE POWYS FRONT

Where it’s hats off to Mid Wales Journal reporter Karen Compton. We seem to have finally found a journalist who isn’t content with being spoon-fed the Williams’ lies. By comparison, the Daily Post has churned out one puff after another that could have been – and probably were – dictated by Paul and Rowena Williams.

Congratulations to Ms Compton also for recognising that the ‘sale’ of the properties to Keith Partridge may be no more than a transfer of shares, just smoke and mirrors.

The Mid Wales Journal report states that the hotels owned by Paul and Rowena Williams – via Leisure & Development Ltd – were sold to “Keith Partridge of Coast 2 Coast Limited”.

There appear to be four companies answering to that name with which Partridge is involved: Coast 2 Coast Resorts Ltd; Coast2Coast Land Ltd; Coast2Coast Shores Ltd; Coast 2 Coast Developments Ltd. (Why no Coast 2 Coast Coasts Ltd?) Though Sukhbinder Singh Heer, who also joined Leisure & Development Ltd on the same day as Partridge, has no involvement with any of them. So how does he fit in?

Then there’s the Charge taken on against Leisure & Development Ltd, with shady lender Together Commercial Finance Ltd after the Partridge takeover, this is the Charge we looked at in connection with the Waves Bar in Seaton.

If this Charge explains how the purchase was funded then we are asked to believe that Partridge raised ten million pounds to buy these properties, at what must be crippling rates given his criminal record and the reputation of the lender . . . then he leaves a number of them empty!

As I’ve consistently suggested, the alleged sale of these properties to Keith Partridge was a subterfuge; done partly to take the heat off Paul and Rowena Williams, and partly to raise more money. Which explains why the Mid Wales Journal found it so difficult to contact any of them.

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GRANTS

The Mid Wales Journal headline reads, ‘Assembly Acts Over Shut Hotels’, which I’m not sure is correct. What the report actually says is that the Assembly is looking into whether any public funding paid to the Knighton Hotel and the Radnorshire Arms Hotel can be recouped. Which to me looks a long way short of action.

We have since learnt from Kirsty Williams AM that under the Tourism Investment Support Scheme the Knighton Hotel received £254,200 and the Radnorshire Arms £170,000. This, remember, is just one funding stream, for it’s suggested that these two establishments received more than the figures just quoted.

What I find most disturbing in this aspect of the affair is the admission by the Minister responsible (a certain Dafydd Elis Thomas), ” . . . the applicant (Mr & Mrs Paul and Rowena Williams) failed to provide final post completion information despite numerous requests to do so”.

So Paul and Rowena Williams trousered £424,200, then refused to confirm that it had been spent properly, or at all; yet the ‘Welsh’ Government couldn’t be bothered to send a pith-helmeted expedition into darkest Powys to check. The conscientious civil servants handling our money just shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘Nah, sod it!’.

As I’ve mentioned, I have a FoI request with the ‘Welsh’ Government asking about grants to the Williams Gang and their properties. I got a reply asking me to stipulate which grants I was enquiring about, presumably in the hope I’d screw up and ask about grants for growing rape seed. But should I need to be so specific?

Are we to believe that there is no central reference for grant funding? That it’s impossible to type ‘Knighton Hotel’ or ‘Paul Steven Williams’ into a shared database and not be told how much grant funding they’ve received? There used to a website called Transparent Wales(?) that provided this information at the click of a mouse, what happened to it?

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A PLACE IN THE SUN

We’ve already encountered Paul Williams’ sister Debra Yvonne Oswald, who seems to have jetted about the world a bit, and may occasionally be found in Goa. ‘Goa!’, you cry, ‘Goa!’. Yes indeedy, the former Portuguese colony, now a state of India, destination for hippies and all manner of interesting characters.

But Debs is no hippy, she’s a businesswoman, and she has a company in Goa, Pleasant Time Guest Houses Private Ltd. though it looks like another of those companies that’s never done anything. Formed in November 2007 it held its last AGM 30 September 2014 and is currently lined up for strike off.

The other directors are Debra’s husband, her (and Paul’s) parents, and a Peter d’Souza, probably a local lawyer.

Goa. Wait! are those the chalets from behind the Radnorshire Arms?

Why would the Williams family want to start a company in a place notorious for being a gangsters’ paradise, where Nigerian, Russian and Israeli gangsters launder their money and do their deals? And with India being a country from which it’s notoriously difficult to extradite anyone to the UK.

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TIME TO CLOSE THE TRAP

At the risk of repeating myself . . .

We have here a gang involved in some kind of financial crime. It could be mortgage fraud, it could be money laundering, it could be both. To which can be added a host of lesser offences, among them the non-payment of income tax and national insurance, or damaging a listed building . . .

A combination of sunshine, Argie red and digging into the antics of these crooks is making my brain boil. I’ve written over ten thousand words on these shysters – I need a break. So unless startlingly fresh information comes in I shall hold back on the Williams Gang until I write a more general update.

That said, there is now enough information in the public domain to justify action from the police, HMRC, the ‘Welsh’ Government, and a number of local authorities and other bodies.

I would suggest that this action be taken sooner rather than later. I say that because Paul and Rowena Williams must know the game is up, and so it would be reasonable to assume that they’re looking for a way out. They can’t go back, and there’s no way forward, so they’ve got to slip out through a side door.

They have enough money to go anywhere. So unless they’re pulled in pronto Paul Williams might soon be sunning himself on Calangute Beach in Goa, next to Sergei ‘Skullcrusher’ Ivanov, feared enforcer for the St Petersburg mob.

We’ve done enough weeping for Wales, let’s start doing something positive!

♦ end ♦

Weep for Wales 4

On 03/07/201804/07/2018 By JacIn Cardiff Bay, Colonialism, Colonisation of Wales, Corruption, Public Funding, Welsh Assembly, Welsh Government, Welsh Labour, Welsh Media78 Comments

I hadn’t planned on writing another instalment so soon after my previous effort but more information has come to light that needs to be put into the public domain.

If this is all new to you then I suggest you get up to speed with Weep for Wales, Weep for Wales 2 and Weep for Wales 3. It’s worth it, and I say that because this is developing into a saga of corruption the like of which Wales has rarely seen.

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WHAT’S IN A NAME?

We shall soon be in Cornwall, and Polvellan House or Manor, standing not far from the confluence of the East and West Looe Rivers, but first I want to take a little detour, my ‘andsome (as he slips effortlessly into dialect!).

On 9 July 2002 Mortimers Cross Inn Ltd (Co. No. 04480966) was Incorporated with Companies House. Perfectly natural seeing as Paul and Rowena Williams, the directors of the company – each holding 5,000 £1 shares – had bought the Mortimers Cross Inn near Leominster in October 2001.

After the sale of the eponymous pub to Punch Taverns in 2004/5 (at what is alleged to be a greatly inflated valuation), the company underwent changes in both directors and addresses, also names, becoming Rural Retreats & Leisure Ltd on 14 March 2007, and Polvellan Manor Ltd on 17 March 2015.

Then something even stranger happened.

On 20 March 2015, three days after Rural Retreats and Leisure Ltd changed its name to Polvellan Manor Ltd, a company called Rural Retreats & Leisure UK Ltd (Co. No. 09502597) was formed. The directors were Rowena Claire Williams and Leisure and Development Ltd, a company whose sole director was Rural Retreats & Leisure UK Ltd.

Why form a new company with a name so close as to be easily confused with the former name of Polvellan Manor Ltd? Surely it’s not a deliberate attempt to confuse?

Rowena Williams soon got out of Rural Retreats & Leisure UK Ltd, and following a flurry of activity in December 2017 (not notified to Companies House until April) the address switched from Plas Glynllifon to Polvellan House, and when the music stopped a certain Michael Jones found himself sole director holding all the shares.

Now I have no idea who Michael Jones is. The documents filed with Companies House tell us that his correspondence address is Polvellan House but that Wales is his country of residence. Does he really exist? And if so, is he aware that he is responsible for Rural Retreats and Leisure UK Ltd and the debt the company has with the NatWest Bank? Perhaps Michael Jones could get it touch to clarify things.

On 1 April ‘Michael Jones’ made an attempt to voluntarily liquidate the company, but this was thwarted by a person unknown objecting. Much to the chagrin of Rowena Williams. But why would she be so upset, because the company has nothing to do with her any more? Officially.

Before it was Plas Glynllifon the address for this new company switched from the Knighton Hotel to Unit 3, 37 Watling Street, Leintwardine, Herefordshire. I shall have more to say on the second of these in a minute.

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WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?

One thing I’ve noticed since I’ve been investigating Paul and Rowena Williams is that a few of those involved in this saga seem to have switched sides, or it may be difficult to tell who they’re working for. One of those I’m thinking about is Keith Rolfe.

Formerly a local government planning officer in Cornwall handling applications from Paul and/or Rowena Williams for Polvellan Manor he is now working from home as a consultant and advises Team Williams and their crew, including Michael Jones, presumably.

Then there’s the “expert” mentioned in this report about the ‘unsafe’ gardens at Plas Glynllifon, “Matt Jackson, from consultancy Land and Heritage”.

As I mentioned in the previous posting, Land & Heritage Ltd is a new company, Incorporated 8 August 2017. Among the directors we find Simon Travers Humphreys. In addition to being a director of Land and Heritage Humphreys also works for Pell Frischmann. This company has worked for Polvellan Manor.

Land & Heritage are even looking after the bats at Glynllifon according to their website, which tells us that “Heating a section of the cellar has proved a highly popular nursery for young lesser horseshoes”. If bats use a cellar it’s because it’s a substitute cave, and therefore cool. Heating it could be disastrous.

If I was Land & Heritage I’d stick to trees and shrubs.

It seems obvious to me that Land & Heritage Ltd has been set up as a sideline to make money by providing whatever bullshit the likes of Paul and Rowena Williams need produced to promote their projects. That being so, nothing produced by Land & Heritage need be treated seriously.

The extract below from the minutes of Looe Town Council 14 June 2016 confirms that Keith Rolfe and Simon Humphreys were already on Paul Williams’ payroll two years ago.

In previous posts on Paul and Rowena Williams I mentioned Dudley James Cross, who we’re told works for commercial property consultants Lambert Smith Hampton. But does he? I ask because he’s been associated with Paul and Rowena Williams for a decade and a half.

During the Open Days last month Cross was even showing people around Plas Glynllifon.

Here’s a planning application in Herefordshire from 2008. Paul Williams wanted to erect holiday chalets behind the Mortimers Cross Inn. What name do we see against ‘Agent address’ but Lambert Smith Hampton of Northampton. In other words, Dudley James Cross.

And I’ve turned up his name in other planning applications associated with Paul and Rowena Williams and their companies. We know Cross has even been a director of the Williams company Leisure and Development Ltd.

Given this long association, and added to the fact that LSH was the agent for Plas Glynllifon during the ‘Wynnborn’ fiasco, it’s possible that Cross is the one responsible for introducing Paul and Rowena Williams to Gwynedd. So are they in partnership?

I ask because the chronology of the crazy property dealing conducted around the time of the purchase of Plas Glynllifon fits. Much of this involved ‘buying’ property they already owned at inflated prices in order to raise cash through loans and mortgages.

Whatever the relationship between them, Cross has been involved in some very dubious transactions and dealings, false reporting, and God knows what else. How does Lambert Smith Hampton feel about that?

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LEINTWARDINE

An address that crops up regularly in the constant changing of the correspondence address for the various Williams’ companies, is Unit 3, 37 Watling Street, Leintwardine, a village in north Herefordshire.

Now 37 Watling Street is a residential property on an unprepossessing street in a sleepy border village, and Unit 3 is a shed accessed down an alleyway at the side of 37 known as Wardens Lane. It also seems to be home to a recycling company. This shed must get a bit crowded!

So who might we find at Unit 3? The answer is John Duggan, or to give him his full name, John William Thomas Duggan. Not only does he work out of Unit 3 but it seems the area down Wardens Lane qualifies as a business park. Which may be stretching things.

Of more importance for this report is the fact that John Duggan served a lengthy prison term after being convicted in May 1998 of fleecing an elderly widow out of nearly £700,000. At the time he was a director of Hereford United Football Club, and it’s from a club website that I got this report.

Here’s another report from the Free Library.

There are crimes of passion, there are stupid things done in the heat of the moment, often under the influence of alcohol or drugs; revenge, lust, hate and a host of other motivations can trigger criminal behaviour, then there are acts – à la Jean Valjean – committed out of necessity . . . but Duggan’s crime was none of these.

His was a cruel and calculating crime carried out over a lengthy period of time against a helpless old woman with no one in the world to help her; for she had lost her husband and, more tragically, her son. So this bastard ripped her off.

Yet Paul and Rowena Williams have no qualms about associating with Duggan, no problem with using Duggan’s address for their companies, over and over again.

Which would be bad enough, but it doesn’t end there.

John Duggan, through his company J D Accountancy (a company for which I can find no details anywhere), is responsible for the accounts of Team Williams companies. Or maybe I should rephrase that, because they don’t seem to be accounts so much as ‘Unaudited Financial Statements’.

Duggan drew up the latest Unaudited Financial Statement for Leisure and Development Ltd, up to 31.01.2018. It’s worth reading. This is the company we are asked to believe was taken over 1 February 2018 by ex-con Keith Harvey Partridge and his mate, failed financial whizz kid Sukhbinder Singh Heer. (Though Paul Williams remained a director.)

In the Unaudited Financial Statement produced by Duggan I was particularly struck by the heading, ‘4. Staff costs’, which seems to suggest that the various hotels and other businesses had no employees. There were dozens. Then again, this might be explained by what I’ve been told about staff being paid in cash. In fact as much business as possible is done in cash. Paul Williams is a great one for the brown envelopes.

There were ten Charges (debts, loans, mortgages, debentures) against Leisure and Development Ltd before the company was ‘sold’ to Partridge and Heer, with an eleventh taken out 4 May, after the supposed buyout. This one seems to bundle up all the previous Charges and suggests that they are now transferred to Plas Glynllifon Ltd, which makes no sense.

Because if we are to believe Paul and Rowena Williams they no longer have anything to do with Partridge, Heer and Leisure and Development Ltd. So why is their new company Plas Glynllifon Ltd listed as the ‘Borrower’ on the Charge taken out by a company they no longer own?

I’d appreciate professional advice on these arrangements. Also for the figures contained in the Unaudited Financial Statement for Leisure and Development Ltd, up to 31.01.2018, because some of the figures appear to be incredible. And here I mean incredible in the sense of being unbelievable. Unacceptable.

But if true, then they should worry anyone having any kinds of dealings with Paul and Rowena Williams.

At the end of the day, we have to ask why Paul and Rowena Williams associate so closely with two men, in Duggan and Partridge, who have been to prison for serious crimes of theft. (And might even have met in prison.) They must know these men’s records.

To pretend they don’t know what these men have done is unacceptable. To argue that they’ve ‘served their time, etc.,’ facile. Paul and Rowena Williams do business with Duggan and Partridge because they’re crooks.

Experience of life and knowledge of Paul and Rowena Williams suggests they use the undoubted accountancy skills of John Duggan because for the right price he’ll give you what you want, no questions asked. Which means that no figures presented by Paul and Rowena Williams can be trusted.

As for Partridge, his background is also useful in the scam he’s working now with Paul and Rowena Williams, that has raised millions and millions of pounds in complicated mortgage deals and phoney sales, money that might soon disappear in a puff of smoke along with those holding it.

Then what of Rolfe, Humphreys, Cross, Jones, Reynolds and the others – do they realise what crooks they’re working with?

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CONCLUSION

I am no longer sure we are dealing with chancers trying to make a few quid by duping politicians, planners and civil servants; we may instead be dealing with a major criminal enterprise covering a wide geographical area, from Cornwall to the Marches, to Gwynedd, and up to the Scottish border. Perhaps involving serious criminals and organised crime.

Paul and Rowena Williams may not even be the main players.

I suspect the police are now taking an interest. And not just the police, for the UK government has lost a considerable amount of money due to the activities of this gang. And I have been promised yet more information about Paul and Rowena Williams. It’s unending!

And what of our (or somebody’s) ‘Welsh’ Government, which I’m sure has given large amounts of cash to these crooks? I have submitted a FoI request, but I don’t expect an answer any time soon. It would obviously help if we had an opposition around that foetid pool that is Cardiff Bay, but they’re all too busy jostling for position and advancement.

With any luck they’ll fall in and drown. But then, rats can swim.

Fuck ’em; the spineless, collaborating bastards bereft of dignity, vision, and ambition for Wales; making our homeland easy prey for the scumbags we read about here. May they rot in hell, an individual hell each must share for eternity with whomsoever and whatsoever most offends their delicate sensibilities.

Weep for Wales.

♦ end ♦

Jac o' the North

Tag: Polvellan Manor

Weep for Wales 5

Weep for Wales 4