Shares in both Kensington and Siberian were traded on the Vancouver Stock Exchange, which prior to its closure in 1999 had a reputation for being poorly regulated.
Amber Rudd is damned apparently by this. Although, if we’re honest about this, there were a few straight companies on the VSE.
There was no FSA until three years after 1999 – just a mish-mash of small-scale regulators.
Not that I am advocating regulation, but my recollection is that London was ‘poorly’ regulated, too.
There was a time when the only regulation of the City was a raised eyebrow by the Governor of the BoE.
So this is bigger than backing the IRA, Hizbollah or Hamas? Have we reached that warped a sense of morality?
Murph’s all over it like an embarrassing ill-informed rash. Apparently no-one who’s ever done anything that he disapproves of, no matter how legal, is fit to be a Cabinet minister. And since he disapproves of being a Tory or holding right-wing views, I think we can see where this is heading. Up the workers!
Flatcap Army
Two posts already – one – a thousand word blather over how Rudd is ‘undermining the rule of law’ reveals once again his own lack of self-awareness.
He would ride roughshod over the rule of law in a heartbeat. Surely a Dark web campaign to bump him off would have enough takers to be viable. What an evil piece of work.
The Grauniad is relying on the ignorance of its readers. The Autonomous Republic of Sakha is the second-largest producer of diamonds in the world and is actually between the Russian Far East and the region defined as Siberia. There is reason to expect some diamonds in north-east Siberia near Sakha.
There were quite a lot of straight companies on the VSE but too large a minority of scams so eventually no-one trusted anyone with a Vancouver listing and the VSE folded.
I didn’t know much about Rudd.
Reading that Guardian article, if anything she’s gone up in my estimation, simply in that she isn’t just another pointless career politician. She’s clearly done a lot else in her life.
Looked for a particular weasel phrase, duly found it: “Though there is no suggestion she was involved in any wrongdoing[…]”
This is straight off the script. Insinuation, guilt by association, no smoke without fire, question-begging, etc.. These people are without shame.
@ BiCR
Thanks for pointing that out – I just had an automatic reflex to the smear about “diamonds in Siberia” which to someone who understands anything about the raw diamond market is like “oil west Canada”
I did actually type “oil west of Canada”
(FYI that means Prudhoe Bay etc)