Michael Ashcroft: Difference between revisions

Michael Anthony Ashcroft, Baron Ashcroft, KCMG, (born 4 March 1946) is an international businessman, man of mystery, philanthropist and politician. He was made a life peer in 2000, and is a Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party. He holds British and Belizean nationality and is a Belonger of the Turks & Caicos Islands.

Michael Ashcroft spent some of his early years in Belize and Malawi in connection with his father having been a colonial civil servant with placements abroad. He was educated at Norwich School, Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe and Mid-Essex Technical College (now Anglia Ruskin University), Chelmsford.^[1]

He has been Chancellor of Anglia Ruskin University since November 2001, and has donated £5 million for the university's business school at Chelmsford, now called Ashcroft International Business School.

He is the Founder and Chairman of Crimestoppers, the only charity in the UK which seeks to solve crime.

In the Sunday Times Rich List 2009 ranking of the wealthiest people in the UK he was placed 37th with an estimated fortune of £1,100 million.^[2]

He began work as a management trainee at Rothmans in 1967.^{[citation needed]} but left in 1969, joining Pritchard Group Services, after some months on the dole ^{[citation needed]}. Pritchard Group was a cleaning and business services company and Ashcroft worked as an assistant in the company's head office accounting department. In 1972, he started his own business, leaving Pritchard's to trade as Michael A. Ashcroft Associates. His first acquisition was Uni-Kleen – a loss-making company with 1,000 employees, he purchased for just £1 in 1974. With a £15,000 bank loan he worked to turn the company around, selling it just three years later for £1.3 million.^[3]

On exiting Uni-Kleen in 1977 his next purchase was Hawley Goodall, another poorly-performing company, this time in camping equipment manufacture. This company was used as vehicle to takeover a variety of companies in the United Kingdom and then the United States, culminating in the purchase, in 1987, of ADT, the largest electronic security company in the United States. In 1988, Hawley was rebranded ADT – a household name in the US. In 1997, ADT was sold to US conglomerate Tyco International for $6.7 billion.^[4]

Ashcroft disposed of large amounts of the Tyco stock which he had acquired as a result of the sale of ADT, explaining that he needed the capital to diversify into other things, and that he never retained a substantial stake in any enterprise which he did not control. Ashcroft nevertheless continued as a non-executive director of Tyco, a role he still held in 2002 when Tyco CEO, Dennis Kozlowski, was arrested in New York in connection with personal tax offenses. Unease had already been expressed around the boardroom table at some of Kozlowski's corporate decisions, and Ashcroft was amongst the directors who appointed leading lawyer, David Boies, to investigate irregularities in the company. In time, the exposure of management deficiencies led to Ashcroft demanding that the whole of the board of directors of Tyco should resign, to be replaced by new management.

In 2003, Ashcroft was criticised by the controversial High Court judge, Justice Peter Smith. Smith condemned Ashcroft's tactics in relation to the takeover of cleaning company RCO by the Danish firm ISS. Smith said,

Euphemistically this practice — which I understand is a not unheard of practice in the City — is described as "greenmail". The proper word to my mind is blackmail. It is the kind of thing which brings the City into disrepute ... Where matters are dealt with in speculation and profits are made, which are then gathered offshore, when there is no merit and no exposure to the kind of risks associated with companies, that to my mind is not legitimate.

— Justice Peter Smith^[5]

Smith added that Ashcroft "was not content with a small £250,000 profit earned in a matter of weeks. He now seeks to extract millions."^[5] Ashcroft responded by telling journalists that "being accused of blackmail by a man who states that speculation has no part to play in the City is rather like finding that you are sharing a railway carriage with a drunk. It's best not to take too much notice."^[5]

Ashcroft has close business and other connections with the Commonwealth country of Belize. In his 2005 biography, he admitted that it is a country where his interests have been "exempt from certain taxes for 30 years."^[6]

Ashcroft's main company in Belize is Stargate Holdings Ltd, whose registered office is the same as The Belize Bank, 73% owned by Ashcroft through both Stargate and his main UK holding company, BB Holdings Limited, itself listed on the Alternative Investment Market.

BB Holdings has interests in facilities services, finance and telecommunications. It is the parent company of The Belize Bank which itself formerly held a majority stake in Belize Telemedia Limited until recently being nationalised by the Government of Belize.^[7] The rapid nationalisation came after years of litigations, wherein Ashcroft was accused of tax evasion as well as abuse of BTL's dominance, outlawing Voice Over IP for example. Lord Ashcroft also has interests in the parent company of SpeedNet, Belize's only rival telecomms company.

Ashcroft also has significant interests in the following companies quoted on the Alternative Investment Market, held either through Stargate, BB Holdings, or both: Mavinwood, Carlisle, OneSource, Corporate Services Group, London Town, Digital Marketing, Global Health. Having attempted a takeover Corporate Services Group in 1999 in June 2006 he increased his stake to 28.5%, prompting speculation that he might make an offer for the remaining shares in the company. As of March 2006 he became the major shareholder in English professional football club Watford, owning up to 42% of the club's shares.^[8] In September 2006, he accepted a bid for British Car Auctions (BCA) worth £450m, netting him a personal gain of £200m.

In the UK, he was a major donor to and Treasurer of the Conservative Party from 1998 to 2001, under William Hague. His tenure was marked by a number of controversies: he was seen to pay little UK income tax due to his domicile in Belize; and he was at the centre of a debate about openness and accountability of political funding.

Unsubstantiated speculation about his business affairs was concluded when he pursued a libel action against The Times. This was settled on 9 December 1999, when The Times issued a statement that "[...] Litigation between the parties has been settled to mutual satisfaction, with each side bearing its own costs."^[9]

In 2004 he clashed with Conservative leader Michael Howard when he offered a £2m donation on the condition that it should go to his specified candidates, rather than into general Conservative Central Office funds.

In December 2005, he was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party.^[10]

On 12 October 2007 he was accused by Labour MPs for being allowed to heavily fund the local Conservative organisations in marginal seats of his choosing. The Electoral Commission is investigating and changes to the rules are predicted.

During the "Cash for Peerages" controversy, on 31 March 2006 he was named by the Conservative Party as having loaned it £3.6m.

Lord Ashcroft courted controversy when Conservative Party Chairman Eric Pickles MP declared on Radio 4 that Lord Ashcroft would be willing to appear on the BBC's flagship Today Programme to clarify his currently unclear tax status. However when invited, Lord Ashcroft quickly declined, according to John Humphreys. On grounds of privacy, he has never commented on whether he currently pays tax on his global income in the United Kingdom, despite being a prominent and influential member of the legislature. [1]

Lord Ashcroft has become a significant figure in Australian politics having been identified as the single largest individual donor to any Australian political party during the Financial Year 2004/2005. The Australian Electoral Commission reported in February 2006 that Ashcroft (who gave his address as "House of Lords, Westminster, London") had donated $1,000,000 to the Liberal Party in September 2004 just before the 2004 Federal election. It was the biggest single disclosed private donation in Australian political history.^[11]

Over the last weekend of August 2008, Lord Ashcroft flew into Auckland, New Zealand in his private Lear Jet. While there he was confirmed to have met with senior figures from the New Zealand National Party; the main opposition party in the New Zealand general elections.

In the U.S., an intelligence research specialist for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Jonathan Randel, leaked Ashcroft's name as being in the DEA's files, although it later emerged that Ashcroft was one of 5 million people they routinely had files on. Randel claims to have believed the DEA was ignoring Ashcroft in its investigation of money laundering, so Ashcroft sued. A U.S. attorney investigated Randel for his leak. On 9 January 2003, Randel was sentenced to a year in a federal prison, followed by three years probation.

On 31 March 2000, Ashcroft was appointed as a life peer,^[12] and the title Baron Ashcroft, of Chichester in the County of West Sussex was gazetted on 20 October 2000.^[13] His appointment to the House of Lords was controversial at the time, particularly because of his business and political interests in Belize. He was nominated by Conservative party leader William Hague on the condition that he became a UK resident. Ashcroft then announced that he intended to take the title "Baron Ashcroft of Belize", a suggestion that infuriated his political opponents. He later claimed this had been a joke, and his title was created as simply Baron Ashcroft.^[14]

In the 2000 Queen's Birthday Honours, on the advice of the Belizean government, he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) "for public service to the community and country" of Belize.^[15]

Ashcroft collects Victoria Crosses; his collection is by far the largest in the world and spans the three services - Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force (RAF).^[16] The collection also spans 128 years from acts of bravery at the start of the Crimean War in 1854 to an act of courage during the Falklands War in 1982. He wrote Victoria Cross Heroes,^[17] published in November 2006 (updated paperback version released in May 2007), to mark the 150th anniversary of the Victoria Cross.

Following the theft of a number of Victoria Crosses awarded to New Zealand servicemen from the Army Museum at Waiouru in late 2007, Lord Ashcroft pledged NZ$200,000 for their return. Those stolen included the very rare VC & Bar of Charles Upham. The medals were recovered three months later and at a presentation in Wellington on 15 April 2008 he pledged a further NZ$200,000 for information leading to the conviction of those responsible for the thefts.

In July 2008, Lord Ashcroft announced a donation of £5 million for a permanent gallery at the Imperial War Museum, where the 50 Victoria Crosses held by the museum will be put on display alongside his own collection of 152 VCs.^[18]

On 12 October 2009, Lord Ashcroft pledged NZ$50,000 for the safe return of two-year old toddler Aisling Symes. Aisling went missing a week earlier in West Auckland, New Zealand.^[19]

• Register of Lords' interests
• Michael Ashcroft's personal website
• The Times libel statement
• Crimestoppers
• Victoria Cross Heroes