What are Hope not Hate hiding as Electoral Commission registration lapses?

Smeeth - allowed HnH
registration to lapse

Casual browsing on the Electoral Commission's website while looking at Hope not Hate Ltd's expenditure for this year's European Elections lead to the surprising discovery that the organisation's registration with the Commission has lapsed.

Due for renewal on the 6th November, the failure to register by HnH general secretary Ruth Smeeth - a Labour parliamentary candidate in Stoke on Trent - is doubly surprising as we are currently in a period where expenditure is regulated by the Electoral Commission ahead of next year's General Election, something Ms Smeeth can hardly be unaware of. The controlled period ran from the 23rd May this year according to guidance on the ElComm website which is made available to all parties and third parties, including serial electoral failure Ms Smeeth. Although Smeeth's name is listed as the 'responsible person', it can hardly have happened without Hope not Hate Ltd owner Nick Lowles knowledge, as any correspondence relating to renewal would have been sent to HnH head office.

At height of HnH campaign barely 70% of website visitors
were located in the UK, and 20% were in Belgium

All of which rather begs the question 'what are Hope not Hate hiding?'. With their recent campaign to encourage otherwise non-eligible donors to become 'Hope not Hate Supporters' by donating via online payment processors being a couple of months old, there is the possibility that they hope to escape the reporting requirements by some legalistic dodge. The failure to re-register also coincides with their innumerate 'we are the 85% campaign', launched shortly after UKIP's Rochester & Strood by election victory and designed to 'represent' the 57% of people (!) who didn't vote UKIP.

Are there any other reasons? We are interested by the big business ties of some of their donors, but we'll go into the detail of their expenditure at a later date. Be aware though that anything HnH does now in relation to the forthcoming general election is outside of the law and potentially illegal as they are no longer registered as a third party participant for the General Election.

Hope not Hate Ltd's lapsed registration with the Electoral Commission, making their anti-UKIP efforts since the 6th November illegal under current electoral law.

UEA student who blocked UKIP speech has conviction for assaulting police at UAF demo

UEA student officer Liam McCafferty is a violent criminal
with conviction for assaulting a police officer

The student union officer at the University of East Anglia who helped organise a petition to prevent local UKIP candidtes addressing the University's Political Studies Society because he claimed students wouldn't 'feel safe' with UKIP on campus has a conviction for assaulting a police officer at a UAF demonstration.

Liam McCafferty, 22, from Doncaster was arrested at a UAF demonstration against an EDL march in Bolton in March 2010, and was convicted of the assault in June 2011 and fined £100. He subsequently appealed his conviction, but it was upheld in March 2012, when in addition to the £100 fine and £630 costs he was ordered to pay a further £200 in costs and a £15 victim surcharge, bringing his bill up to almost £1000. McCafferty asked to pay at £10 a week, but was told that 'if he could afford to swan off to demonstrations, he can afford to pay up' by the judge. He was permitted to pay the costs at £5 per week, but inquiries indicate that he may not have done so.

The judge, in upholding his conviction, said he had taken 'sly digs' at an officer manning a cordon to keep UAF and EDL marchers apart.

McCafferty, speaking about his campaign to prevent UKIP speaking on the campus, said, "the talk was cancelled because student members did not feel safe", despite neither of the UKIP speakers having a conviction for assaulting a police officer. He also Tweeted the following,

Can students feel safe around a man with a conviction for political violence?
McCafferty was fined £1,000 for assaulting a policeman at a demo.

apparently forgetting to mention that even the police can't feel safe when he's around. Of course, the police can't feel safe when any UAF activist is around, and it is hardly surprising to discover a boy with links to the UAF is attempting to suppress freedom of speech. Normally they resort to bully boy tactics and violence, and we're sure that UKIP can look forward to that when sanity returns to UEA.

Full details of his conviction can be found on the Bolton News website here : £1000 bill as student loses EDL demo appeal

We wonder whether students feel safe knowing that their full time student union officer is a violent convicted criminal with a history of beating law enforcement officers, and whether that makes them feel safer or not?

Illiteracy new job qualification for Labour MEPs

We're sure Labour MEP Paul Brannen thought he was being clever. Except as you'd expect of the son of 2 socialist teachers brought up in Labour controlled Newcastle, he can't spell 'artificial'. Still, it's an improvement. A sign written about UKIP by Labour which doesn't have the word 'racist' in it.

'Artificial', Paul. It's spelt 'Artificial'

 

13 years of 'education, education, education', and this is the best he can come up with.

Hope not Hate use seminar organised by victim of Labour racism

Hope not Hate's 'Jihad news' - it's token attempt to make it appear to be targeting more than UKIP for the Labour Party and unions - was over the weekend pushing a BBC report of a 'counter-extremism' conference' held in Slough.

The conference was run by a Mr Zafar Ali, the chairman of the board of governors of the Iqra Primary School.

 

Mr Zafar Ali - victim of
Labour Party racism

We doubt whether Mr Ali appreciates being used as propaganda fodder by a Labour-front organisation like Hope not Hate as he had formerly been a victim of racism in the Labour Party, and successfully sued the party all the way to the court of appeal over its persecution of him and 4 other local Slough members.  In 1998, he along with 4 other men including 2 councillors were suspended from the local Labour Party for what was euphemistically described as 'membership irregularities'. Behind the scenes briefings expanded this to make accusations of bribery and corruption against Mr Ali. Despite these allegedly criminal activities, nothing was reported to the police by the Labour Party, and suggestions persist that the dispute was designed to ensure Labour got its preferred candidates to the top of the European elections list for the London Region.

Bad feeling unsurprisingly continued to persist between Mr Ali and the local Labour Party and in 2009 local Labour MP Fiona McTaggart was barred from visiting Iqra school unless she first apologised for criticisms of the Slough Islamic School Project made in 2006. Despite her unfounded criticisms, the Government later awarded around £8m to run the school in Grasmere Parade, Slough.

There is a double embarrassment for Hope not Hate however. Nick Lowles toured the TV studios in 2008 speaking about the leaked BNP membership list and persecuting people on it - many of them mistakenly -  while making sure that everybody who heard him was left in no doubt about where to find it on the internet so they could join in the persecution. Mr Ali, at the time chairman of the Slough Race Equality Council - was giving an interview to the 'Slough Express' newspaper on the same subject. In his measured response which showed considerably more appreciation for democracy than Lowles' had, Mr Ali said,

"I don’t support the leaking of personal data of this nature and irrespective of what party you believe in, you have the right to confidentiality... We would deplore any action of intimidation or violence against any BNP members.”

As Hope not Hate's actions seem designed to do precisely that, it would appear that Hope not Hate represent exactly the sort of extremism against which Mr Ali is directing his efforts. We wish Mr Ali well in his endeavours and hope that the Labour Party has now ceased to persecute him because of his race.



 

 

 

Senior Labour Party figures Miliband and Ummuna closely associated to man with links to 'Britain First'

A 'Mr Robinson', happily posing with
Britian First candidate

Senior figures within the Labour Party including leader Ed Miliband and shadow Business Secretary Chukka Ummuna had been repeatedly photographed engaged in earnest discussion with a man known to associate with far-right group 'Britain First'.

Left wing commentators and campaign groups showed their outrage by not saying anything, and threatened to protest at such outrageous behaviour by not highlighting it in any way and by not flagging up the connection on their blogs at all.

Labour shadow business secretary clearly
associating openly with 'Mr Robinson'
despite his far-right links

Neither Miliband nor Ummuna had any comment to make on photographic evidence that they had repeatedly been seen in public with a Mr Nick Robinson, the political editor of the BBC, despite recent photographic evidence that he was in a 'selfie' photograph with the deputy leader of Britain First and their candidate in the Rochester and Strood by-election Jayda Fransen.

Mr Robinson, 51, of North London, has a long history of talking to people involved with politics, and has previously spoken to Nick Griffin, former leader of the BNP.

Self-appointed 'anti-fascist' leader of Hope not Hate Nick Lowles has remained strangely silent on the subject, despite earlier tweets during the by-election campaign demanding to know "Why are UKIP campaigners having photograph taken with Britain First candidate in Rochester today?" after Fransen 'ambushed' them for a picture. At the time, Lowles

Labour leader Milliband and Robinson

rubbished claims that they did not know who Fransen was, and said it was 'clear proof of a link between UKIP and Britain First'.

We asked Hope not Hate whether Robinson's photograph was clear proof of a link between the Labour leadership, the BBC and Britain First based on exactly the same logic, but their press officer put the phone down without responding. We also e-mailed the question to Mr Lowles, but on attempting to e-mail again 12 hours later after he had failed to respond, discovered that they had blocked our e-mail address. We were going to contact both the BBC and the Labour Party with the same question, but then remembered that we weren't Nick Lowles, and that drawing conclusions based upon photographs taken out of context was absurd, stupid and the sort of puerile childish behaviour one expects from an anti-UKIP organisation.

Hope not Hate's '85%' campaign runs into some factual difficulties

Hope not Hate's 85% campaign appears to have run into some difficulties, most of them factual. To make up for this, we've created our own '16%' campaign to highlight the share of the vote Labour gained in Rochester and Strood. See if you can spot which one is ours below.

 

Labour MP photographed with known NF activist in her constituency

 

UKIP MP pictured with stranger

 The top picture of course shows Labour MP Dame Anne Begg photographed with her local Scottish NF activist during the recent referendum campaign. She knew who he was. The bottom picture shows UKIP MP Mark Reckless photographed with a stranger who came into the constituency office and who was unknown to him. Even HnH don't name her. Somehow this makes him racist in a way that Dame Anne Begg isn't.

As UKIP poll 42.1% in Rochester, HnH are with the 85% who didn't vote UKIP

After UKIP polled 42.1%,
HnH are with the 85% who didn't

Can you hear that sound? Yes, that's right. It's the bottom of the barrel being scraped by Hope not Hate, who are reduced to releasing ever more tortured internet memes as they desperately try and save Labour's vote share from UKIP's advance.
Their latest piece of brilliance is pictured (right). It urges their supporters, the morning that UKIP polled 42.1% in the Rochester by-election, to say they're 'with the 85%' who didn't vote UKIP. Even their own supporters are having some difficulty with the rather convoluted logic, although the basic mathematical failure does go some way towards explaining how Labour managed to flush our country's economy down the toilet. Labour is after all run by the same sort of posh college kids who run Hope not Hate.

HnH's own supporters are mystified by
their latest attempt at a viral meme

To explain their point - as Hope not Hate have been forced to do several times on their own comment thread - the idea is that UKIP poll only 15% in national opinion polls (a figure which itself is arguable), and therefore there are 85% who do not support UKIP. With Labour polling just 16.76% last night, it could be argued that they have that the wrong way around. although in fairness if you add in the votes polled by the Patriotic Socialist Party in Rochester that figure soars to 16.84%. Perhaps HnH meant that they are with the 15%, but the left polled more than they expected? If you add in the Lib Dem's vote share, the left polled the stratospheric total of 17.71%. In a seat Labour held until 2010. We can only wonder what planet Nick Lowles and his team of Labour sycophants inhabit and who they are trying to kid with their Stalinist propaganda: can they really think that anyone believes the stuff they are putting out?


Nick Lowles seeks strategy
options to counter UKIP

We are sure though that Hope not Hate are sitting down to a traditional English breakfast of pains au chocolate and croissants with their long term adviser and supporter Emily Thornberry, former shadow cabinet member until she was sacked last night for showing how sneering Labour are about the working class nowadays. Perhaps she can share some strategy tips for winning back the working class vote through Twitter? Poor Emily, or to give her her full name, Emily Anne Thornberry, Lady Nugee. As MP for Islington South and Finsbury - and as someone who lives in a £3m house - we're sure she doesn't visit many housing estates, and quite understand why a house covered in England flags might mystify her.

Comedy death threats from Lowles friend Ian Austin MP?

Today's Wolverhampton Express and Star carries the story "Death threat claim by Labour MP Ian Austin over challenge to UKIP's NHS policy".

In it, Mr Austin makes a number of outlandish, not to mention unsupported, claims that he was sent an anonymous death threat after criticising comments by UKIP leader Nigel Farage regarding

So terrified, he hasn't reported it to the police. Austin has form with HnH
director Nick Lowles, and there are few depths to which he wouldn't stoop.

privatisation of the NHS. Mr Austin, who is currently running a campaign to save Dudley Police Station from a program of cuts which the Labour Party is responsible for, makes no mention of his intention to report this death threat to the police, and in fact offers no evidence for its existence beyond his own tweet. Even the local newspapers hedges its bets on this one by saying he claimed it rather than that it had seen it. We presume that had it existed it would have been sent immediately to the local newspaper. The problem with doing so, we assume, is that had he done so then the police would have investigated.

UKIP Cllr Dean Perks, a previous
victim of Austin's ethics

We are currently seeing a huge number of comments and messages posted across social media and on news websites which purport to come from UKIP members. This follows on from the claims made by a Labour campaign team that their stall was overturned by 'UKIP thugs': it is worth noting that the claims that they identified themselves as UKIP was missing from the first reports of the story.

Of course, any fool can set up an account and pretend to be a UKIP supporter, voter or member. Increasingly, we are seeing these picked up as evidence of UKIP racism/sexism/homophobia/extremism etc, particularly by people like Ian Austin. How convenient! Of course, all parties have their idiots: this is not true of UKIP alone. Even as you read this, there is a village somewhere lamenting the loss of Mr Austin. There are several truths we should remember about him particularly.

Mr Austin is a friend of HnH director Nick Lowles. To quote Lowles, "Ian is a long-time friend of Searchlight, and by that I mean since he was in his mid-teens, but today he is more helpful advising us on a media strategy". What better media strategy than to use his position to lend spurious credibility to internet nonsense than by publicising dubious threats from Labour Party sockpuppet accounts?

Mr Austin also has form on the anti-UKIP front: we covered earlier this year his role in a widely publicised story regarding local UKIP chairman and councillor Dean Perks - Did Labour MP release confidential constituency mail to damage UKIP candidate in Dudley?.

Ian Austin MP. Somewhere in England, a village has lost
its idiot and is desperately searching for him.

One thing we can be quite certain of. There is a campaign underway to create false accounts of
imaginary UKIP-supporting people and to then use those accounts to blacken UKIPs name. Austin, who by Nick Lowles own admission used to hang around NF demonstrations - "Ian is a long-time friend of Searchlight, and by that I mean since he was in his mid-teens, but today he is more helpful advising us on a media strategy than hanging round National Front demonstrations gathering intelligence" - is no stranger to underhand methods and outright dishonesty. His claims should be read in that light.

On the wider point of false UKIP accounts on social media and elsewhere, we can all play a part in minimising their effect by following a few simple guidelines:

1. Be careful who you accept as a friend on Facebook. If it is brand new account with nothing but UKIP related friends, be wary of accepting any requests
2. Be careful what you say on social media. Labour and their puppets at Hope not Hate have teams of people who do nothing but trawl comments looking for something they can use against us. Bear this in mind when commenting.
3. Remember that even innocuous comments and jokes can be used against us when taken out of context.
4. Do not get suckered into arguments by trolls - they are trying to make you lose your temper and type something in the heat of the moment which you will later regret.
5. Warn your friends if you are concerned about an account, or if they say something which goes beyond the pale.

Most importantly, remember that there are no depths to which either Labour or the Tories would not stoop in order to maintain their hold on power. Councillors, MPs, MEPs - these all represent considerable influence and millions of pounds worth of financing to the people and parties which control them. We are engaged in a high stakes game against entrenched interests at the highest levels of the establishment. UKIPs 'People's Army' can win, but only if we keep our eye on the ball at all times.

How to find out if your Facebook 'friends' are hard left supporters

We've seen several postings recently which tell Facebook members how to find out if their friends 'like' what is described as the far right, most recently in this morning's 'Metro' newspaper. But how can you tell if your Facebook friends burn literature, physically attack people for their views and violently disrupt political meetings they don't agree with?

To help our supporters, you can use the links below to find out if you have anyone on your friends list who supports Hope not Hate, Unite Against Fascism, AntiFa or the Labour Party.

To find friends who like Hope not Hate -
https://www.facebook.com/browse/friended_fans_of/?page_id=91897231853

To find friends who like UAF -
https://www.facebook.com/browse/friended_fans_of/?page_id=101124430813

***UPDATED***
To find friends who like the increasingly SWP linked Watermelons of the Green Party -
https://www.facebook.com/browse/friended_fans_of/?page_id=20995300784

To find friends who like AntiFa -
https://www.facebook.com/browse/friended_fans_of/?page_id=37315363535

To find friends who like the Socialist Workers Party -
https://www.facebook.com/browse/friended_fans_of/?page_id=132633832928

To find friends who like 'Radical Independence Campaign', the Scottish soap-dodgers -
https://www.facebook.com/browse/friended_fans_of/?page_id=566948540013005

To find friends who like 'Left Unity' -
https://www.facebook.com/browse/friended_fans_of/?page_id=327424650740809

To find friends who like the Labour Party -
https://www.facebook.com/browse/friended_fans_of/?page_id=25749647410

To find friends who hate music and like the band 'One Direction' -
https://www.facebook.com/browse/friended_fans_of/?page_id=121930497861753

We think that just about covers the most tiresome of the fascist, anti-free speech, pro-intolerance groups. If we've missed any off, please let us know and we'll add them to the list.

If you want to know who supports far-right groups, they links are:

To find friends who like Britain First -
https://www.facebook.com/browse/friended_fans_of/?page_id=300455573433044

To find friends who like the BNP -
https://www.facebook.com/browse/friended_fans_of/?page_id=173163939435977

To find friends who like the EDL -
https://www.facebook.com/browse/friended_fans_of/?page_id=238696516197018

Jasna Badzak on the warpath again with Tory help (but let's pretend it's not official help)

Observers of UKIP goings-on will have noticed recently that convicted fraudster and forger Jasna Badzak's psychotic ramblings have been given an extra push by the nostril fuelled Louise Mensch, who has been re-tweeting Badzak like there is no tomorrow.

Having abandoned her constituents in Corby for the high life in New York, former Tory MP Mensch now appears preoccupied with attempting to tie Mark Reckless to the nonsense peddled by assorted conspiracy theorists. Top of the list of these is Ms Badzak, who is determined to push the line that Gerard Batten, UKIP MEP for London, is so powerful that he engineered her conviction for stealing over £3k off of him and then forging her bank statement to cover it up by organising a conspiracy which involved the judiciary, her bank, the Metropolitan Police and god knows who else.

Ms Badzak meanwhile has most recently had her collar felt once again by London's finest when she was arrested and charged last Tuesday for her continued harassment of Mr Batten. Yet another criminal conviction will shortly appear on her record over this when it comes to court.

Ms Badzak has a history of making wild allegations. She left the Tory party some years ago making much the same complaints she now directs against UKIP, although as the Tories have found a means of publicising her nonsense without having their fingerprints directly on it, that is all forgotten for now. In case anybody had forgotten just how barking mad she is, we repost below a blog posting about her long term criminal activities:

HnH push story from convicted fraudster with links to Russian mafia in desperation to halt the rise of UKIP

Desperation strikes at both the Times and Hope not Hate today as they publish an article based on allegations made by Jasna Badzak, a former Tory candidate who briefly worked for UKIP before being arrested and convicted of fraud and forgery after stealing £3000 from UKIP MEP Gerard Batten. Following her conviction, Batten bankrupted her, although despite this she remains listed as the director of several companies with Companies House.

Since her conviction, Badzak has clearly gone off the deep end, with constant tweets and e-mails about UKIP including allegations that the Metropolitan Police are colluding with UKIP and Boris Johnson (yes, I know...) to 'hush up' her mad ravings.

This is not of course the first time that Hope not Hate have used the ravings of those who clearly suffer from a mental illness in their campaign, and there is a touch of irony in that Hope not Hate themselves are being investigated for VAT fraud while Badzak is under investigation for benefits fraud, offences under the Companies Act, and further acts of forgery including allegedly the letter which is the basis of the Times article.

The best expose we have read of her madness, not to mention her criminality, is contained in a blog post by Mark Croucher, former UKIP Director of Communications and now a freelance journalist. In it, he examines Badzak's links with the Russian mob and her long running 'Finance Central Europe' scam which netted her thousands of pounds while simultaneously claiming benefits in the UK. The original article can be found at http://itmaynotbeillegalbut.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/does-serbian-fraudster-have-links-to.html, but we repost the text in full here with the author's permission, for which we thank him!

Friday, November 8, 2013

Does Serbian fraudster have links to Russian mob? - a look at Jasna Badzak

A Serbian immigrant from Bosnia who was convicted last month of perpetrating a fraud on UKIP MEP Gerard Batten has a long history of fraud, it was revealed today.

42 year old Jasna Badzak of Harrow Road, Kilburn, West London plead not guilty to charges of forgery and fraud but was found guilty by the jury at her trial at Southwark Crown Court last month. She had doctored bank statements to show she had not received her wages, but records showed that after Mr Batten paid her from his own pocket she went on a shopping trip to Harrods. When Mr Batten attempted to recover the money, she launched a series of Employment Tribunal cases against him, all of which were dismissed. She received a 12 months suspended sentence and a 4 month curfew order for these offences, while the judge in the case, Michael Gledhill QC, said that if it were not for her son, she would have received an immediate prison term.

Jasna Badzak - also known as Maya Braun -
after her conviction for fraud and forgery

Things may have gone harder for Badzak had the judge been aware of the full extent of her dishonesty which dated back to shortly after her arrival in the UK as a refugee from Mostar in the early 90's.

Despite her CV claiming she was a 'high level business analyst' for the Economist Group, the Economist confirmed that they had no record of an employee or a subcontractor of that name. She did at one stage sell advertising space in European Voice magazine for an advertising sales company - KP Sales Ltd - but that is a far cry from the 'consultancy and business development' role she awarded herself. She also claimed to have "taken sole charge of European Voice and ensured it’s (sic) survival’.

The real frauds begin around the turn of the millennium, however. At that time, she emerged as managing director of a company called 'Finance Central Europe', which she claimed to have bought off the Economist when it 'consolidated or spun off some of it's operations'. The Economist has never had a publication by that name, although it did have a similarly named one which it remained the owners of.

Finance Central Europe presented itself as a magazine which specialised in the subjects which one might expect given its title. There is just one problem - nobody has ever seen a copy of the magazine, which operated from a maildrop operated by Citibox Ltd in Central London and which was registered at Badzak's home address. Her and her husband, Dragomir Mikulic, were the sole directors, while it's website (now removed) was a simple text affair with no content.

So what did Finance Central Europe do? It appears to have been in the business of selling non-existent business awards to companies - some unsuspecting, some involved in organised crime - across Eastern Europe. Badzak, occasionally using the alias Maya Braun, would contact companies in Central Europe offering them research packages costing between £ 485 and £ 5250. As revealed in an article in Montenegran newspaper 'The Monitor', they offered a ranking service for banks - the difference with their service was that only banks which paid for their 'research' - a collation of publicly available figures - would be ranked. The 'Monitor' article followed an earlier expose in a Bosnian newspaper - 'Independent' - based in Banja Luka which precipitated the threat of a lawsuit against them for £1m each. While the lawsuit never materialised, the lawyer 'hired' by Finance Central Europe proved to be Badzak's father-in-law according to Boris Djurik, the paper's foreign correspondent. 'Independent' responded by re-publishing the article, along with a selection of comments from its readers. The comments included claims that Badzak and her mother were defrauding the British social security system and that that fraud was continuing.

When it came to issuing the awards, simply buying the research packages weren't enough. There were further fees to be entered into consideration, a premium level report had to be commissioned, and then there was a formal entry fee for judging. The awards issued reflected how much had been paid, and could cost in excess of £20,000 per award per year.

Now, some of the banks which effectively purchased their awards from Badzak were reputable companies simply unfamiliar with doing business in Western Europe and who thought that publicising such awards would show their increasing strength. Others, however, had rather less reputable motives.

Universal Bank of Moldova began buying FCE awards as far back as 1998 and continued to do so through 2007, according to their website which is currently under re-construction. Universal Bank is quite interesting, as it was at one stage owned by Russian banker German Geruntsov. Geruntsov was gunned down in the street outside his London home in 2012, supposedly by a Serbian hitman. Geruntsov himself was a suspect in the assassination of Russian state Duma deputy Ruslan Amadayev, who was investigating corruption on a massive scale by companies owned by Geruntsov and his business partner, Alexander Antonov. After Geruntosov fell out with Antonov, the latter and his son were also assassinated. Universal Bank of Moldova (Best bank in Moldova, Finance Central Europe Awards 2006) is suspected of holding over £1.5bn embezzled from the Russian railway network on behalf of the Russian mafia.

This is not all. When you look at other banks which have won Finance Central Europe awards, a surprisingly high percentage are under investigation or have been closed down for links with either Serbian organised crime or the Russian mafia. What Badzak's awards managed to achieve was to lend the banks a spurious credibility and plausibility by making them appear as if they had won awards from a company linked to the Economist magazine of London. Even worse, gullible but apparently honest banks such as DSK Bank of Bulgaria continue to tout such awards in the mistaken belief that they have won honestly - DSK was awarded 'bank of the decade, 2000-2010' by FCE.

The fraud appears to have not just been limited to banks, however. At various times, non-financial companies also received awards from Finance Central Europe, including Serbian Railways and the Sarajevo Brewery.

So, how much has Badzak made from her fraudulent activities? It is difficult to say, as Finance Central Europe Ltd was struck off the register in 2004, and in any case never filed any accounts. Despite this, it continued to trade as a UK limited company until early last year, and may still be doing so. I have found evidence of at least 130 awards on the internet over the past few years, although several of these have now disappeared - either the awards have been removed from webpages, or the company websites have disappeared completely. A not unreasonable estimate of her income from these scams would be in the region of £100,000 per year, and all the while she was also allegedly claiming benefits in the UK as a refugee - she later became a naturalised British citizen.

Is this all? Apparently not. According to the Monitor, there is a link between Badzak’s ‘magazine’ and another rating company, this one called Global Ratings Ltd. Global Ratings Ltd is, as the article suggests, another company scamming businesses in the Balkans. Like Finance Central Europe Ltd, it was also struck off the register in 2004, although it’s ownership was more convoluted than Badzaks company. Shareholders in Global Ratings Ltd were two companies – Financial Results LLC of 1072 Folsom Street, San Francisco, Ca – the address is a maildrop – and Star Premier Corporation, PO Box 3321, Road Town, Tortola, British Virgin Islands – another maildrop. Registered directors were Frank and Ellen McGlinn of 6, Divert Road, Gourock, Renfrewshire, Scotland. At the time of writing, Frank McGlinn is the director of 5 companies, and is listed as having been a director of 7 others which have been struck off the register, including Global Rating Ltd. The awards made by this company followed a similar pattern, although also caught a number of unsuspecting companies. How? It invited their directors to gala award dinners in London to collect their awards, and then afterwards presented them with a bill for the dinner and accommodation of over £5,000 each: rather expensive rubber chicken. This scam stretched outside the Balkans and their immediate surroundings, gathering victims in the Ukraine, Uzbhekistan and as far afield as India. My investigations into the precise form of the link between Badzak and McGlinn are continuing.

The question must be will Badzak ever be prosecuted for any of this? Clearly the benefit fraud - which has been reported - is the most likely, although with Finance Central Europe's bank account presumably being held offshore, and with the limited company struck off long before the fraud finished - assuming it is not still being perpetrated - it is difficult to know who exactly will investigate and/or prosecute. As for Badzak's links with organised crime, who knows? Was she a useful tool to make mafia and organised crime controlled banks appear respectable, or was she a willing part of the scheme to make them so? Either way, a 12 month suspended sentence seems like a stroll in the park compared to her crimes.