Last night, Panorama did the nation a great service by firing a blazing broadside at the tax cheat, Michael Ashcroft, whose business activities in the Turks and Caicos Islands are again under scrutiny.

The programme alleges the billionaire Conservative peer had an interest in the construction company, Johnston International, long after claiming he had had “no economic, beneficial or legal interest in the Johnston Group since 1999” when he sold the company.

Panorama blew that out of the water, providing documentary evidence of a clear and close connection between Ashcroft and Johnston International’s Chief Executive, Allan Forrest.

Johnston International built a lavish $16 million mansion for Michael Misick, the former Prime Minister of TCI, who is currently under investigation for corruption. His worldwide assets were frozen last June. But he has not, as yet, been charged.

In 2004, Misick borrowed $4,7290,000 from Coral Square Ltd, apparently an Ashcroft entity, and a further $5m in 2007 from the British Caribbean Bank, run by Andrew Ashcroft, the peer’s son.

In the libel case brought by Ashcroft against the Independent in 2011 (see attached), Mr Justice Eady told the newspaper, in effect, to put up or shut up.

The Judge tells the Independent they must “come off the fence and decide exactly what the charge against Ashcroft is.”

If the Independent is able to advance a properly pleaded case against Michael Ashcroft, to the effect that he did personally attempt to buy influence through authorising the $5m loan and/or the funding of Mr Misick’s mansion and his “lavish lifestyle”, and so on, then the Independent should be able to plead that Ashcroft’s denials of the relevant misconduct were dishonest.

Panorama has given the Independent a stack of ammunition.

How does Ashcroft explain away the relationship he had with Allan Forrest, the Chief Executive of Johnston International? Why was Forrest getting a $300,000 bonus from Ashcroft?

What does the tax cheat have to say about the revelation that he, Ashcroft, controlled Johnston International’s parent company?

The links between the companies he owns or controls are impenetrably complex. A cat’s cradle designed to conceal and obscure.

It is time for transparency.

Ashcroft is not a private citizen. He has a formal position, appointed by the Prime Minister to review the UK’s military presence in Cyprus. And he has used the platform of Parliament to ask how many UK overseas aid projects have been stopped because of corruption.

This time, I doubt the litigious Ashcroft will sue the BBC.

A string of TCI politicians are due in Court on Friday, 3 February to face charges of corruption.

Fred Goodwin

At long last, Fred Goodwin loses his knighthood “for services to banking”.

But he still has the comfort of knowing his turbo charged pension of £342,500 a year continues for life.

The Labour Government should have acted decisively but it fumbled the ball.

Years ago, when I pressed Broon to strip Goodwin of his gong, Broon came up with this opaque one liner:

"The authority to grant and cancel honours is contained in the statutes of the various orders of chivalry."

It was an answer designed to close down any further comment.

By contrast, Cameron realised that stripping Goodwin of his knighthood had no downside.

He seized on the FSA report on the collapse of RBS which damned Goodwin’s stewardship of a great Scottish institution.

This was the authoritative account the mandarins on the Forfeiture Committee said they needed to make Sir Fred just Fred again.

That, and a steer from the Prime Minister.

Attachments:

Ashcroft_v_Independent_(1.7.11)_(Approved).pdf

[Ashcroft V Independent 2011]

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