no end to the Thatchers’ corruption

no end to the Thatchers’ corruption


Mark Thatcher (L), Margaret Thatcher (R)

Fri Apr 26, 2013 12:6PM

While
former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was given a final
farewell last week, there are still many who speak the name of one
particularly notorious member of Thatcher’s family in hushed tones. But
who is this family member and how did he trade on Margaret Thatcher’s
name?


Mark Thatcher, born in 1953, is the son of Margaret and Dennis
Thatcher, and the twin brother of Carol Thatcher. Mark’s embarrassments
to his mother started shortly after she became the country’s PM in the
1979 general election.


According to the Times of London, Mark pocketed an $18
million commission in relation to the £45 billion Al-Yamamah arms deal
in 1985, a controversial arms sale by British arms producer BAE systems
to Saudi Arabia.


Moreover, Mark Thatcher had been secretly paid commission by
construction firm Cementation, for an Oman contract which his mother had
lobbied for. According to the reports, he received a huge commission
despite confidential warnings to Whitehall from the then ambassador to
Oman, Ivor Lucas.


The Guardian newspaper said once that Mark Thatcher has made
a career of "ruthlessly exploiting his famous surname and access to
power... to set him on the road to riches.” The British paper described
the former PM’s son as a “wheeler-dealer”.


For all the money Mark Thatcher traded on his mother’s political
influence, and more importantly for weakening Thatcher’s position in the
office, Sir Bernard Ingham, the then PM's press secretary, suggested
Mark to leave the country prior to the 1987 general election.


So in the mid 1980s, Mark Thatcher moved to Dallas, Texas, where he
was prosecuted for financial scandals, including tax evasion, later in
1996.


Mark Thatcher's use of his position as the Prime Minister's son was made clearer after The Guardian disclosed he got the British taxpayer to pay for 24-hour British bodyguards and unprecedented security at his home in the US.


According to the paper, Margaret authorized the unprecedented use of
British taxpayers' money to fortify Mark's luxurious home in Texas. She
also authorized the home secretary to conceal from MPs the £117,000
cost of his special branch bodyguards while in Britain.


So following the financial scandals in the US, Mark Thatcher moved
to Cape Town, South Africa. It was then in 1998, when Margaret and
Denis' son was involved in another scandal involving loan sharking in
the country. According to the reports, Thatcher’s loan shark company
offered unofficial loans to hundreds of police officers, military
personnel and civil servants.


Mark Thatcher’s illegal activities, however, were not limited to
illegal commissions and tax avoidance. When in South Africa, he pleaded
guilty in relation to 2004 Equatorial Guinea coup d'état attempt
organized by his friend, Simon Mann.


The charges were related to "possible funding and logistical
assistance” in relation to the attempted coup, aimed at toppling
President Obiang. Thatcher was then fined 3,000,000 South African
rand(£215000), and received a four-year suspended jail sentence.


“[Thatcher] was not just an investor; he came completely on board
and became a part of the management team" of the coup plot, said Mann
during Mark’s trial in 2008.


It was right after this incident when Mark Thatcher, known in his
homeland as a “mum’s boy”, was questioned by the government authorities
on whether he should be stripped of his inherited “baronet” title.


Mark Thatcher inherited his father Denis Thatcher’s hereditary
baronetcy title in 2003. The Baronetage was created for Denis Thatcher
by the British Queen when his wife Margaret Thatcher resigned as the
British Prime Minister in 1990.


Mark Thatcher attended her mother’s funeral service at St. Paul's
Cathedral on April 17, where hundreds of Britons turned their backs on
Margaret Thatcher’s coffin as a sign of anger against her policies,
which they believe has wrecked British working class in the 1980’s and
after.

Source:-
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/04/26/300345/mark-thatcher-a-corrupt-baronet/