Green Party
Councillor, Ian Driver, is calling for an independent public enquiry into an
“unrecoverable” debt of £3.4 million owed to Thanet Council by TransEuropa
Ferries.
The debt,
which is almost 20% of Thanet Council’s annual budget, results from a secret
fees and charges deferral arrangement
between the Council and TransEuropa Ferries, which came to light in April of
this year when the ferry company went bust owing more than £20 million to
Ostend and Ramsgate ports, fuel supplier Oil Chart International, and several
other creditors.
Earlier this
week it was revealed in letter from the Information Commissioner, who is adjudicating
on Driver’s request to see all of the secret documents relating to TransEuropa deal, that Thanet Council “will not be pursuing legal action to recover
the outstanding debt”.
Said Driver “this
astronomic loss of public money will ultimately have to be paid for by the
people of Thanet through cuts in services and perhaps even Council Tax
increases”.
Driver places
the blame for the £3.4 loss on the shoulders of senior officers and the
Council’s political leadership. He said “From what I have found out the arrangements with TransEuropa appear to
have been appallingly mismanaged by senior officers. There was no formal legal agreement with TransEuropa
covering the payment deferral; there were no regular reviews or risk
assessments of the arrangement; TransEuropa’s claims about new investors were
not properly investigated and the Council failed to seek security on the
growing debt mountain which meant that it has been unable to share in the
proceeds of the creditor-forced-sale of the Gardenia and Larkspur ferries which
is estimated to raise euros £1.5 million”.
“Worse still,
the deal with TransEuropa was a closely
guarded secret restricted to a small group of
senior council officers and political bosses including ex-Tory Leader of
the Council Bob Bayford, the current
Labour Leader Clive Hart and Cabinet finance chief Councillor Rick Everitt. This secrecy meant that other elected
councillors were prevented from scrutinizing and asking questions about the
deal. This was an extremely serious subversion of democratic accountability.”
“This
appalling mismanagement and secrecy goes right to the top of Thanet Council. No
amount of internal reviews or working groups will get to the bottom of what
went wrong, because powerful people will be desperately trying to cover their
backsides. What we need is an independent
public enquiry into how the Council lost £3.4 million of taxpayer’s
money. This enquiry should name and shame those responsible and hopefully they
will do they honourable thing and resign”
Driver, who
has been fighting for the release of secret documents about the TransEuropa
deal, for 6 months has been advised by the Information Commissioner that they
will be made available to him in December. The Council’s Auditor, who is
investigating complaints submitted by Driver about the TransEuropa fee deferral
agreement, has also said that he will be reporting back his findings in
December. Two days ago Driver was prevented from filming and broadcasting a meeting of a Thanet Council internal review
group looking into the TransEuropa debt because of what he claims is a “growing
paranoia about public exposure of the secrecy and mismanagement surrounding
this sordid affair”.
One of the
senior council officers involved in the TransEuropa affair, Head of Regulatory
Services Harvey Patterson, is widely rumoured to be leaving Thanet Council in the New
Year with what several commentators have said might be a so-called gagging deal
which , if true, would prevent him from speaking
about his role in setting up and supervising the TransEuropa arrangements. Said Driver, “I sincerely hope
this rumour is untrue. It would be highly inappropriate for the Council’s Chief
Executive to allow public money to be used to silence a key player in the
TransEuropa scandal, especially if there were to be a independent enquiry”.
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