Showing posts with label Sandy Ezekiel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sandy Ezekiel. Show all posts

Saturday, 2 March 2013

The Sandy Ezekiel fraud verdict and sentence initial thoughts.

 The key here is that the ex leader of Thanet District Council and the ex Conservative group leader has been found guilty of fraud and his co-defendant found guilty for aiding and abetting fraud.

The Gazette’s lead article says there will be further investigations by the police, see http://www.thisiskent.co.uk/net-widens-Thanet-wake-Ezekiel-trial/story-18287724-detail/story.html#axzz2MIC7nb7n I take this to mean that we can expect the exposure of more fraud within the council. 
 Personally I don’t think the sentence is appropriate, I don’t want to have to contribute towards the fifty grand cost of locking him up when he doesn’t present a physical threat to members of society.

I would much rather see him pay a substantial fine, and this money invested in local projects, say here in Ramsgate something to redress economic decline caused by all main council owned properties becoming derelict. Obviously I would add to this I wouldn’t want him to hold public office of any sort ever again, but would think this is a forgone conclusion. 
 In the past enquires to councillors about why this and that had happened that seemed detrimental to Thanet, produced answers varying from council incompetence to spite from a Conservative administration to a town with predominantly Labour councillors. Now we have to consider the possibility that there may have also been some aspect of fraud, where members gained financially from this state of affairs.

This post is a bit of a work in progress, partly because unlike others I was surprised by both the verdict and the sentence and partly because my bookshop is very busy today. The illustrations come from a book published in 1828 by W H Ireland. Ireland is most famous for producing fake Shakespeares of his own authorship. More book details at http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/kent_s_topographer__a_new___complete_history_of_the_isle_of_thanet_from_the_earl.htm

One aspect of this is how to deal with existing problems and council liabilities relating to the period where our council was run by someone who we now know was a criminal.

I will use Pleasurama as an example here, only because it is the local issue that I am most familiar with, over the years of dealing with this issue there have been times where decisions seemed to defy common sense.

The most notable one under Cllr Ezekiel’s leadership was the 2009 cabinet decision to continue with SFP as a developer, this was made against officer advice and took the council from a position of having little or no liability in terms of litigation from SFP to the situation where officers now say that there is a very real risk of SFP suing the council for millions if they try to pull out.

I have considerable correspondence with various officers and councillors relating to this decision, but no real answer as to why they went ahead when the secret documents look dubious.    







The pictures below relate to a comment






Saturday, 14 July 2012

Sandy Ezekiel to be tried by high court judge.


Councillor Ezekiel former leader of Thanet District Council appeared at Maidstone Crown Court with his friend Philip Emanuel yesterday.

They pleaded not guilty to the charges, which allege:

"occupying a position as a public official, in which he was expected to safeguard or not act against the financial interests of Thanet District Council, dishonestly abused that position intending to make a gain or cause a loss to another, and by using council staff to enforce Town and Country planning legislation against 12a and 12b King Street, Margate, which led the owner to sell it in breach of section 4 of the Fraud Act 2006".

"while acting as a public officer, namely a local councillor, wilfully misconducted himself by improperly using privileged Thanet District Council information in relation to the sale of 12b King Street, Margate, and by directing enforcement procedure by council staff on 12a King Street, which led the owner to sell it to you".

12B King Street was a Grade II-listed council owned building in Margate.

The Judge Philip Statman said it the as it was a high profile case it would be tried by a High Court judge on February 18 2013.

I have added a table of councillors allowances for clarity because of the comments relating to this post, I hope i used the figures for the right year.


Position
 No.
Allowance 
Possible maximum expenditure 
Basic Allowance 
56
£4,360
£244,160
Leader
1
£18,082
£18,082
Deputy Leader
1
£10,776
£10,776
Cabinet Portfolio Holder
3
£7,990
£23,970
Chairman of Council
1
£2,188
£2,188
Vice Chairman of Council
1
£1,530
£1,530
Opposition Group Leader
1
£5,204
£5,204
Opposition Deputy Group Leader
1
£2,304
£2,304
Shadow Cabinet
3
£2,304
£6,912
Overview and Scrutiny Committee Chairman
1
£7,990
£7,990
Overview and Scrutiny Committee Vice-Chairman
2
£1,608
£3,216
Planning Committee Chairman
1
£5,204
£5,204
Planning Committee Vice-Chairman
1
£1,216
£1,216
Licensing Committee Chairman
1
£3,216
£3,216
Licensing Committee vice chairman
1
£805
£805
Governance and Audit Committee - Chairman
1
£5,204
£5,204
Governance and Audit Committee vice chairman 
1
£1,216
£1,216
Standards Committee - Chairman
1
£1,216
£1,216
Standards Committee – Vice-Chairman
1
£279
£279
Standards Committee – other Independent Member
2
£139
£278
JTB Chairman
1
£1,216
£1,216
TOTAL



excluding basic


£102,022

Monday, 17 November 2008

Mail it to your leader

I have had one successful outcome from my questions to the council that is Sandy Ezekiel’s email address leader@thanet.gov.uk is to be reinstated.

It’s a bit of a strange reflection on the way that the council operates that I could get it reinstated and he couldn’t, as it was the email address that he used for his official correspondence it must have been a considerable inconvenience to have it deleted.

I have also received a response to my enquiries about the Sericol leak click here to read, as it doesn’t concur exactly with the information given to me by the experts I consulted, I will have to get back to them and also may have to get more information from the council. Once I have done this I will be able to produce an informed posting about it, in the meantime click here to read the response.

Sunday, 26 October 2008

Sunday morning reflections




It’s two weeks since I wrote the last one of these, just after the China Gateway plans were approved, if the approval was intended to support the company behind it, property speculator Commercial Group properties Plc it doesn’t appear to have worked their shares are still at 42p i.e. where they were before the approval.

Then there were the Rick Card revelations, I don’t think anyone had given much credence to what he has been saying, mainly I think because of the way he had been saying it. Another one of his assertions has been confirmed to me by someone totally independent from Rick. It concerns firearms something I know next to nothing about so I won’t post about it, I shall only say that the person who confirmed it will now take the matter forward.

However I now come to a matter I do know something about, and that is the electrical generators, I emailed Rick and asked him what was the matter with them explaining that I could possibly understand a technical answer, I got a precise technical answer that could only have come from a very competent engineer.

The accident at Chernobyl nuclear power station was caused by the failure of an emergency backup generator and Rick is saying that we may have some of these faulty generators in some of our nuclear power stations.

Another matter of some note in the last couple of weeks was that of deleting Sandy Ezekiel’s main email address leader@thanet.gov.uk now regardless of how you feel about the current leader of the council, he is still that. The main representative of us, the electorate and to make a fool of him in this way sends out a very clear message about what the council officers think of us. Also it means if you have emailed him or replied to one of his emails and he hasn’t responded, it is very probably because he hasn’t received it.

Thursday, 23 October 2008

Loss leader

I don’t know how the Politburo is going to explain this one, it’s got to be one of the funnier emails I have had from TDC in a while.

Subject: Returned mail: see transcript for details
Date: 10/23/2008 12:32:06 GMT Standard Time
From: MAILER-DAEMON@baldrick.thanet.gov.uk
Reply To:
To: MichaelChild@aol.com

The original message was received at Thu, 23 Oct 2008 12:31:34 +0100from in-emit0.armourplate.net [195.167.168.84] ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----leader@thanet.gov.uk (reason: 550 No such recipient) ----- Transcript of session follows -----... while talking to [172.16.7.225]:>>> RCPT To: leader@thanet.gov.uk
leader@thanet.gov.uk ... User unknown

Sunday, 27 April 2008

Another local blog gone

If there is one thing that most of the local blogging community don’t like it’s when one of us is forced to remove their blog. No this isn’t about Eastciff Richard, Thanet Life or One Voice this is about the vanishing of the only blog by a local journalist.

The only inference I can draw is that local politicians didn’t like what he was writing on it and told the bosses at out main local paper to stop him.

Were I living in a banana republic I would of course expect this sort of thing here in England though the home of political satire, if our politicians can no longer laugh at themselves, god help us.

Below a sample from the offending blog I shall be interested to see if I am asked to remove it and who by, you may wish to ponder who doesn’t want you to read it.


These are some of the Smudgers that could not make it into the paper.IT was Easter Sunday and Sandy Ezekiel and his best friend OBE were tucking into creme eggs and dunking chocolate fingers into them when there was an almighty earthquake. Suddenly Jo Gideon appeared and told them not to be afraid and suddenly created a technical evaluation and public consultation. Residents flocked to their house at the news of the consultation but when they opened the front door they found the Thanet Tsar and OBE gone.“Don't be afraid,” said Jo, “I know that you have come to see Sandy and Rog. They are not here, for they have risen. Come inside and see the place where they were eating eggs.” The people went inside the house and found it empty, just as Jo had told them. “Go quickly and tell the others that Sandy and Rog have risen from their beds, and they are going to Margate where you will see them.” No one believed the constituents but later on at a full cabinet meeting Sandy and Rog were seen with strange brown markings on their mouths and suddenly everyone agreed that they both had been eating eggs. Just like they said they would.DID you know that the leader of Thanet council has his own cereal? As we all know Ezekiel was a prophet and priest in the Bible who prophesied for 22 years in the 6th century BC.Crafty church goers have turned a passage from Ezekiel (4:9) “Take also unto thee wheat and barley and beans and lentils and millet and spelt and put them in one vessel and make bread of it,” and turned it into a 100 per cent flourless sprouted grain cereal.The puff reads: “This biblical cereal is truly the staff of life. Yeast free, no added oil, no artificial flavours.” A bit like Sandy I suppose.THE winners of Thanet’s smokefree local business awards were presented on National No Smoking day last Wednesday.There were over 20 entries for the awards, set up by Thanet council, which recognise those local businesses that have followed the law since it came in last July.Smudger feels this is somewhat pointless and assumes that awards will be given out to those who haven’t stolen a car, robbed a bank and the top 10 people who paid their road tax.At a glittering ceremony hosted by Cllr Jo Gideon trophies will be given out to everyone who follows the law. It will be called “I didn’t break the law.” Smudger has been given a special trophy because he didn’t dump black bags in the middle of the road.THE council’s new yoof publication, Youth Matters, is back bulging with Easter details to keep kids entertained. However, what you may not realise is that if you haven’t received your copy you can ring 577050, and if you add 5, 7, 7, 0, 5 and 0 you get 24, which is exactly how many pages the magazine consists of. Smudger thinks that to really get the Yoof interested you have to have some animated adventures with the councillors. It would be a bit like the Fantastic Four. Financial mega-brain, Martin Wise, would become a giant talking calculator called Professor Wise who battles negative numbers and inverse ratios. Tourism legend Roger Latchford would become Corporal Bark, a talking dog who goes around imprisoning evil-doers in art galleries when they graffiti. Exalted leader Sandy Ezekiel would become Sandyman, clad in a tight PVC suit with utility belt containing high-speed consultations and sustainability appraisals that fly through the air at 132mph. The whole show would be called Cabinet Combats: The fight for freedom.Not surprising really.

Thomas Morris

Saturday, 26 April 2008

Three men in a boat

The report of the Standards Board is now published
Click on the members names to read the findings.

Clive Heart

Doug Clark

Sandy Ezekiel