Geoffrey
Robinson
The
Paymaster
Robinson was one of the millionaire paymasters of the New Labour Soap Opera.
He inherited
a fortune from an exotic Belgium lady and kept it in an offshore trust.
He also built up his own engineering business and did business with 'pension
robber' Robert Maxwell, (a former Labour party parliamentary candidate).
Robinson's company collapsed a few years ago.
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Robinson was
never stingy with his money. He leant his Tuscan Villa to the Blairs,
he provided a private office in a luxury hotel for Gordon Brown, and he
gave an undeclared interest-free loan to 'The Prince of Darkness', Peter
Mandelson, so that he could fulfil his New Labour property aspirations with
a house in trendy Notting Hill.
He resigned
from his treasury post of 'Paymaster General' over the Mandelson loan
and was suspended from parliament over an undeclared receipt from a Maxwell
Company (he denies he received the money).
The son of
a furniture-maker, Robinson began his career with the nationalized car maker
British Leyland, a symbol of Old Labour in the 1970s, when the workers spent
more time on strike than making cars.
He moved to
Milan to run Leyland Italy and there met his wife, a Maltese-born opera
singer, Marie Elena.
In 1973 he
became the managing director of Leyland’s one and only glamorous division,
Jaguar. His industrial relations strategy included lending Jaguar cars to
shop stewards.
While at Jaguar,
he became friends with Joska Bourgeois an exotic Belgian lady with a long
and colourful past, who held the Jaguar sales franchise in her country.
Bourgeois was
regarded at Leyland as ‘a living legend steeped in adventure, mystery
and sensuality.’ She was rumored to have flown across the Channel
after the war by promising to sleep with a Canadian pilot, ‘but only
in England’ (Tom Bower in his book,- "The Paymaster").
New
Labour, Off-shore
Bourgeois lent
him £5,000 to start a small company called Transfer Technology, later
renamed Transtec. When Bourgeois died in 1994, she left him pounds £9m
and had already set up an offshore trust fund for his family in Guernsey
called Orion.
The Orion trust
later caused Robinson political embarrassment when he was working at the
treasury for Gordon Brown – Brown had been crusading against rich
people keeping their millions in offshore trusts.
Enter
Maxwell
Another exotic
figure in The Paymaster’s life was the late Robert Maxwell -now infamous
for robbing the Mirror newspaper's pension fund.
In 1991 Transtec
was still privately owned by Robinson. Its flotation came via a 'reverse
takeover' by a listed Maxwell engineering company, Central & Sheerwood,
which bought Transtec, and then changed its name to Transtec. Robinson was
appointed chairman.
Transtec collapsed
at the end of 1999. Trade Secretary Stephen Byers appointed independent
inspectors to investigate the Transtec collapse after it admitted concealing
from shareholders an £11m claim for payment by the Ford Motor Company.
The DTI enquiry
found that Robinson could not have known about the non-disclosure as he
had stepped down as chairman of Transtec before becoming a minister in 1997.
In August
2003 he was banned from driving after failing a breathalyser test.
West Midlands Police confirmed that no action was being taken against Robinson
in relation to the discovery of a class A drug in a police van at the time
of his arrest.
Suspended from Parliament
Geoffrey
Robinson, had been forced to resign from his ministerial post of 'Paymaster
General' after the First Mandelson Scandal.
In
October 2001 he was suspended for three weeks from Parliament after the
Standards and Privileges committee found that he had given ‘inadvertently
incomplete answers’ over an undeclared receipt from a company controlled
by Robert Maxwell.
When questioned
by the Standards and Privileges Committee, Mr Robinson denied being paid
for his brief tenure as non-executive chairman of Hollis, a Maxwell firm.
The author
Tom Bower uncovered a receipt which apparently showed Robinson had been
paid £200,000 by Hollis in December 1990.
Robinson still
denies that he received the payment, which he says was made to his company,
Transtec.
