According to The Times the richest man in Britain's jails is Mr. Palmer, listed at 105 equal with the Queen. His £300 million came from the largest time-share fraud on record, involving 17,000 victims. For this he got a sentence of eight years. It seems the longest sentence recorded was 6,616 years imposed in Madrid as consecutive terms for selling many non-existent holiday flats.
The Office of Fair Trading has issued guidelines on good practice for those who provide debt management services. It also highlights disreputable activities that could lead to these companies losing their consumer credit licences. Full details must be given about the terms and repayments where debts are renegotiated. Where a charge is made the debts must be actively and satisfactorily managed.
The Personal Investment Authority (PIA) announced on 29 October that it had fined the Prudential Assurance Company Limited £650,000 for failure in its pensions review procedures, relating specifically to delays in making payments of redress to supplement pension policy benefits of those who had retired and beneficiaries of those who had died, and to its record keeping.
The man from The Pru was the height of respectability. It is astonishing, therefore, to learn how the mighty have fallen. Perhaps we should not be astonished. Other household names have been found to have missold pensions and persuaded people to take out mortgages the repayments of which depend on life insurance policies which are now found to be wanting.
It seems that the firm was less than diligent in investigating priority cases and failed to meet the requirements of the PIA Rules and Principles in a number of instances, particularly in respect of pensions review. There were delays of over six months in some cases.
One surprising revelation was that the firm failed to keep records of how they justified decisions in relation to the pensions review in respect of complying with the PIAs
Guidance rules. In some cases they were unable to produce any records at all. In others the records could not be found without extensive searches which included obtaining the documents from third parties.
Since the beginning of the year the PIA has taken disciplinary action against 60 firms, resulting in fines totalling £2,762,000. Also firms have set aside a total of £46 million for compensation. Of those 60 firms, 17 cases related to pension review failings, so the Prudential is not alone in this area. In fact, since the pension review started the PIA has had to take disciplinary action against 340 firms., resulting in fines of about £9.4 million!
A rather ominous press release has been issued by Birds Eye Walls concerning the use of Cod in their Cod Fillet Fish Fingers. They say that following newspaper articles they would like to clarify their position which is: "We have no plans to move Captain Birds Eye Cod Fillet Fish Fingers to any other species. We will however progressively use alternative species in other products. This will ensure that we can protect the predicted limited supply of Cod for use in our Cod Fillet Fish Fingers".
It seems that Unilever, the parent company of Birds Eye Walls, is very aware of the threats to fish stocks throughout the world and in 1996 founded, with The World Wildlife Fund, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) to create incentives for sustainable fishing. One initiative is a certification system for fish caught in sustainable circumstances. They already insist that their suppliers do not provide fish from over-fished waters like the North Sea.
They will continue to market alternative species such as Hoki, a white fish which is similar to cod but not under so much threat, and Pollock, to ease the' strain on Cod stocks. In fact, a new Birds Eye product, using MSC certified Hoki, is to be launched soon.
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