2 |

November 9 - 15 2011

News

1059

The Telegraph

The Telegraph

μNews

PAGES 2-13

μWorld News PAGES 14-17

μComment PAGES 18-21

μ Letters

PAGE 20

μObituaries PAGES 22-23

μ Features

PAGES 24-26

μCulture

PAGES 27-29

μExpat Life PAGES 30-31

μBusiness

μClassified

μPuzzles

μSport

PAGES 32-37

PAGE 38

PAGE 39

PAGES 40-48

NEWS P6

In Diana’s footsteps Duchess of Cambridge plans to visit famine-hit areas of East Africa

WORLD NEWS P16

‘Merchant of Death’ convicted Russian faces life in jail after being found guilty of £3m arms deal

CULTURE P29

CULTURE P27

The first pin-up girls An exhibition focuses on the racy exploits of Restoration actresses

‘Wikipedia can topple tyrants’ The founder of the web resource sees exciting times ahead

LOTTO 02/11

LOTTO 05/11

12 11 33 37 38 49 14 16 23 24 27 39

Bonus Ball 3

Bonus Ball 43

There were four winners of Saturday’s £10m jackpot and two winners of Wednesday’s £2.4m prize

μEDITORIAL OFFICE: 111 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 0DT. Tel (Int 44) 207 931 2000. Email weeklyt@telegraph.co.uk μADVERTISING: For details of local offices, contact Julie Bridge, Tel (44) 207 931 3290. Email julie.bridge@telegraph.co.uk. For further information from any advertiser in this issue, please email your contact details, the advertiser(s) and issue date to weeklytelegraphsubs@telegraph.co.uk μSUBSCRIPTIONS: Weekly Telegraph Subscriptions, 3rd-4th Floor, Victory House, Meeting House Lane, Chatham, Kent ME4 4TT. Tel (44) 1622 335080. Fax (44) 1634 815163. (Office hours: 09.00-17.00 GMT.) Email weeklytelegraphsubs@telegraph.co.uk μDELIVERY INQUIRIES: Australia: Network Services. Contact MAGSHOP. Tel: 136 116. Email magshop@magshop.com.au Canada: Linda Hoefler. Tel 001 416 585 5856. Fax 001 416 585 5869. Email lhoefler@globeandmail.com Denmark: Bjarne Balle-Christiansen. Tel 0045 3327 7724. Fax: 0045 3296 8682. Email abo@interpress.dk Hong Kong: Jeff Law. Tel 00 852 2756 8193. Fax 00 852 2799 8840. Email Jefflaw@foreignpress.com.hk Kenya: Shadrack Ochanda. Tel 0025 425 40280. Fax 0025 425 40295. New Zealand: Netlink Subscriptions. Tel 0064 9 308 2871. Philippines: Denis Catangay. Tel 832 5383. Fax 831 3256. Email apcei@mnl.sequel.net Singapore: Doreen Tan. Tel 6282 1960. Fax 6382 3021.Email Doreen@carkitfe.com South Africa: Global News, 74 First Road, Kew 2090, South Africa. Tel: (011) 8872670/1. Fax 0865117067. Email: andy@globalnews.co.za Thailand: Khun Tai. Tel (02) 887 3331. Fax (02) 887 2259. United States: Marlon Johnson. Tel 1800 933 2147. μNEWSSTAND INQUIRIES: The Publisher, 111 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 0DT. Tel (44) (0) 20 7931 3447 Š The Weekly Telegraph (USPS#006819) is published weekly for US$218 a year by Telegraph Media Group Ltd, 111 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 0DT, England. Periodicals postage paid at Newark, NJ. POSTMASTER: Send all address changes to The Weekly Telegraph, c/o SDS Global Logistics, 263 Frelinghuysen Ave, Newark, NJ 07114-1539.

μDATA PRIVACY: When you respond to Telegraph Media Group Limited’s competitions, offers or promotions, we may use your information for marketing purposes. We will contact you by mail or telephone to let you know about any of our special offers, products and services which may be of interest to you unless you have asked us not to. We will only contact you by email, text message, or similar electronic means with your permission. We will only pass your name on to third parties if you have consented for us to do so. In some cases our special offers, products and services may be provided, on our behalf, by our partners. If you have agreed to be contacted by us, your personal information may be passed to our partners; however, in all such cases we remain a data controller of your personal information. When responding to competitions, offers or promotions by postcard, if you do not wish for your details to be used by us to send you special offers, please make this clear by stating “No Offers”. We respect your data privacy. You may modify your preferences or get further information by writing to us at Data Privacy, Telegraph Customer Service, Victory House, Meeting House Lane, Chatham, Kent ME4 4TT or by email to data. protection@telegraph.co.uk.

Continued from Page 1

points” off the size of Britain’s economy.

The Italian government has agreed to allow the IMF to monitor its plans to cut spending, and experts believe that Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister, will seek IMF funding before the end of the year. He turned down the offer of IMF funds last Friday.

Mr Cameron said contingency planning was under way for the possible ejection of Greece from the single currency.

“If Greece wants to leave the eurozone, there would be bad effects that would be felt across Europe, including in the United Kingdom,” he said.

French and German leaders last week sought to intervene in Greece’s political affairs, marking a constitutional shift in the relationship between EU leaders and independent nation states.

They were accused of staging an effective coup d’état as George Papandreou, the Greek prime minister, narrowly survived a confidence vote in the country’s parliament by 153 votes to 145. He promised to begin talks with the opposition to establish a power-sharing government to implement the eurozone bail-out.

Last month, the eurozone countries agreed to establish

Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is fighting for his political life because of the eurozone crisis, but still managed to smile for the cameras behind Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, at the G20 summit in Cannes

HERMAN

REUTERS/YVES

a €1trillion facility to loan money to beleaguered countries such as Italy and Spain. It was also agreed to allow Greece to write off up to half its debts. European leaders had hoped that wealthy countries, including China and Russia, and Middle Eastern nations would contribute to the European Financial Stability Facility.

However, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, disclosed last week that the proposal was struggling. “There really are hardly any countries here that said they will join up,” she said.

It was hoped that a proposal to increase IMF funding would reassure the financial markets and allow direct intervention in beleaguered countries if necessary. However, the final communiqué issued by the leaders made only a vague pledge that they “stand ready to ensure additional resources could be mobilised in a timely manner”.

Amid Conservative backbench anger over the possibility of British taxpayers’ money being used to prop up a eurozone country via the IMF, the Prime Minister indicated that any increase would be relatively modest — and within the parameters of IMF financing already agreed by Parliament.

It is understood that Mr Obama blocked the prospect of an increase in IMF funding without a full eurozone bailout package being in place.

The American and British governments have indicated that the European Central Bank should do more to help prop up troubled countries in the single currency.

The failure to agree a meaningful rescue package emerged at the end of one of the most acrimonious G20 summits ever held. Finance ministers are expected to meet early next month to continue negotiations.

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said Mr Cameron bore some of the blame for the summit’s failure. “What we have had is a Prime Minister who has sat on the sidelines and not shown the leadership that Britain needs,” he said.

Reports, page 4 Business, pages 32-33 Comment, pages 19-21

By Philip Aldrick in Cannes BRITAIN and the US scored a small victory in their battle to avert damaging “currency wars” by securing an agreement from China to let the yuan start rising in value.

Beijing has come under fierce attack from Western powers for keeping its exchange rate artificially low by pegging it to the dollar.

The cheap yuan has underpinned the success of China’s export industry, but at the same time has made US and UK goods uncompetitive, killing off companies and costing jobs.

The deal was struck by world leaders at the G20 summit in Cannes. The communiqué, released following the talks, said member nations have agreed to move “more rapidly towards more marketdetermined exchange rate systems”.

In an early draft, China was named – although it was eventually removed from the final document.

David Cameron said: “China has determined to increase exchange rate flexibility. That is real progress.” He also welcomed recent changes to Russia’s currency regime.

The G20 pledged to “refrain from competitive devaluation of currencies” and committed to “roll back any new protectionist measures that may have risen, including new export restrictions”.

The United States had been threatening to impose tariffs against China.

By Murray Wardrop THE head of the UK Border Force has been suspended amid claims that vetting procedures to stop terrorists and foreign criminals entering Britain were secretly abandoned this summer.

Brodie Clark is being investigated, along with two other senior officials, over claims that he authorised the stopping of specific checks at major transit points including Heathrow and Calais.

It is feared that hundreds of thousands of foreigners might have entered the country over the past four months without having their passports scrutinised.

Border guards at airports and ports were ordered not to bother checking biometric chips on the passports of citizens from outside the European Union, it is claimed.

Staff at the UK Border Force, which is part of the UK Border Agency (UKBA), were also allegedly instructed not to compare fingerprints or other personal details against the Home Office’s database of terrorist suspects and illegal immigrants.

It is understood the decisions were taken without the knowledge of ministers and were designed to cut down queues to avoid complaints by tourists during the peak holiday season.

Graeme Kyle, director of the UKBA at Heathrow, and Carole Upshall, director of the Border Force South and European Operation, have also been suspended on the orders of Theresa May, the Home Secretary.

The Home Office said last Friday that it had begun an investigation but it refused to comment on the allegations. “Head of UKBA Border Force Brodie Clark has been suspended,” it simply said in a statement.

The disclosure raises the prospect that criminals banned from Britain might have managed to sneak into the country between July and the beginning of this month, while vetting procedures were relaxed.

The news emerged a day after the home affairs select committee criticised the UKBA for failing to deport foreign prisoners from Britain.

Keith Vaz, the chairman of committee, described the suspensions as “extraordinary” and said he would be questioning the Home Secretary. telegraph.co.uk/expat

1059

November 9 - 15 2011

| 3

T Take a weekly tablet The Telegraph Weekly World Edition is now available on the iPad telegraph.co.uk/expatsubscriptions

News

ANDREILUKATSKY/AP;SANGTAN/AP

By Duncan Gardham and Gordon Rayner ROMAN ABRAMOVICH was forced to deny being a fraudster and an arms dealer as he gave evidence in a British court for the first time on Monday last week.

The 45-year-old owner of Chelsea FC, who guards his privacy as closely as he guards his billions, faced an uncomfortable afternoon in the witness box at the High Court in London as he disclosed details of his personal and business life.

The oligarch is being sued for $6.5billion (£4 billion) by Boris Berezovsky, his former associate, who accuses Mr Abramovich of swindling him out of shares in companies they allegedly set up together.

Mr Abramovich set out the rags-to-riches tale of how he had gone from selling rubber ducks to sitting on a £10.3 billion oil and minerals empire in just two decades. And while he acknowledged Mr Berezovsky’s role in helping him to win friends in the Kremlin, he described the 65 year-old as a “megalomaniac” who “behaved like a child”.

As the costly legal battle entered its fifth week, Mr Berezovsky stared intently at the man he says was his protégé as he entered the witness box. Mr Abramovich cut a strangely unassuming figure. Apparently unable to read or speak English, he gave his evidence via a translator and wore headphones to hear barristers’ questions in his native Russian.

His boyish voice was so quiet that he had to be told to speak up so that the court could hear his answers, which were often vague and evasive.

His evidence also suggested that he had little grasp of the workings of his business empire, as he admitted he had no idea how much the man who ran his Sibneft oil company was paid or when his closest aides had been appointed to key roles. The Roman Abramovich story Ever since Mr Abramovich’s arrival in England, when he bought Chelsea FC in 2003, stories about his past in Russia have swirled around him, making it hard at times to separate myth from reality.

For the first time in public, Mr Abramovich, who was orphaned and brought up by relatives in northern Russia, set out his own version of his early life.

Born on October 24 1966, Roman Arkadievich Abramovich left school at 16

‘MY MONEY FREED BRITONS’

and went to a local college, the Industrial Institute of Ukhta, but was called up for national service before he graduated.

He spent two years in the Soviet army in the late 1980s, leaving as a private. He studied at the Moscow Road Construction and Automobile Institute and left without a qualification.

His first job in 1987 was as head of the welding unit of the construction and installation directorate of the Soviet government. Soon afterwards, he organised a co-operative to make plastic toys, including rubber ducks, and from there entered the oil trading business in 1991. Arrested on suspicion of fraud Mr Abramovich was presented by Mr Berezovsky’s lawyer, Laurence Rabinowitz QC, with a Russian legal document in which he was accused of “procuring financial gain by means of fraud”.

It was alleged that he had deliberately forged documents for three million kilograms of diesel fuel carried in five railway tankers that were

“emptied and appropriated”. He was arrested on June 19 1992, and remanded in custody on the grounds of the seriousness of the offence and fears that he might try to “escape”, but was later released without charge. He said: “There were problems with the banking system… at the time when the refinery discovered they hadn’t got the money, while I was under arrest, they received the money and I was released.

ROMAN ABRAMOVICH provided a cash ransom to release two British aid workers kidnapped in Chechnya, a court heard last week.

He claimed that he paid to free Camilla Carr and her boyfriend Jon James from Chechen rebels more than a decade ago, but his former business partner Boris Berezovsky took the credit.

The couple, who later married, spent 14 months held in a cellar in the Russian republic after being kidnapped by masked men in Grozny in July 1997. On their release, they were flown home in a jet belonging to Mr Berezovsky.

At the time, Britain and Russia claimed no ransom was paid, but on Tuesday last week, details of the negotiations emerged during the High Court hearing in which Mr Berezovsky is suing Mr Abramovich for £3.6billion.

The court heard that Mr Berezovsky and his business partner Badri Patarkatsishvili were involved in helping to secure the hostages’ release. The British couple, both psychologists, were working with children traumatised by the war in Chechnya.

But Mr Abramovich gave a different version of events. “Badri was travelling to Chechnya to buy out the hostages, it wasn’t Mr Berezovsky,” he said. “After the hostages were bought out, Mr Berezovsky arrived with the journalists, everything was filmed and shown on TV … I gave the money to Badri, he flew there and bought out the hostages.”

Miss Carr, then 40, and Mr James, then 38, of Lydney, Glos, were flown to RAF Brize Norton on the private jet from Moscow in September 1998.

The case continues.

Duncan Gardham and James Orr

“I had not falsified documents and the problem disappeared all by itself.”

The hearing was told about documents belonging to Stephen Curtis, a British lawyer and adviser to several Russian oligarchs, who died in a helicopter crash in 2004. They discussed the sale of spare parts for tanks to Angola and Brazil.

Mr Rabinowitz asked the witness: “Were you involved in weapons trading in 1995?” He replied: “I was never involved in arms trading … my business was petrochemicals.” Berezovsky the ‘megalomaniac’ Mr Berezovsky, who lives in exile in London after falling out with Vladimir Putin, claims he is owed $6.5billion by Mr Abramovich for what he believes is his share of the businesses they set up.

But in a witness statement submitted to the court, Mr Abramovich said that he and Mr Berezovsky were never partners.

He said that in 1994, he wanted to take his business interests “to the next level” by

Roman Abramovich grabs a sandwich for lunch near the High Court in London last week (above); and watching a football match with his girlfriend Daria Zhukova in 2008 (left)

creating what later became Sibneft. “It was not possible to achieve this in Russia at that time without the help of a person who had the appropriate political connections,” he said.

He claims to have paid Mr Berezovsky £1.3 billion for his help over the years, including a final payment of £850million, “to close this particular chapter in my life”.

He added: “Our business relationship was over and yet he still treated me as his cash cow and expected me to fund all of his expenses.” No interest in extravagance Mr Abramovich, who has a taste for custom-built yachts and private jets, and owns two football clubs, claimed to have no interest in extravagance.

He said of Mr Berezovsky: “I was quite surprised by his extravagant lifestyle … I was never interested in imitating this lifestyle. I have always been interested primarily in real business.”

As if to prove the point, he popped into the sandwich chain Pret a Manger for lunch.

Continued from page 1

a number of explosions and black smoke. It’s not something you expect to see on the motorway, it was more like a scene from Afghanistan.”

The rugby club’s fireworks display was being investigated to see if thick smoke drifted on to the motorway.

The accident occurred at 8.25pm last Friday after a bank of fog or smoke about 200 yards across enveloped the M5 between junctions 24 and 25, near Taunton. The pile-up seemed to have begun when an Iceland lorry entered the fog, which one motorist said was “like emulsion”.

Police said vehicles were “immediately alight” after the crash as a “massive fireball” engulfed the carriageway.

Mobile phone footage showed members of the public desperately trying to open vehicle doors in an attempt to rescue those trapped inside.

Witnesses spoke of hearing the screams of men, women and children. One man who rescued people from burning cars had to dodge debris “like shrapnel”.

Assistant Chief Constable Anthony Bangham, the incident commander, said on Sunday: “Our worst fears have not been realised and the number of those that sadly lost their lives remains at seven.”

Police confirmed they were looking at the possibility that a pall of black smoke from the firework display at Taunton Rugby Club, 300 yards from the scene of the crash, may have drifted on to the motorway.

A member of the public who was at the club said: “The fireworks display was massive and caused a huge amount of thick black smoke that drifted towards the motorway less than 10 minutes before the crash.

“Before the display I could see right across the pitch and see the headlights of traffic on the motorway. After the display the visibility dropped to less than 30ft, I couldn’t even see the huge floodlights positioned around the pitch.”

The accident was the worst on British roads since 1991 when 10 people were killed and 25 injured in a pile-up on the M4 near Hungerford, Berkshire.

By Christopher Hope BRITONS with second homes overseas are to be targeted to save millions of pounds in tax evasion.

A team of HM Revenue and Customs inspectors is looking at people with second homes in France, Spain and other holiday destinations to see if they are cheating the taxman.

The inspectors have been told to claw back £560 million in lost revenue by 2015.

The 200-strong team will be scrutinising advertisements placed by second-home owners in magazines and on the internet. They will be looking for undeclared holiday rents and leased office space.

They are also checking overseas land registers to identify taxpayers with properties abroad.

The move is part of a campaign against evasion by the 330,000 richest people in the 50 per cent tax bracket who earn more than £150,000 a year. The Revenue’s first targets are second-home owners because holiday homes are seen as a common way for well-off people to hide a second income from the taxman.

They will be looking for Britons who get undeclared rent by leasing land overseas to local companies.

David Gauke, the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, said: “The message is clear: there is no hiding place for tax cheats. The Government is committed to tackling tax evasion.”

HMRC said the team would look at commodity traders’ work and at people with offshore accounts.

Gary Ashford, the head of investigations at RSM Tenon, said: “Taxes involving overseas properties can always be potentially complicated. It is not always the case that people have deliberately evaded their taxes. However, HMRC could target them whether or not they have intended to do anything wrong.”

The team will work with other inspectors focusing on companies, residence and domicile issues, and trusts and estates to end evasion.