theguardian.com

Archer fraud allegations: the simple truth

️https://www.theguardian.com/profile/matthewtempest
️Thu Aug 16 2001

What was "the Simple Truth"?

Rod Stewart, Paul Simon, Sting and Gloria Estefan were among the artists who gave their services for free after Mr Archer, having seen pictures of starving Kurds on the news on his 51st birthday, was moved to set up the charity in conjunction with the Red Cross.

He also employed two Kurdish aides, Broosk Saib and Nadhim Zahawi, whom he controversially dubbed "Lemon Kurd and Bean Kurd."

Was the concert a success?
It seemed so at the time. At a press conference on June 19, 1991, a beaming Jeffrey Archer held up a cheque for £57,042,000 - nearly £10m more than Bob Geldof's Live Aid, Mr Archer noted.

It also led the then prime minister, John Major, to recommend Jeffrey Archer for a peerage - something the honours committee had already rejected him for once before. This time he was successful.

What happened next?
This is what Scotland Yard are currently investigating.

It was subsequently revealed that the concert itself raised very little, with the bulk of the £57m coming from large-scale aid from overseas governments, including £10m pledged by the British government. Much of this aid had already been committed before the Simple Truth event.

Of the £57m, it appears around £3m came from the Simple Truth concert and appeal, £10m from the UK government, and the remaining £43m from overseas governments' aid projects.

In 1992 the Kurdish Disaster Fund wrote to Mr Archer, complaining: "You must be concerned that the Kurdish refugees have seen hardly any of the huge sums raised in the west in their name."

At the time, Kurdish groups claimed little more than £250,000 had been received by groups in Iraq.

Mr Archer then went to Iraq on a fact-finding mission to see for himself, but only succeeded in alienating the Kurds when his chant of "Long Live Kurdistan" was mis-translated as "Bastard, Devilish Kurdistan."

So could Mr Archer still be prosecuted for fraud?
Theoretically, yes. There is nothing to stop a current prisoner being tried for other offences.

Scotland Yard stress they are still giving the accusations - first levelled by the Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Nicholson on the night of Lord Archer's conviction - a "preliminary assessment."

They have yet to examine the Red Cross's accounts, but if they find evidence of wrong-doing, the case would be handed to the serious fraud squad for investigation.

However, Lord Archer found some support today, with Sir Nicholas Young, the current chief executive of the British Red Cross, denying that any funds had gone missing or that Lord Archer had direct access to the accounts in the first place.

Lord Archer's main protagonist, Baroness Nicholson, claims there are many question still to be answered, including a demand that the Red Cross open up the net accounts for the Simple Truth appeal.

Previously the Red Cross has claimed that it destroyed these accounts after seven years.

Anything else?
There is now an allegation that Lord Archer concurrently invested in an oil firm in Panama, which was seeking to gain oil rights in northern Iraq.

Audio
BBC Today programme interview with Mary Archer

Useful link
British Red Cross