This has all the hallmarks of a classic whitewash which must not be allowed to happen for the reasons below. Before that, there is some question of what form the alleged "audit" is going to take. Some press reports say it is merely an "internal audit" whereas the feeble "leader", Cooper, tweeted a Labour Party member to say that KPMG are involved. Neither option is acceptable. It is precisely because of the lack of probity and any semblance of good business practice under Chief Executive, Jan Britton (£164,159.per annum) that this situation (and others) has arisen. As far as the land sales are concerned this has always been delegated to £128,138 Head of Legal, Neeraj Sharma and £108,614 per annum Area Director, Nick Bubalo. There cannot be any public confidence in an "audit" that involves any of these individuals.
Another worry is that I am informed that some of Hussain's relatives work within SMBC. Please note that I most definitely do NOT allege any impropriety by those individuals here but, clearly, they must be "isolated" from the "audit" simply as a matter of good practice.
Of course, Hussain's son, Azeem Hafeez, who bought Lodge Street/Stone Street and the Coroner's Office from Labour himself worked for Sandwell Council in a role they have chosen not to disclose to me.
It is also not acceptable for KPMG to be involved here either as they have just earned a substantial fee for auditing the annual accounts and giving the Council a clean bill of health. I don't know about you, but I have no confidence in asking auditors to investigate and report that they themselves have failed to spot wrongdoing. Thus whilst the "audit" does require some accountancy expertise this must be from an independent firm.
In any event, there needs to be input from property experts here. Whilst all the media are concentrating on the sale of the Coroner's office, the Lodge Street/Stone Street sale is a much bigger kettle of fish. Sharma/Bubalo sold this plot for a miniscule £145,000 with no Community Infrastructure Levy and Hussain's son rapidly obtained planning permission from Labour for 14 houses. Building has actually started with a total guide price of £2.78m and unless Hafeez cocks it up royal it is difficult to see him walking away from this with less than £1m (yes, one million pounds). There are other property issues too (see below).
Various matters dealt with here have been referred to West Midlands Police and whilst they have apparently done sod all to date they should not be allowed to excuse further inactivity on the basis that they will await the outcome of the "audit".
The laughable Cooper keeps claiming that he will always root out wrongdoing and Hussain himself has told the media he wants the audit to show that he has fully complied with all rules and procedures (a bit difficult when he has just publicly apologised for failing to disclose his and his family's interests in the Five Star Taxi contract!!!!). If they are genuine (cough) in this the remit of the audit must, alas, become very wide and, at the very least, examine ALL property transactions since Hussain has been Chair of the AMLD plus other matters as set out below. Here are some initial steps that require IMMEDIATE attention:
1. Independent accountants and property experts must be appointed to work together on this investigation (I will use "the auditors" as shorthand for this combo). Contact details should be made available so that members of the public can make representations to the auditors within a set time framework - confidentially if necessary. Similarly, there must be a method set up for SMBC staff to confidentially disclose information to them.
2. Hussain should provide the auditors with a detailed family tree as, of course, some of the deals in question are in the name of family members eg Azeem Hafeez. Incidentally, I personally asked Hussain to disclose some family details to me and he declined to do so;
3. As stated in this blog ad nauseum the crafty comrades are redacting (ie hiding) huge swathes of information which should be in the public domain and for no good reason. Firstly, they mark Council agenda items as "private" and then what scraps are made public have key information blanked out - see, for classic examples in earlier blogs, the blanking out of Bubalo's "estimate" for the value of the Coroner's office and the complete blanking out of the address of the property in Florence Road being sold to Councillor Rouf's son. Secondly, it is right and proper that when, for example, two parties are bidding for Council contracts that confidentiality is maintained (though whether it actually is in Sandwell is another story). But what Labour regularly do is simply vote to override their own procurement and tendering rules to gift the contract to a specially favoured party. They then say that they cannot release details due to commercial confidentiality when what they really mean is that they simply want to keep the deal secret. The classic examples here are the multi-million pound Interserve contract to destroy The Public and the seemingly ongoing bent Ice Rink deal.
Accordingly, at the very least all the agendas and minutes of, at least, the AMLD committee for the whole period when Hussain has been Chair must be released in unredacted form.
4. The Council's cavalier approach to answering Freedom of Information (FoI) requests must be addressed immediately. The moronic Cooper has regularly pilloried me for putting in such requests and I was publicly vilified for the same reason on live local radio by Labour Councillor and Cabinet Member Ian Jones (this being the same programme where he mysteriously lied to the BBC and public about the bog-gate valuation!) In effect SMBC have 28 days to respond to such request but regularly miss this time limit and then fail to answer the request adequately. In the bog-gate request two SMBC employees, Willetts and Wendling, specifically provided me with false and inaccurate information and the auditors certainly need to look into that as this serious matter appears to have been totally ignored by Jan Britton and other "management". At the moment I have specific FoI requests in respect of the sale of the Coroner's office and the sale of Lodge Street/ Stone Street and nothwithstanding the statutory framework it is clearly in the public interest that the replies are expedited and made available as soon as practicably possible.
More generally, if Labour are open in their dealings and stop hiding agenda items and meetings then the only ones who will be affected are those involved in bent deals like the Ice Rink. There will be much, much less need for FoI requests and the associated costs.
5. My personal view, of course, is that Hussain should resign his Council seat (on the failure to disclose his and his family's significant interest in the Five Star contract alone). If he refuses, the Labour whip should be withdrawn but as he is a big pal of the joke "leader" this is unlikely to happen. Of course, he is hanging on to his Cabinet position and Labour will allow this. However, what is absolutely clear is that if Labour is too weak to act even they must realise that it would be unconscionable for him to take part in Cabinet or full Council discussions relating to matters decided by the AMLD Committee. Surely even Jan Britton can see that too!!!
Let us just fantasise for one moment that the sleazy socialists will do any of the above (although they might run into choppy legal waters if they do not). The auditors must look way beyond the sale of the Coroner's office:
1. Clearly the Lodge Street/Stone Street sale by Sharma/Bubalo for just £145k is "the big one";
2. There must be a full examination of the tendering process for the Five Star Contracts. The Company which is 50% owned by Hussain and his wife has already had over £100,000 of our taxpayer money and if not stopped WILL continue to receive taxpayers's' money to February, 2017. It would be strange indeed to find, for example, that the Five Star bid came in just below that of a competitor by a very small amount - say £1. In any event - Hussain has now been forced to publicly admit that he didn't register his interests. Accordingly, contract work and further payments to Five Star should be suspended pending the outcome of the "audit".
It might also be interesting to see whether any SMBC contract work was awarded to a taxi firm which then sub-contracted it to a firm connected to the Hussain family.
Incidentally, Labour are very anxious to pretend that most of their contracts go to local firms and in the case of the taxi contract were again quite happy to lie about this in the official Council minutes. Thus the list of firms given the contract was published - including Five Star - together with the lie "All are Sandwell Firms". Five Star has its registered office in Dudley where it is also based - by the bus station.
3. Hussain's family tree should be checked against lists of Council houses sold by Labour and also against housing grants. Some may be perfectly legit but here is an interesting one to start with:
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4. I am told Cllr Rouf is a relative of Hussain. Clearly the auditors need to look at the sale of the building plot at Florence Road (Poplar Grove) Smethwick which Hussain's AMLD resolved to sell and which was then, happily, sold to Cllr Rouf's son who is building a 7-bedroom mansion there (see earlier blog). There is a linked question on who paid for the removal of the electrical sub-station on the site.
Incidentally, the local residents, particularly at Lime Grove are not enamoured with this huge property plonked on their doorstep and also say that there is encroachment on the rights of way on either side of the property. SMBC have not actually completed the transfer to Rouf's son (pending the completion of the mansion) and, no doubt, will wish to ensure that the final legal documents makes the extent of the boundaries crystal clear!
5. Bog-gate!!!! A timely reminder here that a simple phone call saying why The Skidder team should investigate something has taken us a long way. Whilst I am still awaiting for some formal information I have been inundated with calls from good folk in the Muslim community about a Hussain connection. In a Skidder exclusive I am prepared to say that Quyam, who bought the bogs from Sandwell Labour, at a knockdown price IS related to Nigat Loreen. Who she? She is the wife of Naveed Hussain, er, son of Mahboob Hussain. Whilst I believe Nigat and Naveed live at a different address in Oldbury they are both registered on the electoral register at 51 McKean Road, home of, er, Labour Councillor, Mahboob Hussain.
6. Although Hussain - Sandwell's most celebrated amnesiac - couldn't remember his and his wife's 50% shareholding when bidding for multi-million pound taxi contracts he has always been assiduous in declaring an interest in 73 Fountain Lane but as "trustee for his father" Mohammed Shafait. Curiously, Mr Shafait appears on the electoral register at Mahboob's own address - 51 McKean Road.
Opposite 73 is a large patch of derelict land which is an eyesore and a drag on property values in Fountain Lane. Hussain has been a very vocal advocate for the proposed development of the site called "The Junction" which would enhance local property values but he has never declared his interest in No 73 at any Council meetings which discussed the project. Perhaps he thinks a "trusteeship" doesn't count which is strange since the property was conveyed by his father to him and his wife as long ago as 22nd March, 1989! They are the legal owners at HM Land Registry.
The address at 73 has been used in connection with various companies related to the Hussain family at Companies House.
7. And this is a another big one - the bent Ice Rink deal (#icestink on twitter). The idiotic Cooper is also heavily involved in this scandal. See earlier blogs for more details but, in short, Labour are obsessed with having an ice rink in West Bromwich. It seems that they themselves reviewed various sites across Sandwell at taxpayers' expense and then - without any tendering or other competition - offered a huge site to a single private company. The plan is to use our taxpayers' money to knock down the Queen's Square car park so the ice rink company can have a nice clear site. Council officials appraised the project and gave it a very low "score" but the Labour comrades were not to be deterred and the matter came before Hussain's AMLD committee. The plan was to GIVE (yes - GIVE) the huge site next to a major brand new shopping centre to the private ice rink company on a free, "peppercorn", lease but Hussain's committee inexplicably decided in a matter of minutes that they would knock down the car park and sell it to the private company on the usual basis ie via Sharma/Bubalo at a price to be agreed and without it being marketed to anyone else. Of course, this is all secret and given Hussain's involvement there must now be full disclosure. There is no commercial confidentiality since the shifty "socialists" have deliberately excluded the rest of the world from their grubby deal.
There are bizarre rumours that Labour are making secret "grants" in respect of this project.That must be untrue but this "deal" is wholly irrational and requires urgent external investigation.
8. The car park for the Dartmouth Street Mosque (ongoing.....)
Whatever cover-up Cooper and his cronies are planning The Skidder team will battle on! All information gratefully received!
THE SANDWELL SKIDDER - A COMMUNITY BLOG - READ THE SKIDDER, KIDDER!
e thesandwellskidder@gmail.com t @bcrover (Vernon Grant)
Confidential phone no: 07599 983737
Hussain has been like the proverbial nine bob note all his working life. Ever since he first owned Oldbury taxis ( opposite what is now witherspoons
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