Top Tory donor and IRA Godfather’s ‘friend’ in London vice scandal
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Who’s laughing now? Controversial tycoon Christopher Moran (far right) enjoys a joke with former Prime Minister Tony Blair at the Titanic Hotel, Belfast in April 2018
Christopher Moran likes to describe himself as “Dr Christopher Moran” on the basis of an honorary degree from the University of Ulster, though his formal education ended when he left Owen’s Grammar School in Islington with a few ‘O’ levels in 1964.
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Christopher
Moran obtaining an honorary doctorate from the University of Ulster in
2014: on this basis he grandly describes himself as ‘Dr Moran’
Moran also has a 48,000 acre estate in the Scottish Highlands.
Just a mile from Moran’s mansion is Chelsea Cloisters, a block of 670 apartments on Sloane Avenue owned by Moran’s company Realreed. In addition to the freehold on the entire block, Moran owns the lease on more than 200 of the apartments. Sunday Times journalists investigating Moran made 40 bookings in recent weeks with prostitutes using 23 apartments in Chelsea Cloisters, 15 of which are rented directly from Moran’s company.
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Chelsea Cloisters, the apartment block owned by Christopher Moran and described as the “infamous 10 floors of whores”
One ‘escort agency’ claims to have 100 prostitutes working at Chelsea Cloisters on any single night. Many seem to have been trafficked to London from Romania, and the Sunday Times has handed a dossier of evidence to the head of Scotland Yard’s anti-trafficking unit. Former anti-slavery commissioner Kevin Hyland confirmed to the newspaper that there had been “previous cases of [suspected] trafficking linked to Chelsea Cloisters”. One such scandal was publicised in 2004 by the London Evening Standard.
Gavin Shuker MP, chairman of a recent parliamentary investigation into the sex trade, said that the Sunday Times findings suggested Chelsea Cloisters could be Britain’s “biggest brothel”. Mr Shuker demanded that the Conservative Party, which has benefited from almost £300,000 in donations from Christopher Moran and his company, should hand the money to “charities that assist victims of human trafficking”.
Last year in an article on his own website Christopher Moran referred to his personal “friend and champion of peace, Martin McGuinness”. Via the charity Moran chairs (Co-operation Ireland) he brokered several meetings between infamous IRA godfather McGuinness and the British establishment. According to the Irish broadcaster RTE, Moran “stage managed” the historic handshake between McGuinness and the Queen in 2012, and in November 2016 hosted an event at Crosby Hall again attended by the Queen and (in one of his final public appearances) McGuinness.
RTE also reported Moran’s claim that former Prime Minister Tony Blair has used Crosby Hall as part of his shadowy business career since leaving Downing St, though the tycoon has always had closer relations with the Tories, including masterminding the £30m sale of Conservative Central Office in Smith Square. According to a report in 2006 by the Independent on Sunday, Moran was one of a group of tycoons who secretly lent a total of £5m to the cash-strapped Tories, who had to pay back the money in 2006 to avoid being forced by the Electoral Commission to publish details.
Moran’s many other high-level establishment connections include his position as Vice-President (and former Vice-Chairman) of the Council of Christians and Jews.
H&D is aware of numerous previous controversies that marred but failed to halt Christopher Moran’s meteoric rise to business prominence. He began building his empire in the late 1960s, starting as a clerk, then founding insurance brokers Christopher Moran & Co., obtaining approval to conduct business at Lloyd’s of London in the summer of 1972 when Moran was just 24.
A year later Moran paid more than £1m to acquire a Lloyd’s underwriting agency, and in 1976 he obtained a Stock Exchange listing through an £8m ‘reverse takeover’ of existing company Richardson Smith.
In the late 1970s Moran’s company was one of several big names investigated by City of London Police for alleged breaches of exchange control regulations. These ended without charges, but Moran lost a libel suit against the Daily Telegraph in the summer of 1980.
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Christopher Moran (right)
with Karen Bradley (Secretary of State for Northern Ireland) and Bertie
Ahern (former Taoiseach) at the Titanic Hotel, Belfast in April 2018
Nevertheless in September 1982 the Committee of Lloyd’s found him guilty of “acts and defaults discreditable to him in connection with the business of insurance” and he became the first man in the 300-year history of Lloyd’s to be expelled from membership. According to independent arbitrator Andrew Leggatt appointed to assess the case, Moran was a man who “worshipped Mammon”.
Moran never succeeded in winning readmission to Lloyd’s after this life ban, but his fortune continued to expand despite further legal troubles, this time across the Atlantic, in 1992 when he was fined more than £1m by a US Federal court over an insider dealing case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Will Moran’s teflon coating survive the latest charges by the Sunday Times? The newspaper has been careful to assert that there is “no suggestion that Moran has any involvement with the prostitution” apparently rampant throughout his Chelsea property, and similarly H&D is not aware of any such involvement, but there are bound to be questions not only as to whether the Conservative Party should hold on to his donations, but about (for example) the position of Sir Malcolm McKibbin, recently retired head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, as a board member of Moran’s charity Co-operation Ireland – and for that matter the charity’s joint patrons, HM The Queen and Irish President Michael Higgins.
Loyal friends of Ulster will no doubt be grateful for the courage of Sunday Times reporters who pursued this investigation, and will surely give their full support by all means necessary if those reporters continue to suffer threats, as reported in today’s newspaper.
http://www.heritageanddestiny.com/top-tory-donor-and-ira-godfathers-friend-in-london-vice-scandal/