Mo' Money

It's that time of year again.

Readers may recall last November's post on the World Peace and Prosperity Foundation, a scam run by Ray and friends which involved charging punters a lot of money to attend a social event at the House of Lords. The scam being that it was a social event, masquerading as a charity awards dinner, and that charging for such events is in breach of that institution's rules.


Times are hard, though, because last year's Inaugural Reception and Dinner, which would have cost you £120 to attend, has become, this year, a mere Award Celebration Tea

which will only set you back forty quid. Still a lot of money for a cuppa and some biscuits, you may think, but what's forty nicker when you're rewarding exceptional service to global peace and prosperity?

I say it will set you back forty quid. Actually I mean it would have set you back forty quid, since the deadline for tickets was last Sunday. You've missed it, I'm afraid. Sorry about that.

Come to that, who kows whether it would have cost you anything at all? The application form includes, intriguingly, the term DONATION.

This raises the possibility that it would be possible to attend the function without actually paying a penny, which might serve to bring the event within the rules. Or alternatively, it might be there in order merely to give the impression that the forty pounds it cost to get in was actually a donation.

With the intention of asking whether one could get in for free - or for a smaller "donation" than that advertised - I made a large number of calls to the numbers ineptly reproduced on the application form. (Also see: "security purpose".) However, to my regret, but not entirely to my surprise, there was never anybody there to pick up the phone.

Who's running the WPPF show these days? Ray is still listed as Vice-Chairman on the letters

but the level of his involvement is unclear, since he was apparently replaced as a director of the company in June, by Salah Malik.

Whether this is related to the scaling-down of the event and the introduction of the term DONATION, one can only speculate, but we can be reasonably sure that Ray is not entirely detached from the operation, given the identity of the life peer who has unwisely lent his name to the proceedings.

That's the same Lord Pearson of Rannoch who dined with Ray this time last year and discussed live canine chess.

Maybe they'll make a dog's dinner of it.

[Thanks to our informant]

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