Sunday, March 12, 2006

Crooked Scottish accountants want protection when they tell on their clients

Scottish Accountants running scared to the Home Office, wanting protection for giving information about their clients activities ..... well, that is all well and good, if they suspect or have evidence that their client is participating in illegal activities .. but what happens when you get a spiteful or corrupt member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland who decides to cover up his crooked activities by providing false information on a client to get them into trouble when it's really the accountant who is the crook ???

I was faced with this exact situation, where Norman James Howitt, a corrupt accountant from the Scottish Borders firm of Welch's, and now a member of Eildon Housing Association's Board and also a member of the Borders College board, sold my dead dad's car to a friend of his at a knock down price and pocketed the money to his firm, until it was discovered ... but it was also later revealed he took my mum's pension book for himself, and tried to set up a trust where he even took all my mum's money and made her pay for him to look after it .... which i wrote about with more detail here http://petercherbi.blogspot.com/2006/03/norman-howitt-crooked-borders.html

Mr Norman Howitt, was so intent on covering up what he had done, to avoid detection, that he threatened me with Lothian & Borders Police - and feeding them bogus info about me to cover his own corrupt tracks ... and I was visited by Police at my home to take a statement over his false allegations ... good thing my mum was alive at the time because she was able to back me up that I had done nothing wrong .. and that it was crooked Norman Howitt who was the crook .... yes, lads, I remember very well PC Keith Sudlow from Hawick coming to my house at 47 Bongate, Jedburgh, that Saturday afternoon, to tell me that Howitt had been claiming a lot of lies against me ... to cover his own tracks of course as my own statement revealed ...

So, you can see the evidence for yourself in the blog post I made .. what think ? Howitt a crook or what ? ... fancy, stealing a pensioners pension book, and trying to rob her of all her money ? what kind of a guy is that ? A CROOK of course ... a THIEF ... and for that THIEF to run to the cops and tell them lies about me to try and cover his own tracks ... something like that has to be carefully looked at before being acted upon ......

From what a former Chief Superindentent of Lothian & Borders Police once told me, you have to suspect the people giving the information on someone, as much as the person who is the subject of the allegations ... that being because the motives of people giving information on others can frequently be just like crooked accountant Norman Howitt - to take the heat off their own corrupt crooked activities .... so I think I will be making a written submission to the Home Office that if accountants give information on people, they will have to open themselves up to scrutiny, just in case they are on the fiddle too ... because in my case, Norman Howitt was certainly on the fiddle ... and as you can also see from that blog posting, Dr Tom McMorrow isn't such an angel himself .... he didn't do much on my complaint against Norman Howitt - he was more interested in making sure they could get the crook off the hook and stop me from claiming any compensation for what Howitt did ... in fact, Tom McMorrow was twice taken off the investigation, because he started slagging matches with me in letters, and just told outright lies about things I was supposed to have said - just to get crooked Norman Howitt off the hook ...

Even more sinister was the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland interference with the DTI and FSA about my case .... I had taken the issue of what crooked Norman Howitt had done to both the DTI and the FSA .. but Tom McMorrow sent them some letters telling them to stop listening to me about my case, and he also told them a pack of lies about me to drop my case - so much so that the DTI and the FSA had a meeting about me at Ministerial level and decided that "it would be against the public interest to assist Peter Cherbi as it would jeapordise public confidence in the regulation of accounants within the UK and expose that there were no statutory rules [at the time] for the regulation of accountants" - all this just to protect crooked Norman Howitt from being revealed to be the thief, liar and crook that he really is.

So, Tom McMorrow ... I don't think your motives for running to the Home Office are very honest really - your Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland are just as crooked as the Law Society of Scotland - and it is high time the regulation of accountants is taken away from the likes of you stitch-up boys in your own profession ....

As far as the connection to the Leslie Cumming story is concerned .. well, Cumming is back at work, whereas many of the clients of solicitors he is supposed to regulate .. have their lives totally destroyed ... and McMorrow's concerns over the revelations in the Tessa Jowell & David Mills scandal, are even more laughable ... what does McMorrow really worry about ?? that it will be revealed there was a host of crooked accountants moving money about all over the place for Mills & Berlusconi ??? - remember folks - it's the accountants that usually move the money, and skimp off the tax revenues for their clients .. or create complicated & secret trusts on & off shore - to hide money from the Inland Revenue, the Police, even, their clients .... so, better have a bit more regulation on Accountants I think - rather than blindly listening to them as Tom McMorrow wishes .... and read my blog post at before you read about the wishes of the accountants profession .... http://petercherbi.blogspot.com/2006/03/norman-howitt-crooked-borders.html

Article from Scotland On Sunday at :

http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=371302006

Law sparks accountant safety fears
MURDO MACLEOD (mmacleod@scotlandonsunday.com)

SCOTTISH accountants are demanding protection from clients whose questionable activities they must report under strict new money laundering and fraud laws.

The Institution of Chartered Accountants in Scotland (ICAS) is asking ministers for assurances that any information their members pass on about criminal dealings will be kept confidential and that they will receive protection from the authorities.

Accountants north of the Border are making the submission to the Home Office, along with their English counterparts, in the wake of a series of threats to accountants and an attack on the Scottish Law Society's chief accountant, Leslie Cumming. The attack on Cumming is widely believed to have been connected to his investigations of crooked dealings among lawyers.

Tom McMorrow, the Director of Regulation and Compliance for ICAS said: "Accountants are obliged to pass on information to the authorities and there are serious worries over how confidential that information will remain."

The matter is being dealt with by the Home Office because money laundering legislation is reserved by Westminster.

McMorrow added that many accountants had been alarmed by some of the coverage of the case of Tessa Jowell and her husband, David Mills, which has seen confidential documents from accountants published in the media.

An insider added accountants were increasingly finding themselves as the target of threats. The source said: "People who launder money are likely to be pretty nasty people. Some accountants have been threatened in no uncertain terms."

Cumming, who was ambushed outside his Edinburgh home by a masked attacker, has told detectives that the assault was most likely ordered by a corrupt solicitor whom he has investigated.

It is thought Cumming, who was treated for knife wounds, gave the police the names of two former lawyers he has investigated for embezzlement and professional misconduct.

Due to the nature of his work, Cumming is understood to have regularly received hate mail.

No comments: