The Pyramid of Lies: Lex Greensill and the Billion-Dollar Scandal

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Magazine, Smithsonian; Davis-Marks, Isis. "Archaeologists Unearth Egyptian Queen's Tomb, 13-Foot 'Book of the Dead' Scroll". Smithsonian Magazine . Retrieved 13 January 2023.

Lex Greensill: the truth about the billion-dollar scandal

BY 1999, LEX had completed his legal studies and articles at Payne Butler Lang, a prominent Bundaberg law firm. He briefly spent some time at Deacons Graham & James, another law firm, with connections across Asia and a focus on intellectual property and new technologies. And for a form of Prime Minister who really only has his reputation to sell his credibility and his reputation to have put it all on this company, which was already showing some serious red flags, that was a really strange move. When the victims started comparing notes, they realized the basis of this scam was implausible,” said Lovell, referring to the sheer volume of tractors Gentry would have needed to sell to justify what he promised investors. “The victims can see in hindsight how ludicrous it was to believe that this scheme was true.”

“Most of these people were friends of his. They wouldn’t believe that someone close to them like that would be doing that.”

Mr Johnson initially defended Mr Paterson, before later admitting the move had been a “total mistake”.

A Pyramid of Lies — FBI A Pyramid of Lies — FBI

And so they're kind of leaning on each other. And if you take one -- takes the other away, then it all collapses. At Greensill Capital, absolutely Lex and the other executives know that this is a problem. They discuss it all the time in management meetings, how are they going to kind of get out of this problem. Lex being the optimist at all these management meetings will say, leave it to me, I've got it sorted, we'll outgrow this. Of course, they couldn't. DUNCAN MAVIN: That's a great question. So I -- yes, you're right, I've been following this for probably about 4 years now, maybe a little longer than that. And at the time -- I've been a financial journalist for a long time. I was a chartered accountant before that. So just so you know where I'm coming from. But at the time, I wasn't writing an awful lot. I was doing a bit more editing and managing people. And a source -- a longtime source of mine came to me and said, hey, are you paying attention to this company called Greensill Capital? And I said, no, never heard of them.Many pyramids are in a poor state of preservation or buried by desert sands. If visible at all, they may appear as little more than mounds of rubble. As a consequence, archaeologists are continuing to identify and study previously unknown pyramid structures. He’d also expanded his CV, collecting a list of impressive accolades: world champion of the 1998 Junior Chamber International Public Speaking Competition; finalist in the 1999 Young Australian of the Year Awards (he was beaten by Bryan Gaensler, an astronomer and expert in magnetic fields and supernova remnants); two-term appointee to the Asia Pacific Development Council on bilateral trade and education ties; 1998 Young Citizen of the Year for Shire of Burnett in Queensland. He could speak a little Japanese and he’d become a Justice of the Peace. He was the director of five separate companies, including Greensill Corporation Pty. Lex, he had a small bank in Germany, but he wasn't a bank. He needed to find funding from somewhere to pay for these supply chain finance transactions. And so he was looking for investors for that. And Credit Suisse came along and became the biggest investor in those funds. So Lex had sort of latched on to them around 2017, found a couple of portfolio managers, persuaded them that supply chain finance was a great asset class. It paid a little bit more yield than money market funds, but done properly, it could be just as safe or just a little bit riskier. I became deeply concerned that Greensill was connected to the break-in. The thief had stolen my bag containing something a source had handed to me earlier that afternoon. Someone must have followed me, I reasoned. They must have been looking to intimidate me or to uncover my sources, I thought. Maybe I was paranoid. Maybe I was wrong. But dealing with Greensill left me thinking anything was possible. In the years following the Second World War, thousands of Australians took to the land and began a new life in farming. One of these was Roy Greensill, who planted and harvested sugar cane, watermelons and peanuts on a small plot outside Qunaba, Queensland. The township lies a few miles to the east of the nearest large urban centre, Bundaberg. It was named for the only local landmark, the Qunaba Mill, which was previously known as the Mon Repos Mill until it was taken over, in 1900, by the Queensland National Bank. Qunaba is a kind of portmanteau of the bank’s own name.

The Pyramid of Lies: Lex Greensill and the Billion-Dollar

The Cameron government’s endorsement mattered commercially. Whitehall awarded Greensill contracts “for projects Greensill had proposed when working in Whitehall”. Greensill used the CBE the Conservatives gave him as a quality assurance mark, and in 2018 bagged the former prime minister himself. From the time of the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3150–2686 BCE), Egyptians with sufficient means were buried in bench-like structures known as mastabas. [12] [13] At Saqqara, Mastaba 3808, dating from the latter part of the 1st Dynasty, was discovered to contain a large, independently built step-pyramid-like structure enclosed within the outer palace facade mastaba. Archaeological remains and inscriptions suggest there may have been other similar structures dating to this period. [14] It's OK as far as it goes but the author doesn't come across anywhere near the skill of for example, Ian Fraser in his book Shredded which is about RBS. I can't think why there wasn't more in here about Gupta and why Greensill was so chained to what was going on with that company. In the end it was obvious why but nowhere near enough work done to explain that. A view of the Giza pyramid complex from the plateau to the south of the complex. From left to right, the three largest are: the Pyramid of Menkaure, the Pyramid of Khafre and the Great Pyramid of Giza. The three smaller pyramids in the foreground are subsidiary structures associated with Menkaure's pyramid. Famous pyramids (cut-through with internal labyrinth layout); the Layer Pyramid is mislabeled as that of Unas

Pyramid of Lies: The Prime Minister, the Banker and the Billion Pound Scandal

DUNCAN MAVIN: Yes, sure. Yes, he comes across that very early on in his career. So in his early 20s, in Australia actually working for a businessman there who had ideas about supply chain finance and the technology that could really sort of drive supply chain finance at that time, and he sort of developed his ideas around it through his career in Morgan Stanley and Citigroup and also working for the U.K. government as an adviser there. Work on the flat above No 11 began in April 2020, while the Prime Minister was in hospital with Covid. Reports at the time suggested his wife, Carrie Symonds, was horrified at the “John Lewis furniture nightmare” left behind by the Prime Minister’s predecessor, Theresa May, though she has denied the claims. Early Dynastic burial customs". Digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 22 July 2013 . Retrieved 16 November 2012. The Giza Plateau is the location of the Pyramid of Khufu (also known as the "Great Pyramid" and the "Pyramid of Cheops"), the somewhat smaller Pyramid of Khafre (or Chephren), the relatively modest-sized Pyramid of Menkaure (or Mykerinus), along with a number of smaller satellite edifices known as "Queen's pyramids", and the Great Sphinx of Giza. Of the three, only Khafre's pyramid retains part of its original polished limestone casing, near its apex. This pyramid appears larger than the adjacent Khufu pyramid by virtue of its more elevated location, and the steeper angle of inclination of its construction—it is, in fact, smaller in both height and volume.

Pyramid of Lies: The Prime Minister, the Banker and the

Mr Johnson last week issued a “humble and sincere” apology to Lord Geidt, his ethics adviser, for withholding the messages from an inquiry. Tory sleaze He gets business cards with Downing Street that [indiscernible] (00:09:13) and that kind of thing. He holds meetings in Downing Street, really kind of pushes it beyond -- his role beyond what it really ought to have been. But it seems to work for him. And certainly, when Cameron leaves office, he leaves having left Lex with a much higher profile than he had previously.In 2013, papyri, named Diary of Merer, were discovered at an ancient Egyptian harbor at the Red Sea coast. They are logbooks written over 4,500 years ago by an official with the title inspector, who documented the transport of white limestone from the Tura quarries, along the Nile River, to the Great Pyramid of Giza, the tomb of the Pharaoh Khufu. [30] A few years ago, I made it into an intimate meeting at the "top table". Just me and the top brass. I had prepared copious notes to discuss the large deal that was imminent. But I hadn't prepared to discuss horse racing, the ownership of horses, or the best dogs to keep at stables. a b "Egypt says has found pyramid built for ancient queen". Reuters. 11 November 2008. Archived from the original on 2 November 2017 . Retrieved 2 November 2017. And it's a question I took to Credit Suisse, and I took to SoftBank as a journalist many times. It was so startlingly problematic. In the end, The Bond & Credit Co. was taken over by a company -- Japanese insurer, Tokio Marine. And when Tokio Marine got involved, they looked at The Bond & Credit Co's exposure to Greensill and the Green -- the funds that were investing in Greensill assets. And they said, hey, this is too much. We don't want to do this anymore. And that really spelled the end, right, because without that insurance, the funds that have invested in Greensill's assets, they're no longer able to go out to the same pool of investors.