While searching YouTube for a World In Action programme that the police had tried to have
banned concerning corruption within Scotland Yard, by chance I stumbled on an
entirely different story, though it too involved significant police wrongdoing.
The video I found was a presentation given to an audience at the 2015
conference of The
British Constitutional Group by Ian Puddick, a law
abiding citizen, who was a former management consultant but is now a director
of a successful plumbing company. If you have ever watched the BBC Rogue Traders, you may have seen Ian
advising the show's presenter on the poor workmanship carried out by a shoddy
plumber being exposed on the programme. But the story Ian relates has no connection
to his profession; instead he tells how his life was deliberately thrown into
complete and utter turmoil by members of the City of London
Police that acted without accountability to satisfy the whims of a powerful
global corporation that decided to stage a vendetta against him simply because
it could. This is a story of evil over good, which demonstrates how the power
held by global enterprises can be used to exert their considerable influence
over authority in ways that can pervert the laws of the land.
After watching the video I
contacted Ian Puddick and have discussed his case at some length with him via
emails. From what he has told me I am convinced that the treatment and intrusion
into his life was a merciless and most shocking and malicious attack on his
civil rights that, in a society that claims to be civilised, should never be
allowed to happen. It occurred because powerful executives wanted to silence
him, though the danger is that anyone could fall victim to this kind of
treatment if a large corporate organisation decides you are a source of
nuisance or inconvenience and may constitute a threat to their reputation. What
made Ian's case even more shocking was the extraordinary lengths that officers
from the City of London Police were willing to go to in order to fabricate a
case against him.
It all began as Ian relaxed in
his garden at the end of May 2009 when he was alerted to a text message that
came up on his wife's mobile phone. Innocently, he picked up the phone and read
the message. To his horror he discovered his wife was having an affair with a
married man. The sender of the text was Leena Puddick's boss, Timothy Haynes, a
director of the world's largest reinsurance brokers, Guy Carpenter,
who she had known since 1997. After confronting his wife, she admitted to the
affair that had originated before she married Ian but had been ongoing for
10-years. She told him that she ended the relationship when she married Ian but
Haynes refused to accept it was over. Leena continued working as Haynes's
secretary but claimed he had started to pressurise her, sending 30 to 40 texts
a day, that at times included explicit photographs, in an effort to force her
into reinstating the affair. Eventually she gave in and the liaison was
reignited at the firm's Christmas party in 2002. After that, Haynes and Mrs
Puddick began spending time together outside of work at restaurants, in hotel
rooms and at what she later described to one newspaper as, "wonderful
places around the country". Ian also found out that the affair was being
financed by Haynes using company expenses, a fact that was later determined by
expenses receipts fraudulently connected to client activities and supported by
a statement Leena Puddick provided to a Guy Carpenter disciplinary tribunal.
After deciding their marriage was
worth saving, Ian called Haynes and confronted him and by politely asking him
to move Mrs Puddick from working with him. According to Ian, Haynes became
abusive but and told him to mind his own businesses before slamming down the
phone. The following day Ian called Nick Frankland, the CEO of Guy Carpenter
and repeated his request to have his wife transferred away from working with
Haynes. In an emotional state, Ian embarked on a course of action devised to
embarrass Haynes by exposing his extra marital activities. He went to Sussex
where he surprised Mrs Haynes at home and told her of the affair shared by
their respective spouses. Following this, Ian's company received a series of
phone messages over the next five days from a female caller who asked him to
call Mrs Haynes, but the number the caller left was Timothy Haynes's mobile
number. Ian said that he knew the messages were not from Mrs Haynes as she is
German and speaks with a strong accent. This meant someone was trying to set
him up and he realised, that had he returned the calls, he would have left
himself open to all kinds of accusations. Subsequently, he found out that the
caller was Hazel Sibbald, an underwriter and friend of both Leena Puddick and
Haynes who it seems was returning a favour after Haynes was said to have helped
her get a better settlement in her divorce. In view of the dirty tricks being
played against him, Ian angrily informed some of Haynes's clients by telling
them that he was "a person of no integrity". He later admitted this
was wrong, but it was a case of his emotions getting the better of him at a very
difficult time. Without realising, his actions were about to unleash a powerful
string of events that would not remain a personal grievance between Ian and his
wife's lover, but would turn extremely frightening and land him in court
accused of various criminal activities, that incredulously included allegations
of possessing and dealing cocaine.
