Liberty Global stands by board member John Dick despite daughter’s theft claims

Over the previous a number of years Dick has been engaged in an epic household feud over the substantial international belongings of his household. The battle has acquired press protection in publications starting from The Guardian to Institutional Investor.

That battle has taken place in courts all over the world and has featured scrums over possession of Jersey Trusts, actual property in London, an condominium in St. Petersburg in Russia, and a portray valued within the tens of millions of {dollars}: “Madonna and Child” by the Italian grasp Botticelli.

The authorized wrangling has not typically gone Tanya Dick-Stock’s means. In one 2019 ruling, for instance, a Jersey court docket referred to court docket proceedings within the dispute within the United States, saying, “We didn’t discover Tanya’s rationalization to us of the issues that she stated within the deposition in Colorado convincing.” The most up-to-date skirmish has taken place in a federal court docket in Colorado: an offshore legislation agency based mostly in Jersey is suing Dick-Stock and her husband for greater than a half million {dollars} in what it says are unpaid authorized charges.

Tanya Dick-Stock in flip levies an accusation towards the offshore institution she says she’s combating towards: The court docket system on the island of Jersey is deeply biased, mired by interlocking relationships and the will to guard the island’s profitable commerce in offshore secrecy.

Jersey is named a “dependency” of the United Kingdom, however it’s self-governing, inserting it in a authorized grey zone wherein it might create its personal monetary guidelines unbiased of British monetary regulators. It has developed a secrecy regime that has attracted huge quantities of cash from traders all over the world.

The nonprofit group Tax Justice Network, which argues for extra disclosure in offshore tax havens, ranks Jersey No. 16 on this planet when it comes to monetary secrecy. Jersey trusts, offshore companies and foundations “mixed with judicial separation from the UK, present an efficient secrecy house that draws illicit monetary flows from the world over,” the group says. The Tax Justice Network says that despite its tiny inhabitants of nearly 100,000 individuals, Jersey controls an estimated £1 trillion ($1.35 trillion) in belongings and is the registered handle of greater than 33,000 firms.

Jersey Finance, a commerce affiliation on the island representing the monetary sector and the island’s authorities, has touted latest laws that it says will assist Jersey meet worldwide disclosure requirements. The group says the 2021 legislation will enhance the quantity of knowledge made public for Jersey firms and can present a “revised statutory framework as to how helpful possession data, which is not going to be made publicly accessible, is offered.”

Today, they’re at odds. But Tanya Dick-Stock remembers her youth together with her father as comparatively placid. “I feel we had form of a traditional father-daughter relationship,” she stated. “Was it all the time easy? No. But since when do fathers and daughters get alongside on a regular basis?”

Things started to alter when John Dick’s actual property investments began to yield huge returns whereas Tanya was rising up within the United States. That’s when, she stated, John Dick and her late mom started to float aside. Dick was strong-willed and adventurous. His spouse, by distinction, was extremely spiritual and conservative.

“My dad and mom have been married as youngsters,” Dick-Stock remembers. “My mother, to the day she died, was such a straight arrow. No ingesting, no dancing, no smoking. If you went to a film on a Sunday – that was the Lord’s day – you have been going to hell.”

One level of rivalry within the marriage: as John Dick’s monetary success grew, he started to wish to entertain lavishly in a fashion befitting his new station. But his spouse did not need alcohol served in the home. According to Dick-Stock’s lawsuit towards her father in Colorado, when the couple lastly divorced, sure marital belongings have been positioned in belief for Tanya and her brother. It’s the worth of these belongings, and who had rightful management over them, that’s on the heart of the battle between father and daughter.

John Dick professes confidence that he’ll finally prevail within the dispute: “No court docket has present in favour of the Dick-Stocks,” he stated in a press release issued by a spokesman. “At some stage the authorized course of will meet up with the couple, as will their mountain of unpaid money owed. There is not any doable consequence apart from private and monetary break for the couple which saddens me drastically.”

The father-daughter battle has been fueled by a uncommon discovery: a trove of greater than 350,000 pages of paperwork that Dick-Stock says she and her husband, Darrin Stock, found in 2012, stashed in dozens of packing containers in a squash court docket on the grounds of the St. John’s Manor property.

The paperwork, dozens of which have been reviewed by CNBC, allegedly element the interior workings of a belief and property agency based by Dick. That firm was often known as La Hougue, and it operated trusts on the island of Jersey for rich purchasers from all over the world.

Among the paperwork allegedly discovered within the squash court docket is a La Hougue memo labeled “CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION” that was addressed to a potential consumer apparently contemplating inserting cash within the offshore care of the Jersey agency. The memo lays out 11 “strategies accessible to allow the motion of belongings offshore.”

One of the methods was an funding in a Mexican improvement owned by La Hougue, which might then be “credited” to the consumer’s account.

“If inquiries have been made by the investor’s Tax Authority, appropriate confirmations and assurances as to the non-profitability may be given to indicate that, thus far, there had been no capital achieve and no revenue distributions had occurred,” the memo stated.

The La Hougue memo, which doesn’t point out Dick and was signed by a agency official, assured potential La Hougue purchasers of whole secrecy: “No data may very well be obtained individually by any investigating social gathering.”

But such secrecy comes with a catch. The downside for purchasers searching for such ironclad secrecy is that their want for confidentiality gave La Hougue leverage over them – in addition to management over their monetary belongings. La Hougue seems to have been prepared, on one event, to make use of that leverage towards its personal purchasers.

Another memo found within the squash court docket particulars a dispute with rich purchasers in Canada over the worth of the consumer account and the consumer’s request to “wind down” their belief in Jersey. But the Jersey property firm apparently didn’t wish to half with the cash. The memo particulars threats La Hougue apparently thought of making to its personal purchasers in response, together with to disclose the purchasers’ holdings to tax authorities in Canada if the consumer continued to object.

The memo is addressed to John Dick and proposes a response to the consumer: I’ll “be left with no different however to disclose all.” It will not be clear whether or not Dick learn the memo or how he reacted to it.

The memo threatened to disclose “supply of funds, tax anomalies, the place the distributions really went.” What’s extra, the memo stated the Jersey firm “could have no conscience in tipping off Revenue Canada about each of them, particularly [a consultant] who we imagine masterminded all of it!”

Records reviewed by CNBC don’t point out how that dispute was resolved, or whether or not the agency carried out the proposal.

Through a spokesman, John Dick stated there was fraud at La Hougue, however that it was carried out by an govt of the corporate with out Dick’s information – and that Dick himself was a sufferer. The spokesman stated an govt on the agency admitted to creating inaccurate paperwork and stated Dick had no oversight or involvement within the day-to-day operations of La Hougue on the time.

Tanya Dick-Stock stated there’s extra at stake in her lengthy authorized battle than simply her personal private riches. In her view, the struggle can be in regards to the authorized construction of Jersey, which she alleges empowers monetary misfeasance on a worldwide scale.

“If all they have been doing on Jersey is milking cows and rising potatoes, I’d be good with it,” she stated. “But they wish to be a global monetary heart. So there must be legislation and it must be enforced.”

Dick’s globe-spanning profession has taken him far past the island of Jersey. Canadian born and of Ukrainian ethnic descent, Dick has additionally been concerned in intensive enterprise dealings in Rwanda. But the precise standing of his relationship with the present Rwandan authorities is nebulous. Dick says that he’s the ambassador at massive of the African nation and that he carries a diplomatic passport. But the Rwandan Embassy in Washington declines to remark. And Liberty Global, the place Dick sits on the board of administrators, says it doesn’t contemplate him to be a diplomat.

For years, Dick served as a board member of varied telecommunications firms in Rwanda, at a time that nation was struggling to emerge from an period of violent genocide. And Rwandan President Paul Kagame reportedly visited Dick’s longtime residence of St. John’s Manor a number of occasions.

As lately as 2019, the 12 months earlier than St. John’s Manor was offered, the big, wrought-iron and stone entrance gate featured a framed white signal with gold lettering studying: “Ambassador at Large Republic of Rwanda.”

In 2015, Dick granted an interview to a Rwandan newspaper and laid out his imaginative and prescient for the nation. He stated he was pursuing a tax settlement between Jersey and Rwanda, and this could “open the doorways for Rwanda to develop its monetary system – the sort that Jersey has.”

“I feel Rwanda can turn into the Jersey of Africa,” Dick stated.

In a 2015 deposition in a case involving a household dispute, Dick informed an interviewer, “I’m a Rwandan diplomat and I help the nation in lots of totally different areas that contain enterprise issues.” He stated he had been a Rwandan diplomat for 13 or 14 years and that he held a Rwandan diplomatic passport.

That raises the query of whether or not Dick claims or is entitled to diplomatic immunity from prosecution all over the world. To reply that query, CNBC contacted the Rwandan Embassy in Washington in particular person and by phone and electronic mail. While officers promised a response on a number of events, nobody from the Rwandan Embassy or authorities confirmed that Dick is a diplomat for that nation.

A spokesman for Dick declined to say straight whether or not Dick believes he’s entitled to say diplomatic immunity, as an alternative issuing a press release that stated partially: “John has by no means relied on this in any authorized proceedings, nor does he foresee that he’s more likely to.”

Liberty Global’s spokesman informed CNBC the corporate was unaware that Dick had claimed he was a Rwandan diplomat.

Asked whether or not Liberty Global considers Dick to be a diplomat, the spokesman responded, “No.”

Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and present senior fellow on the Brookings Institution’s Center on the United States and Europe, known as the scenario “weird.”

“I’ve by no means heard of Ambassador at Large being a secret,” Pifer stated. “It simply appears bizarre to me.” He stated the truth that the Embassy of Rwanda has not confirmed or denied Dick’s standing “will not be per the US or the apply of any main nation.” Pifer additionally stated: “If his firm says it doesn’t contemplate him to be a diplomat, I’d be doubtful. One may assume the enterprise would wish to promote that credential.”