London: The government accepted thousands of pounds from a fraudster to assist a global trade in fake bomb detectors despite a Whitehall-wide warning that such devices were “no better than guessing” and could be deadly.
The Kent businessman Gary Bolton paid the government to enlist serving soldiers and a British ambassador in what turned out to be the fraudulent sale of bomb detectors based on novelty golf ball finders. Bolton, 48, was sentenced to seven years in jail last year for fraud after claims that use of his handheld devices cost lives and resulted in wrongful convictions.
The ability of UK firms to hire top diplomats to arrange introductions for as little as £250 a time, and serving soldiers to act as salesmen for £109 a day plus VAT, without checks on the authenticity of products, is revealed in Whitehall documents about Bolton’s dealings with the UK government released to the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act.
The government accepted more than £5,000 from the fraudster to supply uniformed Royal Engineers to promote the bogus kit at international trade fairs, and to secure the backing of Giles Paxman, the brother of the BBC presenter Jeremy Paxman and then UK ambassador to Mexico, who set up sales meetings for Bolton’s firm with senior Mexican officials engaged in the country’s bloody drugs war. The British embassy in Manila also helped, and Whitehall trade bodies took money to support Global Technical at least 13 times from 2003 to 2009 as Bolton made up to £3m a year. Sentencing Bolton last year, an Old Bailey judge said the scam “materially increased the risk of personal injury and death”. The Guardian
