Liberty Global waits board member John Dick regardless of child’s theft claims

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

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Liberty Global head office in Denver, Colorado

CNBC

Liberty Global, the biggest global television and broadband business, is waiting embattled board member John W. Dick, stating he serves in great standing.

Dick has actually ended up being involved in a conflict over apparently taken possessions that has actually produced headings worldwide as his child has actually implicated him of theft and of robbery possessions from household trusts.

Dick, who has actually served on the board of Liberty Global considering that 2005, lived for years on the island of Jersey, a crown dependence in the English Channel commonly considered as an overseas tax sanctuary and secrecy jurisdiction. There, he inhabited the distinguished estate calledSt John’s Manor, with 58 acres of gardens and parklands and winding, raked-gravel driveways that stimulates the British upper class of the “Downton Abbey” period.

Dick serves on Liberty Global’s business governance committee. The business states it is sticking to him as a board member regardless of the legal fight.

“John Dick is a Liberty Global board member in good standing,” business spokesperson Matt Beake stated in a composed declaration to CNBC. “These accusations relate to a family dispute, and no criminal charges have been levied by authorities, so you should direct these questions to them.”

“We’re aware of various ongoing estate planning claims among members of the extended Dick family,” Beake composed. “We are not a party to those proceedings and are not involved.”

Dick has actually rejected misbehavior. When CNBC reached him by telephone, he stated: “I don’t wish to answer your questions. This case has been reported on many times. You have all the information you need. I don’t want to get involved in it. But I appreciate your call.”

In a Colorado suit, Dick’s child Tanya Dick-Stock declared that her dad took as much as $50 million from a trust that was expected to benefit her under the regards to her moms and dads’ divorce. In her problem, Dick-Stock stated her dad hid details that would have permitted her to find the “fraud perpetuated” versus her. And in the fall of 2021 that suit was dismissed by a Colorado district court judge after the court stated Dick-Stock stopped working to stand for a hearing and publish a bond.

She compares her dad to a well-known investor who led a double life, “My father’s a lot like Bernie Madoff,” she stated. “Madoff operated on one floor doing the fraud, and there was legitimate business his sons were involved with on the other floor. That’s exactly what my father was doing.”

John Dick turned down the Bernie Madoff contrast outright.

John Dick

Tony Pike|Jersey Evening Post

“That is not true. The only people who believe this are Tanya Dick-Stock and Darrin Stock. Their claim is delusional, and supported by no evidence,” John Dick stated in a declaration provided to CNBC by a representative. Darrin Stock is Tanya Dick-Stock’s other half.

Dick has actually been an active member of the board of LibertyGlobal In 2008, for instance, he brought a financial investment chance to the business’s attention: A satellite business to be headquartered on the Channel island where he lived.

The brand-new business was released on the island of Jersey and called “O3B,” the initials referencing the expression “Other 3 Billion”– a statement of the business’s objective to bring satellite interactions innovation to individuals worldwide who did not yet have access to it.

Dick rested on the board of the brand-new business and got a substantial portion of equity ownership for himself. A different business he managed functioned as the registration representative for the brand-new satellite business. And the CEO of the brand-new business was an American executive who himself had individual ownership of several overseas entities on the island ofJersey John Dick’s company handled those overseas entities on behalf of the satellite business’s CEO.

The CEO informed CNBC all overseas entities he owned were appropriately revealed to the internal revenue service.

Although he got equity in the brand-new business, it is unclear if Dick invested any funds of his own prior to getting shares. Liberty Global spokesperson Beake referred the concern to Dick separately.

Asked whether it was a dispute of interest for a board member to advise the business invest funds into an entity in which he came to have an individual ownership stake, Beake stated: “We are a public company and potential conflicts of interest come up in the ordinary course of business. Like other public companies, we have robust internal processes in place designed to address any issues, for example by making sure that anyone with a potential conflict is not part of the ultimate decision-making and that their involvement is disclosed to those making the final decisions.”

A household drama covering the world

Over the previous numerous years Dick has actually been taken part in an impressive bad blood over the considerable international possessions of his household. The fight has actually gotten press protection in publications varying from The Guardian to Institutional Investor.

That battle has actually occurred in courts worldwide and has actually included scrums over ownership of Jersey Trusts, realty in London, an apartment or condo inSt Petersburg in Russia, and a painting valued in the countless dollars: “Madonna and Child” by the Italian master Botticelli.

The legal wrangling has actually not typically gone Tanya Dick-Stock’s method. In one 2019 judgment, for instance, a Jersey court described court procedures in the conflict in the United States, stating, “We did not find Tanya’s explanation to us of the things that she said in the deposition in Colorado convincing.” The newest skirmish has actually occurred in a federal court in Colorado: an overseas law practice based in Jersey is taking legal action against Dick-Stock and her other half for more than a half million dollars in what it states are overdue legal charges.

Tanya Dick-Stock in turn levies an allegation versus the overseas facility she states she’s battling versus: The court system on the island of Jersey is deeply prejudiced, bogged down by interlocking relationships and the desire to safeguard the island’s financially rewarding sell overseas secrecy.

Jersey is called a “dependency” of the United Kingdom, however it is independent, positioning it in a legal gray zone in which it can produce its own monetary guidelines independent of British monetary regulators. It has actually established a secrecy program that has actually drawn in huge quantities of cash from financiers worldwide.

The not-for-profit group Tax Justice Network, which argues for more disclosure in overseas tax sanctuaries, ranks JerseyNo 16 worldwide in regards to monetary secrecy. Jersey trusts, offshore corporations and structures “combined with judicial separation from the UK, provide an effective secrecy space that attracts illicit financial flows from across the world,” the group states. The Tax Justice Network states that regardless of its small population of almost 100,000 individuals, Jersey manages a projected ₤ 1 trillion ($ 1.35 trillion) in possessions and is the signed up address of more than 33,000 business.

Jersey Finance, a trade association on the island representing the monetary sector and the island’s federal government, has actually promoted current legislation that it states will assist Jersey satisfy global disclosure requirements. The group states the 2021 law will increase the quantity of details revealed for Jersey business and will offer a “revised statutory framework as to how beneficial ownership information, which will not be made publicly available, is provided.”

Today, they are at chances. But Tanya Dick-Stock remembers her early life with her dad as reasonably placid. “I think we had kind of a normal father-daughter relationship,” she stated. “Was it always smooth? No. But since when do fathers and daughters get along all the time?”

Things started to alter when John Dick’s realty financial investments began to yield massive returns while Tanya was maturing in the UnitedStates That’s when, she stated, John Dick and her late mom started to wander apart. Dick was strong-willed and daring. His other half, by contrast, was extremely spiritual and conservative.

“My parents were married as teenagers,” Dick-Stock remembers. “My mom, to the day she died, was such a straight arrow. No drinking, no dancing, no smoking. If you went to a movie on a Sunday – that was the Lord’s day – you were going to hell.”

One point of contention in the marital relationship: as John Dick’s monetary success grew, he started to wish to amuse extravagantly in a way befitting his brand-new station. But his other half didn’t desire alcohol served in your house. According to Dick-Stock’s suit versus her dad in Colorado, when the couple lastly separated, specific marital possessions were put in trust for Tanya and her bro. It’s the worth of those possessions, and who had rightful control over them, that is at the center of the fight in between dad and child.

John Dick proclaims self-confidence that he will eventually dominate in the conflict: “No court has found in favour of the Dick-Stocks,” he stated in a declaration provided by a representative. “At some stage the legal process will catch up with the couple, as will their mountain of unpaid debts. There is no possible outcome other than personal and financial ruin for the couple which saddens me greatly.”

Squash court discovery

The father-daughter fight has actually been sustained by an uncommon discovery: a chest of more than 350,000 pages of files that Dick-Stock states she and her other half, Darrin Stock, found in 2012, stowed away in lots of boxes in a squash court on the premises of theSt John’s Manor estate.

The files, lots of which were evaluated by CNBC, apparently information the inner operations of a trust and estate company established byDick That business was called La Hougue, and it ran trusts on the island of Jersey for rich customers from worldwide.

Among the files apparently discovered in the squash court is a La Hougue memo identified “CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION” that was resolved to a potential customer obviously thinking about positioning cash in the overseas care of the Jersey company. The memo sets out 11 “methods available to enable the movement of assets offshore.”

One of the methods was a financial investment in a Mexican advancement owned by La Hougue, which would then be “credited” to the customer’s account.

“If inquiries were made by the investor’s Tax Authority, suitable confirmations and assurances as to the non-profitability can be given to show that, to date, there had been no capital gain and no income distributions had occurred,” the memo stated.

The La Hougue memo, which does not point out Dick and was signed by a firm authorities, ensured potential La Hougue customers of overall secrecy: “No information could be obtained separately by any investigating party.”

John Dick at St John’s Manor

Tony Pike|Jersey Evening Post

But such secrecy features a catch. The issue for customers looking for such ironclad secrecy is that their requirement for privacy provided La Hougue utilize over them– along with control over their monetary possessions. La Hougue appears to have actually wanted, on one celebration, to utilize that utilize versus its own customers.

Another memo found in the squash court information a conflict with rich customers in Canada over the worth of the customer account and the customer’s demand to “wind down” their rely onJersey But the Jersey estate business obviously did not wish to part with the cash. The memo information hazards La Hougue obviously thought about making to its own customers in reaction, consisting of to expose the customers’ holdings to tax authorities in Canada if the customer continued to object.

The memo is resolved to John Dick and proposes an action to the customer: I will “be left with no alternative but to reveal all.” It is unclear whether Dick checked out the memo or how he responded to it.

The memo threatened to expose “source of funds, tax anomalies, where the distributions actually went.” What’s more, the memo stated the Jersey business “will have no conscience in tipping off Revenue Canada about both of them, in specific [a consultant] who our company believe masterminded all of it!”

Records evaluated by CNBC do not show how that conflict was solved, or whether the company carried out the proposition.

Through a representative, John Dick stated there was scams at La Hougue, however that it was performed by an executive of the business without Dick’s understanding– which Dick himself was a victim. The spokesperson stated an executive at the company confessed to developing incorrect files and stated Dick had no oversight or participation in the everyday operations of La Hougue at the time.

Tanya Dick-Stock stated there’s more at stake in her long legal fight than simply her own individual riches. In her view, the battle is likewise about the legal structure of Jersey, which she declares empowers monetary misfeasance on an international scale.

“If all they were doing on Jersey is milking cows and growing potatoes, I’d be good with it,” she stated. “But they want to be an international financial center. So there has to be law and it has to be enforced.”

A function in Rwanda

Dick’s globe-spanning profession has actually taken him far beyond the island ofJersey Canadian born and of Ukrainian ethnic descent, Dick has actually likewise been associated with comprehensive company negotiations inRwanda But the precise status of his relationship with the present Rwandan federal government is ambiguous. Dick states that he is the ambassador at big of the African nation which he brings a diplomatic passport. But the Rwandan Embassy in Washington decreases to comment. And Liberty Global, where Dick rests on the board of directors, states it does rule out him to be a diplomat.

For years, Dick functioned as a board member of numerous telecoms business in Rwanda, at a time that nation was having a hard time to emerge from a period of violent genocide. And Rwandan President Paul Kagame supposedly checked out Dick’s long time house ofSt John’s Manor numerous times.

As just recently as 2019, the year prior toSt John’s Manor was offered, the big, wrought-iron and stone entryway gate included a framed white indication with gold lettering reading: “Ambassador at Large Republic of Rwanda.”

In 2015, Dick gave an interview to a Rwandan paper and set out his vision for the nation. He stated he was pursuing a tax arrangement in between Jersey and Rwanda, and this would “open the doors for Rwanda to develop its financial system – the kind that Jersey has.”

“I think Rwanda can become the Jersey of Africa,” Dick stated.

In a 2015 deposition in a case including a household conflict, Dick informed a recruiter, “I am a Rwandan diplomat and I assist the country in a lot of different areas that involve business things.” He stated he had actually been a Rwandan diplomat for 13 or 14 years which he held a Rwandan diplomatic passport.

That raises the concern of whether Dick declares or is entitled to diplomatic resistance from prosecution worldwide. To response that concern, CNBC got in touch with the Rwandan Embassy in Washington personally and by telephone and e-mail. While authorities assured an action on numerous celebrations, nobody from the Rwandan Embassy or federal government validated that Dick is a diplomat for that nation.

A representative for Dick decreased to state straight whether Dick thinks he is entitled to declare diplomatic resistance, rather releasing a declaration that stated in part: “John has never relied on this in any legal proceedings, nor does he foresee that he is likely to.”

Liberty Global’s spokesperson informed CNBC the business was uninformed that Dick had actually declared he was a Rwandan diplomat.

Asked whether Liberty Global thinks about Dick to be a diplomat, the spokesperson reacted, “No.”

Steven Pifer, a previous U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and present senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center on the United States and Europe, called the scenario “bizarre.”

“I’ve never heard of Ambassador at Large being a secret,” Pifer stated. “It just seems weird to me.” He stated the truth that the Embassy of Rwanda has actually not validated or rejected Dick’s status “is not consistent with the US or the practice of any major country.” Pifer likewise stated: “If his company says it does not consider him to be a diplomat, I would be dubious. One might think the business would want to advertise that credential.”