Deception Read Free Page B

declined to comment. But the most startling aspect of Ms Chapman’s life in London has nothing to do with her glitzy friends; the clues to it lie in the dry documents of London’s Companies House.
    At first sight, the now defunct company Southern Union appears to have done little of consequence. Founded in 2002 , its declared activities were wholesale trade in food ‘including fish, crustaceans and molluscs’ and ‘other monetary intermediation’. It bears the same name as a former large money-transfer firm based in Zimbabwe, run by a bank close to that country’s ruling authorities, which transferred millions of pounds a month, often using ingenious financial mechanisms to avoid currency-control rules and local hyperinflation. The British Southern Union published its last accounts in 2009 and was wound up on 1 February 2011 . A Steven Sugden, born on 20 May 1974 , became a director in 2002 , also registered at the Chapmans’ address in Stoke Newington. An outsider might wonder if having a lodger in the couple’s one-bedroom flat was rather a tight fit. In 2006 , Mr ‘Sugden’, according to company documents, moved to Dublin.
    Had Ms Chapman not been unmasked as a spy, Southern Union and its directors would have escaped scrutiny. Yet the documents I have obtained and the evidence of witnesses suggest a tangled story reeking of identity theft, money laundering and secret-service dirty tricks. The story starts with a prominent Zimbabwean businessman called Ken Sharpe, who is a friend of Ms Chapman’s father. Mr Kushchenko introduced Mr Sharpe to his Russian wife, Joanna, a former dancer. ak In 2002 the Chapmans honeymooned in Zimbabwe, staying with the Sharpes. Most whites in Zimbabwe fare poorly. But those close to the regime can flourish mightily. American diplomats say Mr Sharpe is friendly with the regime of the Zimbabwean dictator, Robert Mugabe, and active in controversial construction schemes and also the gemstones trade. ‘In a country filled with corrupt schemes, the diamond business is one of the dirtiest,’ said a cable published on WikiLeaks, snappily entitled ‘Regime elites looting deadly diamond field’. 21 It would be easy to see why someone involved in such business might feel at home in Russia, and be disinclined to open his business affairs to scrutiny. At any rate, Mr Sharpe declined to respond to questions. The Sharpe family is clearly connected with the London company bearing the Southern Union name. Ken Sharpe’s sister-in-law Lindi Sharpe is listed on a document from September 2002 authorising the appointment of a director. This is puzzling. A search of Companies House shows no Lindi Sharpe connected with Southern Union. 22 It is not clear therefore how she was in a position to make such an appointment. In 2006 she and a Kenneth Sharpe were listed on the UK electoral roll at an address in London. 23 Nobody there responded to questions.
    By Mr Chapman’s admission, Southern Union was the couple’s principal means of support in the early years of their marriage. It paid him £ 40 , 000 a year plus a £ 10 , 000 payment in return for becoming a director. 24 That is not necessarily sinister: it could just have been a generous father-in-law asking an old friend to make sure that the newly-weds had an income. Mr Sharpe strenuously denies any wrongdoing, or indeed any connection with the UK end of Southern Union. He has said he was a client of the Zimbabwean end of the operation, but did not found it, operate it, or benefit financially from it. But according to Mr Chapman, his Southern Union, as well as handling large numbers of transactions with southern Africa, chiefly Zimbabwe, also made payments on the direct instructions of Ken Sharpe. A foreign intelligence service needing to send money to pay sources and fund operations would have found the company’s capabilities interesting.
    The links in this chain are individually just