The Pyramid of Lies: Lex Greensill and the Billion-Dollar Scandal

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Discovery Channel Nederland". Discoverychannel.co.uk. Archived from the original on 5 December 2004 . Retrieved 16 November 2012. Written like a taut thriller, the author has painstakingly researched a highly complex web of deceit, and laid bare an extraordinary true scandal which ensnared the UK Government, and casts doubt on the integrity of then British prime minister himself. The firm’s founder, Lex Greensill, and a handful of early investors collectively took hundreds of millions of dollars in cash out of the business. They were rich, and Lex made sure everyone knew it.

Pyramid of Lies: The Prime Minister, the Banker and the The Pyramid of Lies: The Prime Minister, the Banker and the

IT WAS THE era of the dotcom boom – even farmers in remote Bundaberg had taken notice. Tech or internet businesses were all the rage. If you wanted to earn a fortune, the tech scene was where you needed to be. Lex wanted in on it and moved to Sydney’s richer pastures. Shortly afterwards, reports emerged that the politician was having an extramarital affair with Spectator columnist Petronella Wyatt. Mr Johnson initially dismissed the claims as an “inverted pyramid of piffle”, before more concrete evidence came to light. Kratovac, Katarina (5 June 2008). "Egypt uncovers 'missing' pyramid of a pharaoh". Yahoo News. Associated Press. Archived from the original on 9 June 2008 . Retrieved 6 June 2008. Many pyramids are in a poor state of preservation or buried by desert sands. If visible at all, they may appear as little more than mounds of rubble. As a consequence, archaeologists are continuing to identify and study previously unknown pyramid structures.DUNCAN MAVIN: That's a great question. So I -- yes, you're right, I've been following this for probably about 4 years now, maybe a little longer than that. And at the time -- I've been a financial journalist for a long time. I was a chartered accountant before that. So just so you know where I'm coming from. But at the time, I wasn't writing an awful lot. I was doing a bit more editing and managing people. And a source -- a longtime source of mine came to me and said, hey, are you paying attention to this company called Greensill Capital? And I said, no, never heard of them. An epic true story of ambition, greed and hubris – the collapse of Greensill Capital is a billion pound scandal that shredded the reputation of a British Prime Minister. And so they're kind of leaning on each other. And if you take one -- takes the other away, then it all collapses. At Greensill Capital, absolutely Lex and the other executives know that this is a problem. They discuss it all the time in management meetings, how are they going to kind of get out of this problem. Lex being the optimist at all these management meetings will say, leave it to me, I've got it sorted, we'll outgrow this. Of course, they couldn't.

Pyramid of Lies by Duncan Mavin | Waterstones

The S&P Global Foundation is about much more than philanthropy—we are about making a difference by finding and developing essential connections between the knowledge- and skill-driven work of S&P Global and the needs of society. DUNCAN MAVIN: Yes. I mean I think that's also another really important point. And I think it's always very tempting with these kind of white collar scandals to think that there are no victims, but there are victims here, not least the 1,000 or so Greensill employees who lost their jobs. So Credit Suisse's role was to provide the funding for these supply chain finance transactions and other loans, although they might argue they didn't know that's what was happening. NATHAN HUNT: There is no Greensill Capital without Lex Greensill. So who is this guy? Where did he come from? And what motivated him to get as far as he did?

I became deeply concerned that Greensill was connected to the break-in. The thief had stolen my bag containing something a source had handed to me earlier that afternoon. Someone must have followed me, I reasoned. They must have been looking to intimidate me or to uncover my sources, I thought. Maybe I was paranoid. Maybe I was wrong. But dealing with Greensill left me thinking anything was possible. While other alleged affairs have been attached to Mr Johnson’s name throughout his career, claims of an alleged fling with American tech entrepreneur Jennifer Arcuri have attracted the most media attention.