Cliff Stanford: The maverick Internet pioneer
Published: 16 Sep 2005 13:20 BST
...he gained new-found notoriety in the wake of a tabloid kiss-and-tell scandal. A News of the World spread carried claims of a champagne fuelled romp with two table dancers at the Claridge's Hotel (from which he was subsequently banned) and on his jet, although he denied the story.
Then, in 1999, his Spanish au pair, Rocio Wanninkhof, was abducted and killed while visiting a fair at her home-town. Although he offered a reward at the time and again in 2003 to anyone who could provide information, no one has ever been convicted for her murder.
By June 2002, however, Stanford hit the headlines again when he sensationally resigned his position as non-executive deputy chairman of a Redbus Interhouse, along with two other directors. The move had followed a row with the chairman, John Porter, a long-term friend and one of the first investors in Demon Internet.
Their dispute centred on the fact that Stanford, true to form, wanted to expand the colocation and Internet hosting company's operations, while Porter was keen to introduce cost-cutting measures in line with the difficult economic environment following the dot com bust. Stanford had already launched several attempts to take control of Rebus Interhouse by ousting its board, but had proved unsuccessful.
But things were about to get even more difficult. By August 2003, Redbus Interhouse sued him for allegedly using £85,000 of company funds to renovate his villa in Malaga a couple of years earlier.
By September 2003, Stanford had sold his stake in the organisation after seeing the value of his shareholding plummet from £150m five years before to about £3m at that point, in what must have been a blow to a man who was avowedly motivated by money.
To make matters worse that month he was arrested, along with private investigator and former Redbus employee George Liddell, by the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit. Stanford was charged with conspiracy to blackmail and of intercepting communications under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, but denied the allegations.
These centred on claims that during his bitter boardroom battle with John Porter, Stanford had hired Liddell to install a mirror wall in Redbus Interactive's email system, which made a copy of each email that John Porter received and sent it to a separate account that Stanford accessed.
Among the emails was correspondence between Porter and his mother, Tesco heiress Dame Shirley, which revealed that she was loaning him money and taking decisions on what to do with multiple millions of pounds in her possession. This was despite the fact that she had claimed she was unable to pay a surcharge of £40m for political corruption levied by the House of Lords because her global assets amounted to only £300,000.
In the end, she was forced to pay £12.3 million in full and final settlement of the scandal.
But, although Dame Shirley may have got her just desserts, the upshot of all this manoeuvring is that Stanford has now been fined £20,000 and received a six-month suspended sentence. The risk taker may have taken one risk too many.
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