Someone tried to buy the UK government

It came up in Hansard (the minutes of the House of Lords) on Monday. Or is trying to buy the UK government. I swear to God I am not making this up.

Here’s the transcript.

Essentially, Lord James said that he had been approached by “Foundation X”:

“For the past 20 weeks I have been engaged in a very strange dialogue with the two noble Lords, in the course of which I have been trying to bring to their attention the willing availability of a strange organisation which wishes to make a great deal of money available to assist the recovery of the economy in this country. For want of a better name, I shall call it foundation X. That is not its real name, but it will do for the moment.”

Lord James is an expert on terrorist and mob money. He is the man the bankers talk to when they want to know if a business is on the level or completely evil. It is manifestly clear that he isn’t the goodie here; he even says as much. He knows people. So when someone goes, I have a lot of money, they go to him.

Here’s the thing. He says:

“The City firm came to me and asked whether I could get a reference and a clearance on foundation X. For 20 weeks, I have been endeavouring to do that. I have come to the absolute conclusion that foundation X is completely genuine and sincere and that it directly wishes to make the United Kingdom one of the principal points that it will use to disseminate its extraordinarily great wealth into the world at this present moment, as part of an attempt to seek the recovery of the global economy.”

Wait, what?

“I found myself between a rock and a hard place that were totally paranoid about each other, because the foundation X people have an amazing obsession with their own security. They expect to be contacted only by someone equal to head of state status or someone with an international security rating equal to the top six people in the world. This is a strange situation.”

Messed-up metaphors aside, why would they do this?

” My point on all of this is that we have not proven any of this. Foundation X is saying at this moment that it is prepared to put up the entire £5 billion for the funding of the three Is recreation; the British Government can have the entire independent management and control of it-foundation X does not want anything to do with it; there will be no interest charged; and, by the way, if the British Government would like it as well, if it will help, it will be prepared to put up money for funding hospitals, schools, the building of Crossrail immediately with £17 billion transfer by Christmas, if requested, and all these other things. These things can be done, if wished, but a senior member of the Government has to accept the invitation to a phone call to the chairman of foundation X-and then we can get into business. This is too big an issue. I am just an ageing, obsessive old Peer and I am easily dispensable, but getting to the truth is not. We need to know what really is happening here. We must find out the truth of this situation.”

No one gives up 17 billion pounds (nearly 30 billion dollars) for altruistic reasons.

Do they?

Do they?