On June 21, 2007, I wrote the following piece for the East London Advertiser:
THE Town Hall has cut links with organisers of the East End’s biggest culture festival after allegations connected to work permits.
Tower Hamlets council chief executive Martin Smith has decided to suspend its “service level agreement” with the Baishakhi Mela Trust following a number of concerns with last May’s event.
He has also announced an investigation into what happened, including an examination of the trust’s accounts.
As the Advertiser reported last month, UK immigration chiefs were forced to reject dozens of work permit and visa applications for artists wanting to perform at the event.
The Mela, which attracts 500,000 people and celebrates the Bangladeshi New Year, is the East End’s most prestigious festival.
But many community leaders are worried its world famous reputation is being sullied.
Bethnal Green MP George Galloway, who flagged up his concerns to the council more than a year ago, has demanded an inquiry to determine whether the Mela has been abused to smuggle illegal immigrants into Britain.
In a letter to the MP, council boss Martin Smith said: “We are aware that there have been allegations from sections of the community of both financial and immigration irregularities on the part of the Trust.
“The council has repeatedly made it clear both in general terms and specifically to the individuals concerned, that any evidence substantiating these allegations would either be dealt with by the council, or in the case of immigration issues, be passed to the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police.”
However, he added:“Up until now, no such evidence has been forthcoming. I am advised that some issues which cause us concern, have been identified and the council has therefore taken prompt action to suspend the service level agreement at this point.
“The relevant evidence will be explored as part of a thorough review of the SLA.”
Mr Galloway has asked for assurances that the council’s findings will be made public.
The Baishakhi Mela Trust could not be contacted for comment.
Five years later (five years in which George Galloway and his comrades in Respect somehow found it within their high political and moral principles to jump into bed with Mr Haque), the following is being reported on bd24.com:
Sun, May 27th, 2012 6:37 pm BdST
Dhaka, May 27 (bdnews24.com) –Police have arrested 19 Bangladeshi applicants for UK visa at the British High Commission in Dhaka on charges of fraud.
The applicants were arrested on May 24 as they had provided forged documentation and false statements with their business visitor visa applications to attend the London Boisakhi Mela, as stall holders, the High Commission said in a media statement.
The Bangladeshi law-enforcers worked in close cooperation with the UK Border Agency and discovered that the applicants had misrepresented their employment status and produced forged bank statements.
The group admitted that they had paid agents up to Tk 1 million (approximately £10,000) each to facilitate their visa applications and provide forged documents.
Nick Low, British Deputy High Commissioner, said: “We do not tolerate abuse of our immigration system and have a zero tolerance to fraud.”
Terming the agents criminals, he strongly advised visa applicants not to listen to agents who offer to sell forged documents and say they can guarantee a visa.
Following Lutfur Rahman’s election to Tower Hamlets Mayor, it was widely predicted here and elsewhere that his self-styled main financial backer, millionaire housing association tenant Mr Haque, would soon be given back control of the annual Mela. And last July, as I reported here, it came to pass.
Now, there is no suggestion that he has any links to these arrests in Dhaka, but I would imagine that investigations are underway to find out just who was demanding the £10,000 fees for “visa facilitation”.
So I wonder whether whoever is the chief executive of rudderless Tower Hamlets Council at the moment will take the same strong decision as Martin Smith five years ago and suspend relations with the Boishakhi Mela Community Trust pending these investigations? I doubt it. We remember what happened to Martin a year later, don’t we… .
Incidentally, here’s what Shiraj has to say about last week’s Mela in today’s East End Life:
“We delivered a Boishakhi Mela the entire community were able to enjoy, a mela that brought people of all generations and cultures to Tower Hamlets, to celebrate Bangladeshi heritage.”
So much of what that man touches becomes sullied. Why does he seem to have so much influence?
UPDATE – 6.45pm, Sunday, May 27.
The British High Commission in Dhaka has a statement on its website here.
As I say in a comment below, it’s my understanding that anyone applying for a business visa to the UK needs a British based business sponsor. These come in the form of a letter from the UK business which would attest to the true nature of teh work to be done.
I’d imagine that the Boishakhi Community Mela Trust probably provided such letters to artistes from Bangladesh. I’ve no idea whether it did so in the case of the arrested 19 wannabe “skilled worker” stall-holders.
It’s quite thin, though, Ted. What you’re saying is that people used forged bank statements to try to gain Visas saying they wanted to be stall holders at the Mela. Haque is chair of the trust that runs the Mela.
There is no direct link.
All around the world people are using forged docs to try to get visas for the UK. Once they’re in the UK they’re using forged or stolen docs in order to get work. They’re easily caught because the docs are often just made on a PC. A phone call to the bank is all it takes to show them to be false.
As I said, Dan, I’ve not seen anything to suggest a link, but it is my understanding that anyone applying for a business visa to the UK (as these people were) would have had to had a sponsor here. It’s quite possible that the sponsor would have been the Baishakhi Community Mela Trust.
If so, Shiraj as chair would have done the signing of the sponsoring letter. Maybe these were part of the forgeries as well. Let’s see what happens in the investigation.
Full details of what you need to get a temporary work visa can be found here.
I’m also intrigued how “stall holders” would fall into the UKBA’s Tier 5 skilled worker categories.
While on the topic of the Mela (and I thought it would show up on this blog sooner or later), what is the cost of the very heavy police presence it seems to need? While stuck in traffic on the Bethnal Green Road last Sunday evening I think I saw 17 seperate police riot vans, and can only suppose that this was a small proportion of those needed ….
Tim
OK, so it’s probe rather than a finished piece.
I’d say the whole Bangla community is a criminal enterprise when it comes to immigration, especially in the restaurant business. But are you really expecting documentary evidence to land on your desk linking Haque?
I think it’s unlikely that you will find Haque’s fingerprint visually swelling up in the lens of your magnifying glass, Ted.
First the labelling, then the gassing. You wish. we won’t die, we just multiply. I hope all your neighbours are ethnic even better if Bengali, everyday of your is hell for you. Lol, if you need a hug, let me know.
Curry King’s fingerprints are all over the accounts. The Mela was taken away from him because the accountants said he wasn’t fit to run it. Maccurry’s friend Lutfur Rahman gave it back as a part of the deal to compensate his financial backers.
Give up Maccurry, now Livingstone has gone the far left like yourself are finished in London and there is no way you are going to get Lutfur back into the Labour Party.
How do you earn your living by the way?
Dan, how can you blame the whole Bangladeshi community and level them as criminal enterprise? This is really shocking and i condemn Ted for publishing this ‘unedited.’ You can not blame the whole community for the tiny minorities criminal act.
Anyway, Betar Bangla Community Radio held a Press Briefing after the Mela, about the conduct of Mr Siraj Haque. There has been allegations against him for not being paying proper fees to the artists and paying himself instead (his restaurant). Also various companies under the names of ‘Clifton’ has been given sub-contracts for the Mela. I would not be surprise if Channel S has some involvements.
Interesting thing about the dates which does suggest fraud, and not a very sophisticated one at that. bdnews24 reports that the 19 were arrested on May 24th as that applied with forged documentation for their visas. That was last Thursday and the Mela was the weekend before that.
“We delivered a Boishakhi Mela the entire community were able to enjoy, a mela that brought people of all generations and cultures to Tower Hamlets, to celebrate Bangladeshi heritage.”
Err not really. The mela is not a historic event that “entire community” feel welcome to attend and if you actually went it is not culturally encompassing at all. It is not engaging. Our local links to historic Bangladesh are tenuous at best. The event is rife with internecine violence and factional bravado. I am looking forward to seeing the same “entire community” celebrating the Jewish New Year! Also looking forward to the Bangladeshi involvement in the Jubilee!
Being a “multicultural” society that we are we should each celebrate each others historic dates and I feel that the Bangladeshi involvement is paramount to multicultural involvement and progression.
Unfortunately, I didn’t see many Bangladeshi’s at the Marathon, and I don’t hold out much hope seeing many of them at the Jubilee. As fro Olympic support – we will see:)
Yap, we are all at it. Bringing illegal cow herders from villages in Bangladesh to serve you third rate curries then to rule you from the town hall. I wonder if anyone checked the mayor’s immigration status? Apart from his underwar size that’s about the only thing we haven’t discusses here.
Mad Mullah is Graeme, by the way.
And Dan is a racist
Waaaaa Sylhetmanosh wants his mummy! While I don’t have any facts to add to this high brow debate I do have decades of personal experience living here and when I worked at a language school in Whitechapel during 2011 the owners, Bengali of course, were known (the administrators would discuss it openly) to take £10,000 bungs to fake language qualifications to get compatriots needing proof of English proficiency into the country. They had it all sewn up nicely. This was not a “single rogue school” because a friend of mine who taught at a rival school in E1 (also Bengali owned) was forced from her job after refusing to be complicit in a similar scam. Let’s just be truthful and say that an incorruptible Bangladeshi is a rare thing indeed. Bangladesh has topped the Corruption Perceptions Index more than any other country in history and probably only moved from the coveted top spot after five years at number one because they had finallt found the right man at Transparency International to tap!
Oh I can hear the wails of indignation already! Boo hoo! Dan wasn’t far from the truth when he said what he said – but I’d go further! This tawdry borough urgently needs the Audit Commission to go through its accounts, the Electoral Commission to run it’s votes and Jeremy Kylie to supervise its meetings.
The collaborators’ shrill demands to censor Dan’s comments are quite typical!! Vive La Résistance!
PS: Build some toilets.
….. and James F – you need to get a proper job quick as getting fired from the Bengali newspaper, sorry, leving because you suddenly felt some moralit hit has turned into a real Bengali hater!!!
So what did you do when you ‘heard’ these discussions of bungs? Did you stick your head above the parapit like this other woman, or you carry on taking a salary from thur corrupt Bengalis?
Fix up and work harder to try and hide your resentment for basically being given the heave ho….. if you are theee James Frankom that it is, if not then your still a prat
I apologise…..
Not for the prat comment, that’s stands, but for the spelling as on a mobile
Wow. I didn’t think even you’d stoop so low.
So what is it about the second largest ethnic group in the world that means ‘an incorruptible Bangladeshi is a rare thing indeed’? Is it a genetic thing? I mean, it must be, right? I wonder what the solution is? Maybe we should stop them breeding? All 300m of them. They won’t like it. So it’d have to be forced sterilisation. But it’s their own fault – they shouldn’t be genetically programmed to be corrupt.
I’m not from the PC brigade, if things are real then they need to be said, offence or no offence, but these corrupt Bengalis are those who hold power….. just the same as white folk in other parts of the world who HOLD POWER and abuse it, just like black folk who HOLD power and abuse it.
When the police stats showed that high proportion of black people committed crimes, what’s wrong with that if it’s the truth, but not all of the majority of black people are criminals.
So to say majority of Bengalis, all 300million of them as Anon1 pointed out are corruptible is racist.
But James being fed by the corrupt Bengali hand and than being booted out is classic resentment, as I mentioned earlier….. complete prat!
we should be using local talent, not imported and force local businesses to contribute to the cost
I thought I was Dickie Parrot?
Haha I’m loving the reaction. Keep it coming girls! As for Sheraz and her little mistruths… no I most definitely resigned over a point of principle. I still have the letter. Clearly you have no idea what you are talking about, which you wouldn’t, because you weren’t there and you are just creating what you hoped happened because that distracts you from actually answering any of the points about immigration fraud I was making, presumably because you have nothing to say other than meekly nod in agreement. The paper had brought in a new editor – a collaborator of such menace she who would shame Vidkun Quisling – whose personal intention was to distort what had hitherto been an officially politically impartial newspaper into a lying mouthpiece for Lutfur Rahman, George Galloway and the SWP. Everyone working there was a volunteer and rather than help in the lies and after trying in vain for a while to stop them I decided it really wasn’t worth my time continuing. I wasn’t the only writer to quit at that time either and you may have noticed that the newspaper hasn’t been published once in print since I and the others left. Regarding the corrupt, illegal immigration scam at the language school – the scam was organised by it’s violent, terrorist-praising, homophobic, anti-Semite manager. A man who would never employ any women for long because he was such a bigoted misogynist, a man who not only refused to pay any of the staff holiday or sickness pay but wouldn’t employ a cleaner and even expected some ‘kafir’ students to take their classes in the toilets – yes, literally. I remember one over worked teacher literally vomiting on Friday evening because he was so exhausted. He was unfit to work but had to because the manager who had no regard for UK law regarded ‘kafirs’ as dirt and refused to allow him any paid time off thus threatening him with homelessness. I only found out about the immigration racket a few months before I left because I got another job, which I love and that I got because of my qualifications, skill and considerable charm unlike so many of the “jobs for the boys” created in Tower Scamlets which I suspect are often subsidised by public money and invariably are recruited for in a racist manner because they only ever employ people from the British-Bengali population using such ruses as saying “the ideal candidate must be fluent in English and Sylheti” which of course is a condition that no one other than a British-Bengali from Sylhet can meet.
Bangladesh is arguably the most persistently corrupt country in the world so why should anybody expect people from that country to suddenly behave differently when in London. It is also a country that does not tolerate minorities within its borders and has a record of systematically racially discriminating against non-Muslims. I don’t expect you to like what I am saying but I reserve the right to speak and hopefully I might give confidence in other people to stop apologising for it, stop peddling the bullshit and start being honest. Here something to start being honest about, racism and violent discrimination against minorities in Bangladesh.
http://www.bdmw.org/?page_id=2
http://islamoscope.wordpress.com/2008/06/01/non-muslim-minorities-in-bangladesh-victim-of-bloody-religious-persecution/
Long Live The Queen
I’m disappointed, you spent sooooo much time with us Bengalis, took their money, even ‘volunteered’ for the corrupt lot and yet… I’m offended that you think Sheraz as a birds name!!!!
Did I touch a nerve for you to have to write that essay…..phew!!!
No one gives a crap about your resentful rants son, typical story of person turning on paymaster cos didn’t get what he wanted tarring everyone with the same brush.
Tell you what – scan and post that letter you have, not that you maybe lying or not, but the fact that you will be pissed enough to do it….. oh, feel like ones of those ‘LOL’ things coming on.
Ted, I am really disappointed that you are allowing this vile racist propaganda being written on your blog. I assume you have some form of moderation on this blog, and if you do, why are you allowing this sort of racists even being allowed to comment.
I have no problem anyone being critical of individuals or small groups, but what this racist bigot James F is spewing out is discrimination against a whole community and race. That is racism in every sense and by you allowing him to comment in this way, is effectively you condoning it.
I have taken screen shots of the above comments and shall be reporting this racist James F to the police first thing in the morning and ask other readers of this blog to do the same.
Taj – this is not a case for the police unfortunately, the only way to sort this is out offer a job to James, paid or voluntary.
If you have a business or could refer him to any of your associates – James would lap up the chance to be fed by ‘those Bengalis’ again…. but please be warned, if you or your associates have to given him the boot, then more vitriol will be coming our way.
Typical.. you don’t like the content because you have nothing to say to counter it and so you demand political censorship. What a great world we would live in if you and your Stalinist council cronies were in charge… I have said nothing untrue and nothing illegal. Indeed, the only plausibly “inciteful” comment actually came from Sylhetimanosh when he so eloquently said to Dan Curry:
“I hope all your neighbours are ethnic even better if Bengali, everyday of your [life] is hell for you.” (see above)
Have to say I appeal to Ted for some moderation of this forum as well. Not for any supposed ‘racism’, but merely that this discussion has descended into an unseemly trading of insults.
Ted, for the sake of your blog you should do something about it.
Tim