Jersey Offshore: Fallout of a family fraud
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A leak of 350,000 pages of a Jersey trust company’s internal records – which detail decades of financial malfeasance and the Crown Dependency’s failure to take adequate action – appeared from an unusual source.
Tanya Dick-Stock, 54, discovered the documents – which have led to allegations of illegality and malfeasance – in stacks of boxes in an old squash court on the grounds at the Jersey manor she grew up in.
The 18 gigabytes of data contain correspondence, accounting ledgers, loan documentation, handwritten notes and money wire transfers from La Hougue, a trust company based in Jersey until 2007. The files were left behind when La Hougue moved its trust business to Panama.
Her father, John Dick, 82, was said by Jersey lawyers to have been “the beneficial owner of the La Hougue entities (“La Hougue”)” in 2014. This was denied last week by his London lawyers.
Dick-Stock and her husband, Darrin Stock, used the information in the files to launch a fraud case against her father, whom she accuses of having utilised millions of pounds from trusts meant to support her and her extended family. Her father is defending the court case and it is yet to be heard. Stock has himself faced allegations in the US and federal tax authorities there are pursuing him for unpaid debts. He denies the allegations and says he is challenging the debts.
Jersey Offshore
Lost trust: leaked files expose Jersey’s inaction on fraud scandal
Read the investigationDick-Stock and her husband also shared the files in digital format with New Zealander journalist Nicky Hager. The database was then shared with the European Investigative Collaborations group, which included nine media organisations in Europe and Canada, one of them being the Bureau in the UK, to write articles based on the leak.
La Hougue said many of the allegations put to it by the Bureau were “blatantly false”, without detailing what the supposed errors were, and said the truth would be established before the courts.
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Illustration by Daniel Stolle for The Bureau of Investigative Journalism
