Fraud squad raids home of woman behind £7.5bn scheme for sick miners

THE fraud squad has raided the home of a woman who is at the centre of a police inquiry into a £7.5 billion compensation scheme for sick miners.

Detectives arrived outside Clare Walker’s house, which is also the registered address of her company, Indiclaim Ltd, at 7.20am yesterday, climbing over the front gates to gain entrance to the £500,000 property.

They spent more than four hours conducting a detailed search of the converted stone barn on the edge of Todwick, an affluent commuter village in South Yorkshire.

The five plainclothes officers removed a large collection of documents from the house and the hard drives of two computers.

Police also made a video recording of the interior and grounds of the house, opening the doors of a double garage to film Miss Walker’s £110,000 Bentley Continental GT. The pale blue car carries a personalised number plate: B1 CNW. Its owner’s full name is Clare Nicola Walker. Her £61,000 company car, a BMW X5, was parked in the driveway of a neighbour’s home.

Detectives were executing a warrant to search the registered office of Indiclaim Ltd, which is at Miss Walker’s home address. Yesterday’s raid is expected to be the first of several such police operations as the inquiry into the world’s largest personal injury compensation scheme gathers pace.

Detectives are investigating payments made by three solicitors’ firms to a company called Indiclaim which is wholly owned by Miss Walker, 41.

The former British Coal employee, who was on an estimated £18,000 salary until 1997, earned £260,000 last year for a 20-hour week as the head of claims at Vendside, a claims handling company owned by the Union of Democratic Mineworkers. Under the terms of a special deal which the UDM signed with the Government in 1999, the union has earnt fees totalling £19 million for settling thousands of compensation claims in-house. It has also chosen to pass on more than 16,000 claims to a select group of solicitors’ firms which have been paid a total of £25 million by the Department of Trade and Industry for settling UDM cases.

Three of those firms, the Doncaster-based Beresfords, Sheffield solicitors Wake Smith and BRM Solicitors, in Chesterfield, are known to have made payments to Miss Walker’s private company.

The UDM says that Indiclaim, which is said to offer “best practice” training for law firms involved in industrial disease litigation, is Miss Walker’s private business and has no connection with the union, Vendside or any of its individual claimants.

All three solicitors’ firms, however, have directly linked their Indiclaim payments to the receipt and settling of UDM claims. Beresfords and BRM say they were instructed to make the payments by the union.

Miss Walker and Mick Stevens, the UDM’s vice-president, have stood down from their posts pending the outcome of the police investigation. Both deny any wrongdoing. Neither Miss Walker nor her boyfriend, Duncan Gillespie, 41, who is Indiclaim’s company secretary, were arrested yesterday. Both remained in the house throughout the police operation.

John Mann, MP for Bassetlaw, north Nottinghamshire, hailed yesterday’s raid as a sign that his campaign to highlight alleged abuses of the miners’ health compensation scheme was finally producing results.

The Law Society is investigating the conduct of more than 30 firms of solicitors over the settling of miners’ claims for respiratory disease and vibration white finger, a crippling hand condition.
It has told the High Court that it is “concerned about the propriety” of payments made by solicitors to Indiclaim.

The compensation schemes were launched in 1999 after two High Court battles led to British Coal being found negligent for the two diseases, both associated with years spent working underground.

It was initially thought that the cost to the public purse —the DTI took on the liabilities of British Coal post-privatisation — would be at most £1 billion. The Government now estimates that the final bill will be at least £7.5 billion.

More than 770,000 claims have been registered by former miners, their widows or their families, and £2.5 billion has already been paid in compensation for the 312,000 cases that have so far been settled. Legal fees already paid by the Government total £530 million.

Pre-tax profits earned by the 984 members of the UDM’s Nottinghamshire section, which owns Vendside, total £6.3 million since 1999. The UDM was formed in 1985 after Nottinghamshire miners broke away from the National Union of Mineworkers during the national coal strike.

Miss Walker and Mr Gillespie have lived at their home in Todwick since 2002. They purchased the property for £495,000, three months before selling their old home in Sheffield for £175,000.

source: Times Online (Last Updated: Friday, 15th July, 2005)

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