By Dr George Venturini  

At the end of second world war Britain was more or less bankrupt, so it was agreed that instead of paying cash for the shares of the Bank, shareholders would receive 3 per cent Treasury stock instead. With the 1946 Bank of England Act the Bank was ‘nationalised’, and all the Bank shares were transferred into the possession of the Treasury solicitor, and there they are to this day. It remains a corporation, not a government department.

The government of Prime Minister Clement Attlee issued Treasury Notes in the sum of £11,015,100. All the stock was owned by the British Government, although the Bank continued as a ‘Royal Charter Company’ with the absolute protection of confidentiality and security afforded by a Royal Charter and the Official Secrets Act.

Obviously the nationalisation was not welcomed by its shareholders or bankers of the day. Because of the abrupt resignation of Prime Minister Harold Wilson in April 1976 and the fact that the new government of Prime Minister James Callaghan had virtually no majority, ‘U.K. Ltd’ became vulnerable and effectively bankrupt. With double digit annual inflation, 70 per cent over three years, incessant strikes, the £ Sterling frequently suspended on international exchange markets, virtual parity with the United States dollar, it seemed the ideal time for the shareholders to strike back and re-take the Bank of England.

On 6 April 1977 the Bank of England formed the Bank of England Nominees Limited –  B.o.e.n., a wholly owned subsidiary private limited company, under no: 1307478, with two of its 100 £1 shares issued. Its Memorandum and Articles of Association’s objectives provided that B.o.e.n. was: “To act as Nominee or agent or attorney either solely or jointly with others, for any person or persons, partnership, company, corporation, government, state, organisation, sovereign, province, authority, or public body, or any group or association of them….” [Emphasis added]

The origin of B.o.e.n. is mentioned in a work by Lynn Picknett, Clive Prince and Stephen Prior,  from which comes the following extract: “In early 1973 new legislation governing the ownership of shares [was] proposed by [Prime Minister Edward] Heath Government. This would force stockbroking companies to disclose the names of the individuals on whose behalf they bought shares, to prevent them gaining a controlling interest in a company by buying shares in several different names. The Queen was concerned that this would mean that details of her private investments would be made public, which would allow her personal wealth to be calculated – which the royal family had always strenuously avoided – and asked her Private Secretary, Sir Martin Charteris (who had succeeded Sir Michael Adeane in 1972), to express her anxiety to Edward Heath. [Sir Martin Charteris, officially known as Lieutenant-Colonel Martin Michael Charles Charteris, Baron Charteris of Amisfield, in 1950 had been appointed Private Secretary to Princess Elizabeth, who was then Duchess of Edinburgh and heiress presumptive to the British throne. From her accession in 1952 until 1972, Charteris served as her Assistant Private Secretary under Sir Michael Adeane. On Adeane’s retirement in 1972, he was promoted to Private Secretary. He held this post until his retirement in 1977. Some of his correspondence with Sir John Kerr, at the time when Kerr & Co. were planning the Royal Ambush of the Whitlam Government, is publicly available at the National Archives of Australia. Some other, and probably the most important, including that between Kerr and the Queen, is still unavailable and is the source of litigation by initiative of Professor Jennifer Hocking. On his retirement Sir Martin was granted the honour of being a Permanent Lord in Waiting.] The legislation was delayed, but eventually became law – under Labour in 1976 as the Companies Act. However, a special clause was included which exempted a new shareholding company, Bank of England Nominees. This was established with the purpose of handling investments solely on behalf of heads of state and their immediate families. This allowed the Queen’s investments and those of her family – along with those of other heads of state, such as the Sultan of Brunei, Bhumibol Adulyadej the late king of Thailand, the Kuwaiti royal family, the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and his then friend Saddam Hussein and other crowned oligarchs who were quick to take advantage of the exemption – to be effectively concealed. They all became clients of what appeared to be the Queen’s very private bank. B.o.e.n. was only one of the many cut-outs used to hide obscene profits from the sale of arms, oil and nuclear material. Extraordinarily, not even the Chancellor of the Exchequer [was] permitted to know about the Queen’s personal investments. Andrew Morton would write: “The result of this legislation has been to cocoon further the royal finances in a web of mystery. Journalists who delve into dusty share registers find the impenetrable phrase ‘Bank of England Nominees’ staring back at them when they try to find a hint of royal investment in a company. The justification for the clause was that public knowledge about where the Queen invested her money might influence the market. However, that this was just an excuse is revealed by a memo sent from the Palace to the Government saying that it is ‘to be congratulated on a neat and defensible solution’. In other words, the Palace were pleased that the Government had come up with a way of justifying the secrecy.” (L. Picknett, C. Prince, S. Prior, War of the Windsors: A Century of Unconstitutional Monarchy, Mainstream Publishing, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2002).

Questions were asked, and quite frequently, in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The answers were always evasive, vague, inconclusive.

On 21 April 1977, to a question in the House of Commons from  Mr. Blenkinsop, who wanted to know from the Secretary of State for Trade whether B.o.e.n. was “intended to hold shares on behalf of ‘Heads of State’ and certain others” and whether he had granted any exemptions under Section 27(9) of the Companies Act 1976; and if he would make a statement, Mr. Clinton Davis replied: “The Secretary of State has granted one exemption under Section 27(9) of the Companies Act 1976 in favour of Bank of England Nominees Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Bank of England. Bank of England Nominees Ltd. have given a number of undertakings about the use to be made of the exemption. They will hold securities as nominee only on behalf of Heads of State and their immediate family, Governments, official bodies controlled or closely related to Governments, and international organisations formed by Governments or official bodies. They will in turn seek certain assurances from anyone in the eligible categories who wishes them to hold the securities as that person’s nominee. These assurances are to cover (a) the fact that the person is the beneficial owner of the securities to be held by Bank of England Nominees Ltd.; (b) that the beneficial owner will not use his interest in any securities held by Bank of England Nominees Ltd. to influence the affairs of the company in which shares are held except as shareholders in general meetings of that company; (c) that the beneficial owner is aware of his overriding obligation, under Section 33 of the Companies Act 1967 as amended, to disclose his interest to the company in which shares are held if he is interested in 5 per cent. or more of that company’s share capital.”

Mr. Davies added: “Bank of England Nominees Ltd. has also undertaken to make a report annually to the Secretary of State for Trade of the identity of those for whom it holds securities, and, provided that it holds securities for two or more people, the total value of the securities held. The contents of such reports are to be confidential to the Secretary of State.” (Shareholdings (Disclosure) HC Deb 21 April 1977 vol 930 cc151-2W 151-152W)

On 5 March 2010, replying to a request by Mr. E. Danielyan, as to “What is the “Bank of England Nominees Limited”? Mr. Ben Norman, the Deputy Secretary of the Bank of England explained that: ”The Bank of England Nominees is a wholly-owned, non-trading subsidiary of the Bank of England, with 2 ordinary shares valued at £1 each, as the latest Bank of England Annual Report states (see: Bank of England, Annual Report 2011, p.69).

Furthermore, “BOEN acts as a nominee company to hold securities on behalf of certain customers. It is a private limited company, incorporated in England and Wales in 1977, and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Bank. The shareholders are the Bank and John Footman, who holds his share as nominee on behalf of the Bank. The directors are John Footman and Andrew Bailey. (This letter can be viewed in full and downloaded here).

Both John Footman ( ‘John Footman Executive Director, Central Services and Secretary of the Bank’, and Andrew Bailey (‘Andrew Bailey, Executive Director, Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) – Deputy CEO designate’) were at the time employees of the Bank of England and their biographies were on the Bank’s website.

There followed questions in the House of Lords.

Paul Myners, who was known as Baron Myners, CBE, a member of the House of Lords, and had been a businessman until he became  the Financial Services Secretary – sometimes referred to as City Minister – in Her Majesty’s Treasury, and then the Finance Ministry, during the Labour Government of Prime  Minister Gordon Brown, rose:

“To ask Her Majesty’s Government when the accounts of Bank of England Nominees Limited were last published; when they will next be published; and whether they intend to review whether the company should remain exempt from company law disclosure requirements”. (House of Lords – Hansard https://hansard.parliament.uk/ [HL8302]).

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Baroness Wilcox) replied: “The most recent accounts of Bank of England Nominees Limited are available via the Companies House website and were published on 14 June 2010. It can be seen from these accounts that the company is currently dormant. The company is due to publish its next set of accounts by 30 November this year. The company is no longer exempt from company law disclosure requirements and currently no other persons are exempt from these requirements.”

Later on, when Lord Myners rose:

“To ask Her Majesty’s Government when the accounts of Bank of England Asset Purchases Facility Fund Limited will be published; whether these accounts will take into account an indemnity from HM Treasury; and whether the accounts of the company are exempt from any company law disclosure requirements.” (House of Lords – Hansard https://hansard.parliament.uk/ [HL8303]).

Lord Sassoon, the Commercial Secretary to the Treasury, replied: “The Bank of England will publish accounts for the asset purchase facility (APF) for the year ended February 2011 before the Summer Parliamentary Recess. The amount due to or from HM Treasury under its indemnity to the Bank will be identified. The accounts are not exempt from any company law disclosure requirements.

Lord Myners insisted and rose again: “To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the accounts of the Bank of England, Bank of England Nominees Limited and the Bank of England Asset Purchase Facility Fund Limited are all audited by the same firm of public accountants.” (House of Lords – Hansard https://hansard.parliament.uk/ [HL8310]).

To which Lord Sassoon replied:” KPMG are the external auditors for the Bank of England and the Bank of England Asset Purchases Facility Fund Limited. As a dormant company, Bank of England Nominees Limited is not required under the Companies Act 2006 to appoint an external auditor”.

In 2011 B.o.e.n. was no long allowed disclosure exemptions  from company law disclosure requirements”, as a written answer from the Lords’ Hansard on 26 April 2011(8) made clear. The consequence of this was that B.o.e.n. was no longer granted an exemption under Sec. 796 of the Companies Act 2006 to the notification provisions required by Sec. 793 – something to which it had been previously authorised.

To summarise: as stated in Hansard, B.o.e.n. was a company set up with the intention of holding shares confidentially on behalf of “Heads of State” – whoever they might be – and certain others.

One is perfectly entitled to presume from that that the Queen and her ‘immediate family’, however defined and certain bodies are included in that broad specification. (A. McConnachie, ‘Investigating the Bank of England Nominees, 11 October 2011, prosperityuk.com).

There had been a statement by Melanie Johnson M.P., Economic Secretary to the Treasury, in 2000 to the effect that “B.o.e.n. is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Bank of England, which was granted an exemption by Edmund Dell, Secretary of State for Trade from the disclosure requirements under Section 27(9) of the Companies Act 1976, because: “it was considered undesirable that the disclosure requirements should apply to certain categories of shareholders”. [Emphasis added]

A Freedom of Information request submitted in 2010 provided a similar answer.

Because of the combination of the provisions of the Royal Charter and the Official Secrets Act, the Bank enjoyed unusual confidentiality and security and was even untouched by questions being asked in the House of Commons.

Thus structured and protected, B.o.e.n. became a vehicle for governments and heads of state to invest in United Kingdom companies, subject to approval from the Secretary of State, and providing they undertake “not to influence the affairs of the company.”  Later on, B.o.e.n. was is no longer exempt from company law disclosure requirements. It remained as a dormant company, although  dormancy did not preclude it from actively operating as a nominee shareholder. Officially B.o.e.n. had only two shareholders: the Bank of England, and the Secretary of the Bank of England.

A fundamental question remained: why form a wholly owned ‘Nominee company’ which since its establishment in 1977 had never traded and confined itself to lodging ‘Short form’ un-audited accounts?

It was conceivable that sometime after 1977 The Bank of England had been in effect ‘privatised’, its shares being held in B.o.e.n., thereby making a ‘closed loop’: although B.o.e.n. was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Bank of England, B.o.e.n. had effective control of the Bank because the shares were in fact owned by the secret shareholders. It seems that only 50 per cent of the shares were sold, but they controlled all voting rights. Considering that shareholders appoint directors, it was legitimately conceivable to conclude that the Bank of England was covertly controlled, if not by the banks, then by a higher banking entity which had the interests of the banks at heart, which justifies the rampant and systemic fraud perpetrated upon their customers with arrogance and impunity.

In 1997, after the Three Rivers District Council had won their action against the Bank of England for failing to control the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (B.C.C.I. would come under the scrutiny of numerous financial regulators and intelligence agencies in the 1980s due to concerns that it was poorly regulated. Subsequent investigations revealed that it was involved in massive money laundering and other financial crimes, and illegally gained the controlling interest in the First American, a major bank), several persons and entities who had fallen casualties of banks made formal complaints against the Bank of England for not enforcing control over their respective high street banks. Yet, contrary to the Bank’s own Statement of Principles and the Banking Acts the complaints were rejected on the ground that the Bank of England does not intervene between bank and customer. Within months the Bank of England complaints staff and department had been transferred to ‘Canary Wharf’ under the guise of the Financial Services Agency who could not act on complaints emanating prior to their formation.

In 1998 the Bank became an independent public entity, wholly owned by the Treasury Solicitor on behalf of the government, with independence in setting monetary policy.

The Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee has a devolved responsibility for managing monetary policy. The Bank’s Financial Policy Committee held its first meeting in June 2011 as a macro prudential regulator to oversee regulation of the United Kingdom’s financial sector.

As a regulator and central bank, the Bank has not offered consumer banking services for many years, but it still does manage some public-facing services such as exchanging superseded bank notes. Until 2016 the Bank provided personal banking services as a popular privilege for employees.

B.o.e.n. was quietly dissolved, following liquidation, on 27 July 2017. (Bank of England Nominees Limited – Insolvency, commencement of winding up 13 October 2016, due to be dissolved on 27 July 2017).

Much mystery came to an end, in part anyway, when in a kind of ‘return for fixing the 1997 elections’ and facilitating New Labour into power, Parliament passed  the  Bank of England Act 1998, which gave the Bank’s Court of Directors complete independence with regard to monetary policy. That brought about the operation of a nationally owned institution,  which has the monopoly in the production of the national currency, and places independent control of the country’s monetary policy in the hands of a Court of Directors who serve the private banking system as they have since the Bank was established.

It means private banking control of the United Kingdom’s currency and monetary policy, and all that fully independent of government.

Since 1998 one witnessed the Bank rapidly inflate the money supply, while at the same time relaxing regulation on how banks could lend. No longer were banks required to have cash in reserve for loans they made. Instead the vast majority of currency entering the economy did so as a result of commercial banks entering some numbers into a ledger – money out of thin air, literally.

Working for the private bankers, the Bank of England set things up to maximise the returns for their banking colleagues’ speculative activities, in the full knowledge that as a nationalised institution, it would be the United Kingdom taxpayers who were carrying all the risk, and not, as would have been the case before 1946, the shareholders.

The Court of Directors is working for a kind of ‘combination’: the Anglo/Dutch/Saudi empire – the still-alive-and-kicking hidden hand behind the British Empire of the Victorian age. So it is no surprise that the solution they provide to today’s manufactured monetary financial collapse is to print more money. Their ultimate aim could be that of destroying  the last vestiges of British sovereignty.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who had served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Blair Government from 1997 to 2007, announced the new financial infrastructure at the 2009 gathering of the G20. Then he announced the possibility of a new global currency – to be issued and managed by the newly reinvigorated International Monetary Fund.

Protected by the Royal Charter and the Official Secrets Act, the B.o.e.n. never told anybody who are the shareholders, who control the company, who are the beneficiaries thereof: the Rothschilds, perhaps? The Queen, maybe?

Nevertheless, one would be surprised on finding out that the Bank of England, which is entitled to issue cash, then lends it and charges interest to the government, acting therefore like a private business.

This kind of operation is very much like that of the Federal Reserve Bank of America, which is a privately owned bank, as all central banks of the world are, including the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland, which is the Central Banks’ clearing house.

If one day the ‘One World Government’ actually had an address, this would be part of it – the B.I.S, another privately owned bank, the central bankers’ central bank, beyond the control of guaranteed by democratic practice, yet able to influence events secretly from behind the scenes. One thing is certain: in times of financial crisis, these central banking networks become supremely powerful. The people wielding this power see the world’s financial crisis as their moment of opportunity to seize greater power. The scary part of that is that hardly a living soul even knows they exist. Now, that is real power.

What’s all this about?

The late Carroll Quigley, a distinguished American historian and theorist of the evolution of civilizations, noted for his teaching work as a professor at Georgetown University, for his academic publications, wrote a book on who ruled the United States and Great Britain between 1870 and 1960. He called it: Tragedy And Hope: A History Of The World In Our Time, (GSG and Associates San Pedro, California, 2004). The work is the ultimate view of a secret global élite which has impacted nearly every modern historical event. The main thesis is that the Anglo-American banking élites were able secretly to establish and maintain their global power. The book provides a detailed world history beginning with the industrial revolution and imperialism through two world wars, a global depression and the rise of communism. Tragedy and Hope is an important work on the world’s power structure and an essential source material for understanding the history, goals and actions of a possible ‘New World Order’.

The gist of the work is that “the power of the Bank of England and of its governor was admitted by most qualified observers.” In January 1924 Reginald McKenna, who had been Chancellor of The Exchequer in 1915-1916, as Chairman of the Board of The Midland Bank, told its stockholders: “I am afraid the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can, and do, create money … And they who control the credit of the nation direct the policy of Governments and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people.”

Quigley commented: “… the powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.”

And again: “Each Central bank sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.”

Continued Wednesday – A cast of characters: The Monarchy (part 15)

Previous instalment – A cast of characters: The Monarchy (part 13)