The Pyramid of Lies: Lex Greensill and the Billion-Dollar Scandal

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Many of them, they are never going to see the amount that they had put into it,” Guth said. “But they will be able to benefit from some of it. And some of it may be better than nothing at all.”

pyramid of piffle’: All the defences Boris ‘An inverted pyramid of piffle’: All the defences Boris

DUNCAN MAVIN: Yes, I think that's right. I think this is -- it's tempting sometimes to see these big kind of corporate scandals in terms of big systems and institutions. But at the heart of this one, is the guy Lex Greensill. And he's fascinating, a really divisive character. Some people I talked to said Lex is really charismatic and a genius. And other people I talked to said, stay away from Lex, things are going to go wrong. And there would be some sort of implausible excuse given. A very, very difficult firm to deal with. And I suppose that was probably one of the biggest red flags, right, that if somebody is so desperate not to tell you the truth, not to answer your questions, even questions which seem pretty straightforward, then that's a real red flag. If you've got a genuine business that's genuinely growing faster that is being done in a very honest and well organized and well structured way, then you're probably fine answering difficult questions from journalists. But if you've got a business which fundamentally is not doing what it's supposed to, then that's always going to be a difficult relationship. NATHAN HUNT: A final question, Duncan. You also became a character in the Greensill story, an unwilling character, but a character. As you were investigating Greensill for Dow Jones and for your book, what was your experience with them? Mr Guppy ended up being jailed for a separate fraud and Mr Johnson later dismissed the call as a joke.Long after the end of Egypt's own pyramid-building period, a burst of pyramid-building occurred in what is present-day Sudan, after much of Egypt came under the rule of the Kingdom of Kush, which was then based at Napata. Napatan rule, known as the 25th Dynasty, lasted from 750 BCE to 664 BCE. The Meroitic period of Kushite history, when the kingdom was centered on Meroë, (approximately in the period between 300 BCE and 300 CE), experienced a full-blown pyramid-building revival, which saw about 180 Egyptian-inspired indigenous royal pyramid-tombs constructed in the vicinity of the kingdom's capital cities. [19] Old Kingdom of Egypt". World History Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on 23 April 2021 . Retrieved 27 May 2020.

Pyramid of Lies: The Prime Minister, the Banker and the The Pyramid of Lies: The Prime Minister, the Banker and the

A view of the Giza pyramid complex from the plateau to the south of the complex. From left to right, the three largest are: the Pyramid of Menkaure, the Pyramid of Khafre and the Great Pyramid of Giza. The three smaller pyramids in the foreground are subsidiary structures associated with Menkaure's pyramid. Famous pyramids (cut-through with internal labyrinth layout); the Layer Pyramid is mislabeled as that of Unas There was another term frequently applied to Greensill: ‘shadow bank’. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, tougher regulations had forced traditional banks to set aside large amounts of capital to cover for another calamity. That had driven the banks from newly burdensome businesses, and money that previously ran through big global finance houses instead washed up in companies that were much less tightly regulated, and which thrived by skirting rules designed to prevent a financial scandal. Greensill was one of them. DUNCAN MAVIN: This is also kind of really key to Lex Greensill, right? So you and I might call out a lie. He might say, well, look, I was in the White House, and I gave some advice. So is it really a lie? I think this is also -- you're getting to the heart of one of the real problems with exactly this sort of business. And by this sort of business, I mean, fast-growing tech businesses with kind of visionary founders where there is a reward for them to saying -- making outlandish claims, pushing their reputation and their ambitions as far as it will possibly. NATHAN HUNT: Sadly, the losers from Greensill's collapse extend beyond just a few venture capitalists and private equity investors. What was Credit Suisse's role in spreading the exposure to Greensill?Solved! How Ancient Egyptians Moved Massive Pyramid Stones". Live Science. Archived from the original on 1 January 2022 . Retrieved 26 February 2018. He gets business cards with Downing Street that [indiscernible] (00:09:13) and that kind of thing. He holds meetings in Downing Street, really kind of pushes it beyond -- his role beyond what it really ought to have been. But it seems to work for him. And certainly, when Cameron leaves office, he leaves having left Lex with a much higher profile than he had previously.

Pyramid of Lies by Duncan Mavin | Waterstones Pyramid of Lies by Duncan Mavin | Waterstones

The name for a pyramid in Egyptian is myr, written with symbol 𓉴 ( O24 in the Gardner Sign List). Myr is preceded by three other signs used as phonetics. The meaning of myr is unclear, as it only self-references the built object itself. By contrast architecture of similar function like 'temple', per-ka, is a compound of 'house' and 'soul'. It has been speculated myr belongs to a class of words like djed and ankh, which refer to objects already in existence when the Egyptian language split off from afroasiatic. [ citation needed] A typical translation of myr is given as 'High Place'. By graphical analysis, myr uses the same sign, O24, as benben. The benben is the mound of existence that rose of out of the abyss, nun, in the Egyptian creation myth. The relationship between myr and benben is further linked by the capstone architectural element of pyramids and obelisks, which was named benbenet, the feminine form of benben. Edwards, I. E. S., The Pyramids of Egypt Penguin Books Ltd; New edition (1991), ISBN 978-0-14-013634-0 BY 1999, LEX had completed his legal studies and articles at Payne Butler Lang, a prominent Bundaberg law firm. He briefly spent some time at Deacons Graham & James, another law firm, with connections across Asia and a focus on intellectual property and new technologies. As the Conservative Party self-immolates in the wake of the public’s final loss of patience with the Prime Minister, Duncan Mavin’s new book, The Pyramid of Lies: Lex Greensill and the Billion-Dollar Scandal, is a useful reminder that the creeping (now overwhelming) impression of tawdriness in public life did not begin with Boris.ALONG THE WAY, there were plenty of opportunities to stop the Greensill crisis before it snowballed. I began writing about Greensill in the spring of 2019. My stories were sceptical. Lex hated them and as a result he hated me too. His staff told me. His business partners told me too. His pugilistic public relations chief told me, and demanded that I stop asking awkward questions. It was personal, at least for Lex.

Pyramid of Lies by Duncan Mavin | Waterstones

And Sanjeev's looking for somebody who lend them some money and the 2, they have this kind of symbiotic relationship. So much so that at one point, Sanjeev Gupta is a major shareholder in Greensill Capital. So the 2 become really kind of intertwined and they start to really lean on each other, right? Like Greensill can't really grow without the revenue it gets from Sanjeev Gupta's businesses. And Sanjeev Gupta's businesses known as the GFG Alliance, they can't really grow without the money that Greensill is providing to it. While it is generally agreed that pyramids were burial monuments, there is continued disagreement on the particular theological principles that might have given rise to them. One suggestion is that they were designed as a type of "resurrection machine." [21] A few years ago, I made it into an intimate meeting at the "top table". Just me and the top brass. I had prepared copious notes to discuss the large deal that was imminent. But I hadn't prepared to discuss horse racing, the ownership of horses, or the best dogs to keep at stables.And Lex, like some of the others in Silicon Valley, he was very keen to be seen as a visionary, very keen to sort of align himself with very important global politicians and financiers and so on because he knew that there was a lot of value in doing that. And I think if you look at what he claimed with the Obama White House, it was -- that was part for him of saying, look, I'm a really big, important powerful player. I mean in the end, right, like Lex Greensill's company was valued at several billion dollars. And part of the reason for that was because he was making these outlandish claims. It just became too big. And such a major part of Greensill's business was heavily reliant on what Sanjeev Gupta was up to. And that business now is under investigation by the SFO in the U.K. And so clearly, there was a problem there.