Portsmouth needs to make a very firm stand against Aquind’s plans

Well done to Portsmouth for resisting Aquind, and its plans to land an electricity cable from France on our shore and drive it across country to Lovedean. (Councillors say Aquind plan is ‘nonsensical’ The News, November, 6).

Unfortunately, the ultimate decision will be with a “government” inspector, so Portsmouth needs to make a really strong case for the whole idea to be dumped.

Aquind apparently welcomes continued engagement with all “stakeholders” so maybe a few open questions might get the debate started.

Who is Aquind, what is their proven experience on such an operation, will the contractors/workers be from a UK-based company, in the event it runs out of steam (money), who picks up the bill??

What is the response to the following detail taken from their June 2018 accounts as filed that may answer: who is this outfit?

The company’s immediate parent undertaking was OGN Enterprises Limited, a company registered in the British Virgin Islands. The directors regarded the ultimate controlling party to be TMF (BVI) Limited, a company registered in the British Virgin Islands.

On February 15 2019 100 per cent shares of the company were sold to Aquind Energy SARL, a company registered in Luxemburg and the transaction has been registered with the UK tax authorities.

Is Portsmouth dealing with a company based in tax lax Luxemburg, or with a company in Newcastle-senior company executives and others at OGN House, Hadrian Way? OGN was/is a company with various guises, and several liquidations that a senior executive has been involved with. In fact, the history of Aquind, its previous names used, and with other company ‘officers’ needs a little more scrutiny.

Is this company a major player in the civil engineering industry? It appears not.

Rather it is a collection of accountants, consultants and managers who, if the project went ahead, would have no ‘hands on’ the dirty bit, just shuffling the account and the responsibility would fall to who?

The whole wide open and it would seem mostly unregulated energy sector, is populated by companies who on inspection rise and fall all too often.

The names change slightly, the director’s names can be chased from one crash to another.

Only one thing remains constant – the taxpayer and consumer will always be expected to cough up.

A spectre is appearing to me, a name, a ship maybe – vic something or other. No, sorry the image has gone.