It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done
He’s the Scots conman who stole investors’ money and gave Lib Dems £2.4m. Now he wants you to believe him when he says...
A NOTORIOUS Scots conman who gave £2.4million of his stolen money to the Liberal Democrats has said the record party donation was the ‘stupidest’ thing he has done.
Michael Brown, who swindled investors out of tens of millions of pounds by falsely claiming to be the Gordonstoun-educated son of a lord, said he regrets the donation because it led to an ‘onslaught of recognition’ that brought pain for his family.
Brown, 53, who flew Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy and other party top brass around the country in his private jet during the 2005 general election campaign, accrued his enormous wealth by conning huge sums out of investors. They included former Manchester United chairman Martin Edwards, who lost £5million.
But in 2006 Brown was jailed for a year for perjury.
Following his release, while facing other criminal charges, he later fled the UK for the Caribbean.
On being tracked down three years later, Brown returned to the UK where he then served half of a seven-and-ahalf-year sentence for theft and fraud offences. He was released in 2016.
Brown has been working for private security giant Serco, which runs six prisons in England and Scotland. He advises on prisoner inductions and self-harm, saying he uses his experience of being a prisoner to help other inmates adapt.
In a self-serving BBC Radio 4 interview, the fraudster, who now styles himself Michael Campbell-Brown, said he came to deeply regret the controversial donation.
He claims he involved himself in politics because he admired Mr Kennedy and wanted to ‘level’ the political playing field with the Conservatives and Labour in the 2005 general election campaign, where the Lib Dems won a record 62 seats.
But he said the £2.4million payment, made via his firm, Fifth Avenue Partners Ltd, should have been rejected.
He said in the interview: ‘They should have said to me, “But Michael, you don’t live in the United Kingdom, you’re not registered on the voters’ roll, your company was only born six months ago; really sorry Michael, thanks for coming, but no thanks”.
‘That’s what they should have done but of course, you know, the pound signs tend to obscure absolutely everything else.’
Brown said: ‘I feel bad because giving the money brought me to the forefront... and caused an enormous amount of pain on my family.
‘It was an extraordinary sum of money, a horrendous amount of money. It was perhaps the stupidest thing I have ever done in my life.’
During his first spell behind bars, Glasgow-born Brown said that he had witnessed prisoners harming themselves and was ‘absolutely petrified’.
Explaining his decision to flee, He said: ‘I’d brought shame on my family, I’d brought stress on my family and I thought, there’s two ways I can deal with this – one is to take the final step, the other one is to circle the wagons and get out of Dodge.’
While on bail awaiting trial in 2008, Brown fled in a cab to Gatwick airport.
Using a false passport, he flew to the Dominican Republic, which does not have an extradition treaty with the UK. He remained in the country for four years, during which time he was found guilty in his absence of theft, providing false information and perverting the course of justice.
The court heard that he had secretly spent cash from investors on the Lib Dem donation and to fund an ‘extravagant’ lifestyle. The trial judge declared his actions amounted to a ‘breach of trust’.
Although the Lib Dems faced calls to return the donation, they kept it after the
‘I’d brought shame on my family’
Electoral Commission concluded they had not broken any rules and had accepted the payment in good faith.
Brown, who has been living in a luxury villa in Majorca with wife Sharon, 59, no longer supports the Lib Dems.
He accuses them of ‘driving out’ Mr Kennedy as party leader ‘because he was an alcoholic’. Mr Kennedy died in 2015, aged 55.
The party said that it is appalled by Brown’s accusation and a source told Radio 4 it would not ‘dignify’ the claim with a response.