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The Fraud Squad possessed several copies of the report as part of its deliberations as to whether the Fayeds should be prosecuted over their deception of the government. Kenneth Etheridge, meanwhile, retained excellent contacts within his old police colleagues. It was, therefore, merely a question of time.
Accordingly on 23 March Tiny Rowland acquired copy No. 26 of the report from a mole within the Squad, for a sum running well into six figures.
For Rowland the risk and the expense was worth it. Not only had the Inspectors' conclusions concurred exactly with his own knowledge of the facts, but they had articulated their views with a searing forthrightness.
The next day, Good Friday, Rowland summoned The Observer's editor, Donald Trelford, to his country retreat in Bourne End to discuss the possibility of publishing great swathes from the report in
The Observer. Trelford took little persuasion. The Inspectors had vindicated his financial journalists' articles in the most spectacular fashion. Rowland also expressed his intention to distribute copies of the report at Lonrho's Annual General Meeting, the following Thursday, 30 March. Trelford warned that this would result in the Government obtaining and serving on
The Observer an injunction preventing any publication thereafter. The possibility of transcribing and finding room for sizeable extracts in time for the forthcoming Easter Sunday's edition was ruled out. Trelford and Rowland decided to do nothing until after Easter.
The following day, Friday, 24 March, British construction company Bernard Sunley & Sons plc lodged a writ at the High Court against Fayed for £40 million.
The Observer's Michael Gillard wrote up the details of the case before
The Observer went to press the following evening. His finished article, entitled £40m writ for Fayed, was duly published in the Easter Sunday edition's business pages.
Two days later on Tuesday 28 March Donald Trelford flew back from his family holiday in the Channel Islands for a war meeting at Rowland's London home in Chester Square. Present were a bevy of Lonrho's lawyers and directors; plus Lonrho's chairman, leading Conservative MP Sir Edward du Cann. The possibility was discussed of producing a special mid-week edition of
The Observer - a Sunday paper - to coincide with Lonrho's AGM. This would allow Tiny Rowland his glory at the AGM, and also circumvent the problem of an injunction preventing publication. Trelford telephoned the paper's managing director, Nicholas Morrell, who okayed the feasibility of producing a 'one-off' edition for publication two days later. Trelford relayed Morrell's assent. It was agreed that they would go ahead with all due haste.
Trelford telephoned The Observer's City Editor, Melvyn Marckus, and told him of the plan. Marckus was more than content to see his team's research endorsed so publicly. He drove down to
The Observer's headquarters to join Trelford in selecting passages from the report for publication, which Trelford's and Morrell's secretaries, Barbara Reick and Karen Pritchett, then typed up into
The Observer's mainframe computer system. That evening, Trelford contacted
The Observer's managing editor Jeremy Hunt, assistant editor David Randall, and picture editor Tony McGrath, and summoned them to a meeting at the newspaper the following morning. Total secrecy was imposed. Key political journalists, such as David Leigh, Paul Lashmar and Adam Raphael, were excluded from the operation. It was, after all, a City Desk operation.
After assembling at 8.00 am the following morning, the management team worked non-stop to produce the paper's plates in time for going to press that evening. They completed the job fifteen hours later at 11 pm.
The next morning, Thursday, 30th March, before Lonrho's shareholders had begun making their way through the London traffic for their AGM at The Grosvenor House Hotel,
The Observer's print centres in Portsmouth, Sunderland, and Glasgow had already produced an estimated 260,000 copies of the historic red-hot edition.
Trelford held back distribution until the last minute to prevent any resultant injunction from stopping Rowland presenting the paper at the AGM. Then, in an operation of military precision, by 10 am fleets of vans full of papers were delivering their cargoes to wholesalers all over the country, for onward distribution to the newsagents and street-sellers. Everything went to plan like clockwork. Back at
The Observer, David Leigh and others raised objections that the management had gone over their heads. The staff took a vote. To Trelford's great satisfaction they endorsed both his reasoning for publishing the special edition and then carrying out the operation in secret.
As expected, as soon as the government got wind it obtained an injunction, in the event from Judge Mr Justice Tudor Evans, preventing
The Observer from 'publishing, disclosing or distributing' copies of the report 'or any extracts.' It was too late. By the time the injunction arrived at The Grosvenor at 11.55 am Sir Edward du Cann was already reading out the juiciest passages to Lonrho's stunned shareholders. More importantly, an estimated 180,000 copies had found their way into newsagents, homes and offices across Britain. Copies were faxed and mailed in their thousands to financial centres around the world.
The Inspectors' findings were digested feverishly by the Labour Opposition. Labour's front-bench trade & industry spokesman Bryan Gould immediately tabled a Private Notice Question, to enable the Commons to debate the issue the following week. He and his Labour colleagues sought maximum embarrassment of the Government.
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