Awards and citations:


1997: Le Prix du Champagne Lanson Noble Cuvée Award for investigations into Champagne for the Millennium investment scams

2001: Le Prix Champagne Lanson Ivory Award for investdrinks.org

2011: Vindic d'Or MMXI – 'Meilleur blog anti-1855'

2011: Robert M. Parker, Jnr: ‘This blogger...’:

2012: Born Digital Wine Awards: No Pay No Jay – best investigative wine story

2012: International Wine Challenge – Personality of the Year Award




Tuesday 8 February 2011

BBC London Inside Out - wine investment scams


This is now on the BBC iplayer.

I'm delighted to see fraudulent and dubious wine investment companies under the media spotlight and I thought the report was well done. However, my suggestion that the police are not doing enough needs clarification.  

The programme said I thought the 'police were not doing enough'. They didn't use a direct quote and while this is fair comment overall I did say that I was pleased to see current investigations by The Met, City of London police and the investigations by Hertfordshire police.

It was interesting that the anonymous interviewee claimed that Kai Seale was only the front man for Seale Wines Ltd and that it was actually run by someone else. If this is correct who was actually running the company and how many other companies does this shadowy person run?
 

4 comments:

Justin Roberts said...

Nice one Jim. Saw it.

Jim's Loire said...

Thanks Justin.

Luc Charlier said...

Thank you for all this work, Jim.
It is already tough enough to sell good wine nowadays. Even though those relatively large fraudulous companies - both in France and in UK, and elsewhere as well, I suppose – mostly concern en primeur sales of mainly Bordeaux wines, the last thing the winemakers want is a bad reputation of the retail side of our activity as well.
But then again, buy straight from the producers whenever you can.

Jim's Loire said...

Thanks Luc. You are right this sort of activity can well give wine a bad name.