Why is a small travel firm footing the bill for Antiguan ambassador to Japan, Anthony Liverpool - the man key to the future of whales?
The Sunday Times Insight team
Published: 20 June 2010
Japan hopes to overturn a ban on commercial whaling that has been in place for 24 years (AP) The Antiguan ambassador to Japan, Anthony Liverpool, flew to Morocco last week preparing to play a pivotal role in deciding the fate of the oceans' whales.
He had been thrust into the role of stand-in chairman for the International Whaling Commission (IWC) after the incumbent fell ill.
Top of the agenda is a move backed by Japan and its supporters to resume commercial whaling after a gap of 24 years. It will require a strong and unbiased chairman to handle the commission's anti and pro-whaling factions.
However, The Sunday Times's revelation that Liverpool has accepted a fortnight's free accommodation at a luxury hotel raises serious questions about his impartiality and suitability to lead the IWC meeting, which begins tomorrow.
When he checked into the Atlas Amadil Beach hotel in Agadir last Sunday, somebody had already paid his bill of about £4,000 by credit card.
Investigations by this newspaper have established that the name on the card was "Japan Tours and Travel Inc". The firm is an unusual choice of travel company as it is based in Houston, Texas, 2,000 miles from Liverpool's home.
The firm is linked to a Japanese businessman called Hideuki "Harry" Wakasa, who also lives in Houston. A whistleblower last week identified Wakasa as the middleman who paid cash and cheques to five east Caribbean islands, including Antigua. When a reporter contacted Liverpool at his hotel on Friday, questions about Japan funding his stay were initially met with long silences. The conversation went on:
Reporter: [The] money comes from the Japanese government. Or the Japanese whaling association or the Japanese co-operation foundation? Which suggests that you are — as the chair of the meeting, it seems odd ... that they should be paying for your hotel?
Liverpool: Yes, but there is nothing extremely odd about that . . .
Reporter: Does he also pay for your flight?
Liverpool: At this point in time?
Reporter: Yes
Liverpool: Uhuh [agrees].
However, Liverpool changed his line when the reporter read out a passage from the IWC convention that said: "The expenses of each member of the commission and of his experts and advisers shall be determined and paid by his own government."
Liverpool said his government had provided support for him to attend the meeting "in a significant way" and claimed he did not know Wakasa. While he did not deny being funded by the Japanese, he did say the country's "government" was not paying for him.
Yesterday Barry Gardiner MP, a former Labour biodiversity minister, called on Liverpool to step down. "To be in any way compromised by Japan, which is notorious for buying up votes, is unacceptable," Gardiner said.
The IWC will this week consider a proposal that quotas should be introduced to allow commercial whaling. Japan, Iceland and Norway would be able to kill 1,800 whales a year, including endangered species.
For Japan it is the culmination of a long campaign to win support for whaling by recruiting small impoverished nations to the IWC.
Last week The Sunday Times exposed how Japan was buying votes from small nations using aid, cash and prostitutes to gain their support on the IWC.
The story went round the world. It was also read by a whistleblower who was in touch with Greenpeace, the environmental campaign group, in Tokyo to tell it about his role in Japan's vote-buying operation. The whistleblower, "Mr A", told The Sunday Times that he had worked for years as an executive for a Japanese company which built fisheries aid projects in underdeveloped countries.
He said he held a series of "very, very unofficial" meetings with Japanese civil servants who encouraged his company to sound out IWC countries, or potential IWC countries, which would pledge voting support in return for aid.
After arranging almost 50 fisheries projects for about 20 countries, Mr A had first-hand knowledge of the secret payments and the characters involved.
He provided a list of 16 countries being paid for their votes ahead of this week's meeting on the future of whaling. In each case he claimed Japan paid for a delegation to travel to the IWC and funded the country's membership fees of £7,000-£10,000 a year.
The Marshall Islands, Kiribati, Solomon Islands, Republic of Guinea, Benin, Gabon, Gambia, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mauritania and Morocco were all named. He also included five east Caribbean nations: St Lucia, St Vincent and Grenadines, St Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, and Antigua and Barbuda.
Mr A said he had recently been talking to an official in Japan's foreign ministry who told him the embassy in Trinidad had offered to pay Liverpool's expenses during the Morocco meeting.
When a reporter made inquiries at Liverpool's hotel in Morocco, we found he was staying there from June 13 to 28 and his bill was being paid by Japan Tours and Travel.
Mr A said he had also organised trips through this small firm and that Wakasa used it frequently. He said Wakasa was the whalers' key man in the east Caribbean.
"The east Caribbean islands were on our side. Their membership fees for the IWC were paid for by Wakasa who also gave them air fares, paid for their hotels, as well as subsistence money when they attended IWC meetings," he said.
Mr A said Wakasa was an agent for Japanese whaling interests funded by his country's government. He worked on behalf of the Japan Whaling Association which is financed indirectly by the Fisheries Agency and the Overseas Fisheries Co-operation Foundation (OFCF), an agency sponsored by the agriculture ministry.
Mr A said funding between the two bodies was interchangeable but the OFCF had a £540,000-a-year slush fund to meet the expenses and fees of the countries that supported its pro-whaling position on the IWC. Delegates were given $300 to $500 spending money during meetings.
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