by OUR OWN REPORTER
A number of Israeli Government departments and the country's UK Embassy have told Not Just Sheep & Rugby they have no knowledge of a $40 million intellectual property deal involving their state officials and "disruptive technology" company Avocet Natural Capital.
The identity of the mystery Middle East purchasers of 'revolutionary' fuel additive patents appeared to have been confirmed during a court hearing in October when a finance company successfully applied to have Avocet chairman Martin Frost declared bankrupt.
Our exclusive report on the bankruptcy proceedings included an explosive submission by Jonathan Rodger, counsel for United Kingdom Agricultural Lending Ltd. (UKALL), the firm pursuing Mr Frost and his wife for a £4 million debt.
Mr Frost had claimed he would be in a position to pay off his debts and creditors as he was due to receive some $6 million from the patents sale. The proceeds were, at that time, being held in a Texas bank, he said.
But in a forthright court statement Mr Rodger declared: "There are no transaction documents, by which I mean documents effecting the sale of $40 million of intellectual property to the state of Israel. The idea that such a transaction would not have generated a forest of documents is absurd.
"There is no evidence that any money transfer from the Frost Bank [of Texas] to Mr Frost is in progress. There are no minutes of the board of ANC (Avocet Natural Capital) or of a shareholders meeting of ANC approving the disposition of such an enormous amount of ANC’s money to Mr Frost. Obviously for a company to just give $6.1M of its money to a director is an eyebrow raising thing which ought properly to be done with attending formality.
"And finally, there’s no copy of the written confirmation of this favourable decision from the Texan taxation authority – all of this could have been produced to you. I’m afraid that it’s my submission that Mr Frost’s letter of 11th October and his assertion that essentially 21st century alchemy is going to put $6.1M in his pocket is fanciful and utterly without substance."
In response, Mr Frost claimed there had been an embargo in place that there should have been no mention of the state of Israel.
He added that counsel for UKALL had broken that embargo in a public forum. Mr Frost explained that Israeli security services had been involved in the transaction. ANC had a number of prominent Islamic shareholders, and "one did not want a big announcement that this technology was being sold to the Israelis".
Since the court proceedings ended six weeks ago we have attempted to secure comment from the Government of Israel about their dealings with Avocet Natural Capital. Our efforts have involved fourteen separate email exchanges.
We asked how the technology sold to the Israeli state by ANC would be used, and requested confirmation of the $40 million price frequently quoted by Mr Frost in newsletters to shareholders.
Our quest began with a message directed at Israel's general press office where a member of staff provided a ten-page list of spokesmen and spokeswomen for the various state departments. We were in for a long haul.
An approach to the Israeli embassy in London elicited the response "I can try to find out but the chances are slim". A fortnight later we were told there was no further information available.
We then tried Israel's Ministry of Energy, copying our request for information to the Science & Technology department.
An Energy spokesperson wrote back to say: "This is not related to our area of practice. I'm not familiar with this story at all. I have no relevant information of who is the appropriate person who can help".
Since then we have despatched three emails in the course of the last fortnight to the "Western European media spokesperson" but we are still awaiting a response.
Despite our best efforts, for now the multi-million dollar transaction between ANC and the state of Israel remains as mysterious and as secret as ever.
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