For Queen and Currency

In For Queen & Currency, investigative journalist Michael Gillard exposes a massive fraud and security scandal at Buckingham Palace which Scotland Yard and the Royal Household tried to suppress.

Drawing on thousands of leaked documents and police sources, Gillard tells the inside story of a group of Royalty Protection officers who entertained a life of high-risk gambling, brown envelopes of cash and striking gangsta poses on the throne of England while supposedly guarding the royal family and their secrets from terrorism and press intrusion.

Paul Page, a young royal protection officer turned degenerate gambler, ran a hedge fund for cops during the credit and property booms. His Currency Club bet millions on movement in sterling and gold and paid investors returns beyond the dreams of avarice and financial logic. As word spread to other royal palaces, more protection officers and their friends piled in with savings and cheap loans from banks, many of which were running their own Ponzi scam.

Page was hiding huge gambling losses and when the returns dried up a hit man threatened his family, sending the royal cop over the edge and on the rampage with a gun.

Scotland Yard tried to spin the scandal to divert attention from its own regulatory failures. But Page refused to go quietly. His sensational trial became an arena to expose the so-called elite royalty protection squad and the private life of a senior royal. “The Queen is going to be mightily pissed off,” he warned. “[There was] an agreed understanding that what happened at Royalty stayed at Royalty.”

Not any more.

Michael Gillard writes for The Sunday Times on corruption and organized crime. In 2004, he co-authored Untouchables: Dirty Cops, Bent Justice and Racism in Scotland Yard. A two times winner of Investigation of the Year in the British press awards, in 2013 he was voted Journalist of the Year for his investigation of organized crime and the London 2012 Olympics, his next book.