Today’s Times contains more useful information about undercover police officer Mark J Kennedy.

+ Global Open employs other ex-NPOIU officers.

+ Global Open’s clients included E.ON.

+ Heather Millgate’s husband (John?) is a former Special Branch officer.

+ Global Open’s clients include ‘large power companies, banks and pharmaceutical businesses’.

+ Global Open admits that it worked for E.ON in 2009 but denied that it employed Kennedy ‘during that time’ which it could not have done because he only left the police in March 2010. It also implies that his was later employed by Global Open.

+ E.ON ‘currently uses a different firm of private security consultants for the same purpose’ – i.e. infiltrating protest groups and feeding the company with confidential information. Could that company be C2i International with which, as noted on Indymedia, its head of security Barrie Millet has a close personal relationship with C2i Justin King?



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Founder of police intelligence unit now runs surveillance company

The Times 14 January 2011

The founder of a secret police unit that monitors political protest groups was revealed last night to be running a private security company providing intelligence to multinational companies.

Rod Leeming was head of the National Public Order Intelligence Unit before founding Global Open, which gathers information on extremist groups. The company confirmed that it employed other former members of the elite intelligence unit after being linked to the undercover officer Mark Kennedy, whose unmasking is blamed for the collapse of a trial of six environmental protesters this week.

A woman undercover officer who infiltrated environmental activists in Leeds for four years has since been identified and details of two other potential informants are being circulated among activists. Global Open was providing intelligence to the E.ON power company at the same time that Mr Kennedy had infiltrated a group of protesters planning a mass invasion of its coal-fired power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar, near Nottingham, in April 2009.

Julia Hodson, Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire Police, has asked the Independent Police Complaints Commission to investigate events leading to the collapse of the Ratcliffe-on-Soar trial. She has also requested a separate review into the use of an undercover officer in the case.

Mr Kennedy officially left the Metropolitan Police last March after seven years in his covert role but remained with the environmental activists for six months until admitting his real identity to them.

He had already used the details of Global Open's then solicitor and director to set up one company before leaving the force and a second one after resigning. Heather Millgate, the solicitor, whose husband is a former Special Branch undercover officer, refused to discuss her links to Mr Kennedy.
Mr Leeming, 65, also refused to discuss the company's links with Mr Kennedy but insisted "he was not giving us evidence while he was in the police".

"He did not work for us and I doubt he was working for anybody," he said. "I am surprised that he has been exposed but there is a lot more to this than meets the eye. I expect he will explain everything that has happened." Mr Leeming said that Global Open investigators would covertly attend campaign activists' meetings if they were open to the public but that most of the company's work was analytical.

The company says its services are aimed at companies that are "at serious level of threat from activism" and monitors the threats to directors and attacks on premises.

Global Open lists more than 90 clients, including large power companies, banks and pharmaceutical businesses, and its services include intelligence gathering, tracking the movements of activist groups and "maintaining a discreet watch" on organisations considered a threat.

E.ON admitted employing Global Open to keep track of green groups opposed to its power stations until 2009 to "gather information from public sources" but denied that Mr Kennedy worked for the group during that time.

The company, which employs a former member of the Special Boat Service as its head of UK security, currently uses a different firm of private security consultants for the same purpose.

Global Open has also been used by BAE Systems, Britain's biggest weapons company, to monitor Campaign Against Arms Trade. Martin Hogbin, a former national director of the campaign, was also later accused of providing information to the defence giant, which he denied. It emerged yesterday that the Home Secretary is unlikely to be informed of the details of undercover police work because they are deemed "operational" matters rather than policy.

The previous Labour Government is understood to have been relaxed about being in the dark because it was seen as constitutionally improper to interfere in day-to-day activities. 'He was not giving us evidence while he was in the police'.