Chips 4 Free Virtual Magazine

Damning Evidence Against Prescott Emerges

Further evidence showing that Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott used his political influence to push for the bid of an American business tycoon to turn the Millennium Dome into Britain's first super casino has emerged.

Emails coming from Mary Spence, the chief executive of Thames Gateway South Essex, whose office was in support of a rival bid Southend, revealed that Prescott's office put pressure on them to support the Millenium Dome bid.

Following a key meeting with ODPM officials February 28, Spence wrote in an e-mail: "ODPM want to make a decision on a single preferred option in the TG (Thames Gateway) Strategic Framework - reason for this being that Government policy is ONE licence."

This new evidence clears away most doubt that Prescott's department has been pushing for the casino bid of billionaire Philip Anschutz. The email comes after disclosures of Prescott having stayed in the tycoon's Colorado estate, and met with him six other times, without being officially declared.

Anschutz is the owner of Anschutz Entertainment Group, the firm bidding for the Millennium Dome to be the site of the super casino. The e-mail has put a hole in the claims of the Deputy Prime Minister that he knew nothing about the secret strategy to push for the Dome.

He dismissed the Southend allegations as "absolute rubbish".