US Dome boss in share probe

The new owner of the Dome is at the centre of the latest accounting scandal to rock the United States.

American tycoon Philip Anschutz made £1 billion by selling shares in a company at an inflated price.

Mr Anschutz, who is heading a consortium that is taking over the Dome, was founding chairman of Qwest Communications International which is now being probed by a US financial regulator.

It emerged today that he sold a big stake in Qwest for $47 a share in 1999. The price slumped to $1 a share after the company admitted it had exaggerated its profits and used improper accounting practices.

The Tories seized on the revelation to question whether Mr Anschutz, a big donor to President George Bush's election campaign and Right-wing pressure groups in the US, was a fit and proper person to take over the running of the Dome. But ministers vowed to press ahead with the deal, which will see the Greenwich attraction turned into a concert and sports venue surrounded by luxury flats.

The venue will be operated by Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), part of the Meridian Delta consortium which is taking over the whole site.

The Government has claimed it can get a return of around £550million on the attraction, built with Lottery money. But the return depends on how well AEG runs the business. Meridian will keep all the profits up to an undisclosed threshold, after which they will be shared with the Government "roughly 50-50". Ministers have said the precise terms of the deal cannot be disclosed for reasons of commercial confidentiality, but critics have warned that the arrangements mean the Government could end up with little or no money if visitor numbers fall short of target. AEG has promised to invest £200 million at the site, now empty and neglected after the Dome exhibition closed in December 2000.

A spokesman for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, now overseeing the Dome, said: "The deal that we did was with Meridian Delta, who in turn did a deal with AEG. AEG are completely separate from Qwest and, as far as we are aware, the deal will go through as planned."

But Tory culture spokesman John Whittingdale said: "The Dome continues to lurch from one disaster to the next.

"This is yet another episode in a dreadful catalogue of mismanagement."Mr Anschutz's profit from selling Qwest shares was revealed in a submission to the Securities and Exchange Commission, America's stock market watchdog.

Other senior Qwest executives made a further £317 million by selling before the shares crashed.

Last weekend the company's new chief executive, Richard Notebaert, admitted that the company had been overstating its profits for three years from 1999 to 2001, and would have to restate its results for that period.

Investigations are centring on suspicions that the company swapped telecommunications capacity with other companies and booked immediate profits, while spreading the costs over several years.

The scandal is the latest in a wave to hit corporate America, including the collapse of energy trader Enron and telecoms group WorldCom.