# Bell Pottinger Group

Bell Pottinger is a public relations company. They were hired by Mark Warner (unknown when) and sent their Head of Issues and Crisis Management Alex Woolfall to Praia da Luz.

The Bell Pottinger website: → Bell Pottinger

More information here: → Wikipedia

“Bell Pottinger Private (BPP Communications Ltd.) is a British multinational public relations and marketing company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the largest UK-based public relations consultancy measured by 2010 fee income. Bell Pottinger offers services such as lobbying, speech writing, search engine optimisation and “sorting” (fixing) Wikipedia articles to clients including companies, governments and high net worth individuals. In December 2011 it came under public scrutiny after managers were secretly recorded talking to fake representatives of the Uzbek government and abusing Wikipedia by removing negative information and replacing it with positive spin. Bell Pottinger was, until July 2012, a wholly owned subsidiary of Chime Communications plc. →Lord Bell, who advised →Margaret Thatcher on media matters when she was British Prime Minister, is a co-founder of Bell Pottinger.”

Some of their clients include(d):

- →General Pinochet, who was represented by Michael Caplan QC (the McCanns hired Michael Caplan).
- →Nuclear Decommissioning Authority who had representation in COMARE meetings (Gerry McCann was on the Committee of COMARE).

Founder of Bell Pottinger were →Lord Bell and →Sir Frank Lowe.

Extract from wikipedia: “Lord Timothy Bell was knighted in 1990 after nomination by Margaret Thatcher and made a Life Peer after nomination by Tony Blair as Baron Bell of Belgravia in 1998. Tim Bell has recently been an advisor to the Iraqi government on the “promotion of democracy”. In December 2006 Lord Bell successfully lobbied on behalf of the Saudi government to discontinue the Serious Fraud Office investigation into alleged bribes in the Al Yamamah arms deal.[7] Lord Bell has also performed public relations work for the authoritarian government of Belarus, and for the Pinochet Foundation (Fundación Pinochet). In late 2011, Bell's lobbying interests were investigated by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism for The Independent newspaper which reported claims that the company attempts to interfere with Google results to “drown” out coverage of human rights abuses, that his employees had altered Wikipedia entries to create a better impression of clients and had easy access (via former Conservative MP Tim Collins) to the Cameron government and others overseas. Bell-Pottinger, via a sting operation, were found to be willing to work for the authoritarian regime in Uzbekistan. Bell launched an internal inquiry, but believed he had been singled out for his connection with Mrs Thatcher. Chime disposed of Bell Pottinger in June 2012 (while retaining a 25% stake in the business), when Bell also resigned as a director of Chime.”

The Guardian provides a vita of Frank Lowe →Monday 17 July 2006: “The grand old man of advertising, Sir Frank Lowe caused a sensation when he quit the agency he founded 25 years ago to launch a new company - and promptly pinched one of his old agency's biggest accounts. After 15 years with →Lowe Worldwide, →Tesco pulled its £50m account to go with Sir Frank's new start-up, →Red Brick Road, named after the route that Dorothy decided not to follow in the Wizard of Oz. It was quite a coup for Sir Frank, who co-founded Lowe Worldwide in 1981. He quit after relations became increasingly fraught with Lowe Worldwide's parent, Interpublic, which bought the company in 1990. Adland hadn't seen anything like it since Maurice and Charles walked out on →Saatchi and Saatchi. Classic Lowe campaigns read like a list of all-time greats, including ads for Hovis, Hamlet, Heineken and Stella Artois. Once described as “terrifying but inspiring”, Sir Frank, who rarely talks to the press, made his name at the Collett Dickinson Pearce agency in the 1970s. Knighted by Labour for his services to advertising and charity in 2002, less than a year after he donated £2m to the country's first city academy in north London, he has been called the “definitive champagne socialist”. He left Lowe Worldwide in 2003 and set up the new business following a two-year ”non-compete“ clause. He ended it in the most dramatic fashion with the capture of the Tesco account, one of the most successful ad campaigns of the last 10 years. Lowe's start-up was also appointed the lead international creative agency for drinks giant Heineken. “Frank has an absolute dedication to quality and he never lets up. It can drive you mad,” according to Red Brick Road chief executive Paul Hammersley, who worked with Sir Frank for 10 years at Lowe Worldwide. “Can he be unreasonable to people? Absolutely. Can he be inconvenient to people? Absolutely … But I have no doubts about working with him again.”