Government ministers appear to waste time with bizarre hoax

[muriel_volestrangler]

This story starts with a rambling speech in the House of Lords, that blogger Hopi Sen noticed and tried to understand:

http://hopisen.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/the-lord-the-cabinet-minister-foundation-x-and-a-mysterious-5-billion/

Picked up by a Financial Times blog: http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2010/11/03/392971/the-parliamentary-foundation-x-files/
and a Reuters one: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/11/03/conspiracy-theory-of-the-day-foundation-x-edition/

Consensus seems to be that Lord James has fallen for a hoax by the "Office of International Treasury Control", who have a history of hoaxes involving governments and money. But it's worrying that 2 government ministers, as well as a Tory Lord, have been spending time on this. As commenters note, this is the governmental equivalent of "Dearest Sir, I have a Large Amount Of Money I need to move urgently out of Nigeria, and I am in need of your help to do this".