Wrekin truck sale as ruby tales intensify

Diggers, dumper trucks, picks and shovels are not unusual assets for a construction company.

And today more than 40 vehicles belonging to the Wrekin Group are up for grabs to the highest bidder in an online auction.

But most definitely not up for sale is one of the strangest assets ever to appear on the balance sheet of a failed civil engineering business - a two kilogram, cricket ball-sized rock reported to be a ruby known as the Gem of Tanzania.

Although the auction is expected to realise more than £130,000 for administrators Ernst & Young by the time bidding ends on Friday, it is the gemstone apparently valued at £11 million which has generated the headlines.

Would-be buyers were on site at Wrekin's Shifnal headquarters today to view the vehicles being sold off.

Meanwhile it appears only Wrekin chairman David Unwin, his solicitor David Miller, and the administrator have actually seen the Gem of Tanzania, currently locked up in a secure facility.

The ruby was acquired by Wrekin in December 2007 from Mr Unwin's Tamar Group in exchange for £11 million worth of preference shares in the Lamledge Lane-based firm.

The Tamar Group had taken over Wrekin in June 2007.

But doubts have been cast on the value of the stone after Mr Unwin's solicitors said they were concerned about the validity of the valuation documents which Mr Unwin relied upon when purchasing the ruby.

And in the latest twist to an already bizarre tale, it emerged today that the uncut stone once belonged to a businessman exposed as being behind a £100 million scheme selling a "cure for Aids".

Official documents supporting the £11 million valuation for the gemstone in 2004 show it was owned by Trevor Michael Hart Jones, also known as Michael Hart Jones.

The documents include an appraisal of the stone's value in 2004 for Mr Hart Jones, who was later exposed by the BBC Newsnight programme as running a scheme, allegedly backed by the Swaziland royal family, selling "goat serum" as a cure for Aids.

The scheme was brought to the attention of the BBC by Swazi-born actor Richard E Grant, who had seen a brochure from Mr Hart Jones' company, Commercial African Resources Development, which showed African patients being injected with the serum and showing marked improvement within 20 minutes.

He contacted Newsnight after discovering Mr Hart Jones had allegedly been involved in diamond deals with the military junta which took power in Sierra Leone in 1997.

The valuation of the stone for Mr Hart Jones, by gem expert David Davis, records it as a ruby from Tanzania, of "very fine red colour" which could be cut into many gem stones.

It is understood Mr Hart Jones sold the ruby to another party who later sold it on to Mr Unwin.

Mr Unwin's solicitor, Derek Miller, yesterday said his client had bought the ruby in good faith and was "shocked" by the concerns that it may have been over-valued.

An unnamed gemstone is listed in the Tamar Group's accounts in 2005, with a value of £300,000.