Tokra
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Tokra was a private security firm apparently set-up by Mark Kennedy, an undercover police officer who infiltrated the environmental movement for 7 years.[1]
The cross-over between police intelligence gathering and the private security sector raises some difficult questions about accountability and corporate policing.
History
An article by The Guardian, dealing with the undercover police officer Mark Kennedy reveals information about the private security sector. After leaving the police,
- in February 2010 – a month before resigning – Kennedy set up Tokra Limited, at an address in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire.[1]
- Calling himself a logistics officer, Kennedy registered himself as sole director of the company. Intriguingly, the address he used is the work address of Heather Millgate, a solicitor specialising in personal injury, and a former director of Global Open, a private security firm.[1]
- In February last year, Millgate went from being a marketing manager to a director of Global Open. On 31 March, Tokra changed its address from Millgate's work address to one in Basingstoke.[1]
- On 12 April, Kennedy applied for Tokra to be dissolved. Within a few days of that application, he resigned from the police. Tokra was finally dissolved on the 17 August. On 31 August, Millgate resigned as director of Global Open. Black Star High Access has not yet filed any records to reveal whether it is a viable, financial concern, but it is still active.[1]
Sci-Fi names for private security firms
The fanciful name could have derived from a science fiction television series, Stargate. The Guardian tells us
- Kennedy might well have seen parallels between his company's mission and the plot, which features the Tok'ra as an alien race symbiotically inhabiting human hosts. In their human guise, the Tok'ra fight a powerful, evil race who seek to control and destroy the planet.[1]
- Last spring, Kennedy set up a second firm – Black Star High Access Limited – in east London. That company name also appears to have been taken from a television science fiction programme: Black Star is the name of a spaceship in Babylon 5.[1]
