LONDON VAUXHALL DEALERS

Organisers were forced to make cutbacks when they were unable to secure funding, blaming the "poor economic climate".

The procession set off from Portman Square in Westminster at 11am without floats and vehicles.

People have also been warned not to go to Soho expecting open air entertainment, as no street events have been planned, a Pride spokesman said.

The celebrations will finish in Trafalgar Square at 6pm, earlier than in previous years, organisers said.

The spokesman said that all the agencies involved had agreed that it was prudent to deliver an event that is affordable, without compromising the safety, security and the integrity of the event.

A statement on the Pride London website said: "London and UK's LGBT community has never been one to flounder in the face of adversity.

"Despite the changes in the past week, we urge all members of the community to come out in force and support WorldPride and do the very best they can.

"Forty years on from the very first Pride London march, we need to show that this fighting spirit from 1972 lives on. Not just for us, but for our brothers and sisters across the world who are still fighting for their rights to be human, their rights to love and the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the place that they live."

On Wednesday, charity chairman Dr Patrick Williams resigned from his position following criticism of the board's handling of World Pride 2012.

Pride London announced long-standing board member Tony Hughes as its interim chairman and said the rest of the board would remain unchanged and committed to delivering an event London can be proud of.

Gay human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, who helped organise the first Gay Pride in Britain in 1972, said despite the problems and setbacks the numbers at today's events were huge and the atmosphere amazing.

He said: "It's much more political than in previous years. The global human rights message is really strong for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender freedom.

"Nearly 80 countries still criminalise homosexuality with the penalties ranging from life imprisonment and even execution.

"We are also celebrating 40 years of Gay Pride in Britain. In those last four decades we have won the appeal of nearly every anti-gay law. All that remains is to win same sex marriage."

Prime Minister David Cameron said: "The UK has been judged to be the best country in Europe in which to live if you're gay so it is great that World Pride is being celebrated here in London - especially during this Diamond Jubilee and Olympic year.

"I'm very pleased that the Mayor of London has enabled the march and events in Trafalgar Square to go ahead and I want to thank all the volunteers who will be stewarding the event and contributing to it.

"It is 40 years since people first marched in London calling for equal rights. Since then we've come a very long way and progress is still being made. We have just finished consulting on how to introduce same sex marriage and we are working with countries across the globe to bring about greater equality.

"I hope you all have a happy Pride and remember all those who have, and those who are still fighting for, greater rights and protection for the LGBT community."

PA

The multi-billion dollar case between one of Russia’s richest men, Oleg Deripaska, and the known fugitive from the law, Michael Cherney, will finally be heard at the Royal Courts of Justice this week.

The presiding judge will have to filter the truth from two tales that bare only the faintest semblance.

Cherney’s legal team will claim their client took a young Deripaska under his wing at the very start of his meteoric rise to wealth. Using his financial muscle and his political connections with the Yeltsin administration, Cherney opened the doors that allowed his protégé to become one of the richest men in the world. In return he was given part ownership of the asset at the heart of the Deripaska/Rusal empire, the Sayan aluminium smelter, known as SaAZ.

He was, by his own account, a fully fledged partner in the aluminium empire.

According to Deripaska, that account is a fiction. Far from being a business partner, Deripaska’s legal case alleges Cherney was part of highly sophisticated empire of organised criminals that were making millions, if not billions, of dollars extorting cash from legitimate businesses.

The deal brokered in the Lanesborough was the final instalment of this protection money, it is claimed. In 2001, after years of saying he suffered threats, blackmail attempts and even an attempted assignations, Deripaska felt secure enough to put a stop to the protection money he had been paying since 1995.

In his defence documents he claims Cherney and Anton Malevsky, a gangster who died in a parachuting accident in 2001, were the principal individuals behind the organised crime groups (OCGs) that operated in Russia. Working through gangs such as Podolskaya and Izmailovskaya, the alleged gangsters extorted vast sums of money from Deripaska and others through imposing krysha, literally “roof” in Russian, on their victims.

“It was well understood by businessmen operating in Russia in this period that it was necessary to have krysha in order to avoid the otherwise inevitable damage to their businesses and assassinations or personal harm to them or their families,” Deripaska’s defence documents claim.

It was against this background, and the specific assassination attempts on the lives of Deripaska and his associates, that he claims he entered into the krysha agreements with “Mr Cherney, Mr Malevsky and others, acting on behalf of various OCGs”.

The tales of lawlessness, of private armies and assassination attempts that have already emerged from the lawsuit are little short of extraordinary. They paint one of the most vivid pictures ever seen of Russia’s violent emergence from the Soviet era.

In court the tale could get even more dramatic.

Deripaska, an associate of Lord Mandelson and financier, Nat Rothschild, will detail in court how he paid private armies to protect his business interests in the late 1980s.

“The first time I was directly threatened, . . . two weeks later my commercial director was shot two times in the head,” Deripaska told The Sunday Telegraph in an interview earlier this year. “This was how, finally, I decided it was better to pay for the moment to stay alive and for my people to stay alive.”

Deripaska claims one of the main agents for the criminal gangs running the extortion racket was Cherney. Operating out of exile in Israel, he alleges Cherney operated as the link man between the Russian gangs and the west. Cherney is claimed to have used his contacts to extort millions of dollars from Deripaska, a pattern it is alleged that was repeated with other companies such as the Reuben brothers’ Trans-World Group.

Cherney will give evidence to the London court via videolink as his presence in the country could lead to him being detained under international warrants connected to a Spanish money laundering investigation.

Over 10 years, Deripaska will claim he had successfully defended his businesses from criminal infiltration while crime gangs in Russia had weakened.

Starting from his primary asset, the SaAZ smelter in Siberia, Deripaska had personally equipped local police forces with basic equipment, vehicles, radios, as well as funding his private security force, to combat crime.

By 2001 he claims the work had paid dividends.

“The development of the law enforcement agencies in the Russian Federation, the law and order policy of the new Russian government, and the success of Mr Deripaska’s business in all areas including his efforts to terminate the influence of OCGs meant that Mr Deripaska felt able for the first time to attempt to negotiate a termination of the krysha agreement,” the legal documents state.

A meeting was brokered between Malevsky of the Izmailovskaya crime group and Deripaska. According Deripaska’s case, the figure of $400m, almost exactly the same as was paid by Trans-World Group to exit its krysha, was brokered at that meeting. There was a condition that Deripaska should meet Cherney to negotiate his part of the deal.

Both parties admit the meeting at the Lanesborough took place and the money was paid.

According to Deripaska just one document was drawn up and signed on that day in March 2010. It covered the payment of $250m in protection money.

According to Cherney two documents were drawn up on that day, the first covering $250m in part payment for his share in the aluminium business. The second covered the balance of that payment and would relate to shares in the business.

While tales of lawlessness, shootings and gangsters will provide much of the colour for the six month court case the black and white facts will centre on the two documents.

Are the signatures authentic? Were they signed at the same time? Are the documents copies or the real thing? It is expected that each side will call a number of expert witnesses to back up their claims that the documents are, or are not, valid.

What is resting on the evidence is a claim that could run to billions of dollars. The quantum of the legal case settlement is so large it will be decided in a separate hearing, if it comes to that.

The case is set to start tomorrow, run for a week as both sides set out the basis of their case. It will then adjourn until September when witnesses, including Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, will be called.

It will be a long affair that will be measured not just in monetary terms but also the cost to the reputations of each man.

Paul Netherton, Assistant Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall Police, described the incident as "extremely traumatic".

He said: "It was a head-on collision at speed. The black Vectra was coming down the hill and appears to have swerved into the path of the oncoming car. The members of the family are in a critical life-threatening condition in Derriford and Torbay hospitals.

"We are trying to identify their next of kin in southern Ireland to inform them, and the next of kin for the gentleman who has died have been informed and our thoughts are obviously with the families involved at this time.

Mr Netherton said because the driver of a police car witnessed the crash, the force has referred the matter to the Independent Police Complaints Commission as a matter of course. The officer's police car had not been pursuing the vehicles.

"I booked myself a flight into space, I thought I’d fulfil that childhood dream. Then I told my friends and when the conversation changed, as it inevitably does, to what they would do if they had that amount of money I felt embarrassed.

"Their ideas were much more generous, interesting and responsible than mine."

After cancelling his space flight and struggling to choose a worthy cause for his cash, he decided to set up the WeAreLucky project.

"I didn’t want to just pass on my luck, I also wanted to share the responsibility. I decided to give away £1,000 every day. All I'd ask is that they'd do something positive with the cash. I’d take their picture and ask them to fill a brief questionnaire with their hopes and intentions for the money."

But is handing over the responsibility to others, really the responsible thing to do? How does he know the money will be put to good use? "I don’t," he shrugged. "I leave it to them. I’m not going to judge or start checking up on them. Sometimes you have to just believe in people," he said with almost child-like enthusiasm.

Once Mr Lucky had reached a certain level of wealth the extra income began to mean less to him and he began to wonder what more he could get for his pound: "Some people ask me why I just don’t give directly to a charity. Sometimes I might give the money to someone who then donates it to a cause I would have supported anyway.

"That may seem pointless. But I get a kick from bringing another person into the loop. I get a warm feeling when I give it to them and then they get a warm feeling when they give it to the charity." These unquantifiable ‘warm feelings’ are the non- monetary value added. The extra bang on the buck that he’s seeking.

The first lucky person seemed to fall out of the sky. We were standing on Charing Cross Road in central London when we witnessed a young lady running after a man to return his iPhone. Having unknowingly dropped it, the man was grateful and thanked her profusely. Mr Lucky smiled, this was an obvious one.

Noelia, we later discovered, is from Spain and is in London doing an internship. She shrieked as she peeked into the envelope filled with £50 notes and scanned the horizon as though expecting a hidden camera team to step out. Her first words in hesitant English were: "You believe in me? Thank you so much for believing in me."

But would that act of belief in her to do good inspire something? Does making that leap of faith in others galvanise something unexpected? She was not immediately sure how she would spend the money, she wanted to think about it. But as we left her making animated calls to her family in Spain Mr Lucky told me he felt confident.

The second lucky person of the day was a voiceover agent, Hannah, who having seen a clue on Twitter donned her running shoes and appeared wide-eyed and short of breath in a pub in Soho, where we were waiting.

Over a celebratory gin and tonic she told us that half would go a colleague she wanted to help out and the rest to a hospice in Watford, Hertfordshire. "I’ve never even been to Watford itself. But I promised I’d do a sponsored walk with a friend for the cause and because everyone is struggling right now I have failed to raise much money."

"Is it the Peace hospice?" Mr Lucky asked. It transpired that this is the very hospice that looked after Mr Lucky’s father before he died. We sat pondering the chances.

Once the adrenaline of that giveaway faded, I could see Mr Lucky become anxious for the next encounter. And I understood why. The immediacy of the reaction was intoxicating. "I love the direct impact," he explained shifting in his seat. "Nothing gets lost on administration and bureaucracy. Sometimes the money is enough to solve a particular problem for someone, to make it just disappear. Some causes feel like they need endless sums, bottomless pits of money."

Is that what brings increased satisfaction? Is it better to make a big impact on a small problem than a small impact on a big one? He told me the story of Marina, who he picked out in a pub. She gave her money to her 79-year-old neighbour who had been living without hot water for six years, fixing her plight instantly.

Like Marina, all ten participants that day, seemed to feel the weight of responsibility.

I met a previous participant who despite having had the money in his account for two months had not spent it. "I am focused on making the right choice. I will wait till I come across it," Ricardo told me.

We walked the streets and ended up in Vauxhall, south London, seeking out something unusual in the crowds. Mr Lucky decided to leave an invite in the appropriately named ‘Lucky Fish Bar.’ He explained the concept vaguely to the owner, Linda, and asked if she would hold an invite whilst he posted a clue on his Twitter feed. Her excitement at the prospect was so endearing that Mr Lucky could not resist. "This one is for you, Lucky Linda," he said handing her an envelope.

Her eyes widened and welled up: "I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it" she said. "I’ve always been told to work hard, to work every day, but I’ve never had this," she said clutching the envelope. She told us that her husband is recovering from a serious illness and she wanted to spend the money on health-related products for his recovery.

In an age of both greed and austerity, witnessing such spontaneous giving is rare. I see the joy on Mr Lucky’s face as he gave the envelope and on ‘Lucky’ Linda’s as she received it.

I was happy to just soak up the atmosphere and reflect on the project. Is it effective and what does it inspire? Ultimately it forced me to pause and shift my focus away from the question of what we need to make us happy to the less examined question, what can we give to make us happy?

When I recounted the day to a friend, I could see her wondering if she had come close to Mr Lucky. "I don’t think I would even turn around if someone tapped me on the shoulder. I always just assume they want something’ she said. I told her: "There is still time though. You could still get lucky. He’s still out there. This is something worth turning around for."

We-are-lucky.com; or follow @wearelucky1 on Twitter