“TEES VALLEY regional mayor Lord (Ben) Houchen’s South Tees Development Corporation (STDC), responsible for Europe’s largest brownfield regeneration project, is using Enron-style accounting to mask the remarkable deals it has struck with local businessmen and their effects on the body’s finances, an examination of its latest accounts shows.

Epitomising the smoke-and-mirrors is the single most expensive project at the heart of Rishi Sunak’s flagship freeport: the construction of a £113m quay on the south bank of the Tees, planned to serve green industrial companies such as the Korean wind turbine monopile manufacturer SeAH, which is building a plant next to it.”