The Telegraph.QUOTE
James Thomlinson, head of digital at Bell Pottinger, told the Independent that “Biggleswiki†was “one of a number of accounts†that had been used to edit Wikipedia entries.
He added: “We have never done anything illegal. We have never added something that is a lie or hasn’t been published elsewhere and we have never tried to ‘Astroturf’, ie create fake positive reviews to sell a product.
“If we have been asked to include things about clients that are untrue we have always said no and pointed to Wikipedia’s strict guidelines.
“We have also ensured that for every change that we have made we have sought the approval of the wider Wikipedia community first.â€
Like most text with words "always" or "never" or "every" in it, this may be puffery. However, I did notice
PrguruguruÂ
(T-C-L-K-R-D)
did create
Pelham Bell Pottinger, first in user space. It was then moved to Articles for creation, and from there to mainspace by another user unlikely to be affiliated with the company. The only impropriety here is that Prguruguru did not disclose conflict of interest, if any, and did then edit the article after the move. However, the edits seem reasonable, though I haven't checked in detail.
In another post here I got the relationship of Pelham Bell Pottinger and Bell Pottinger Group backwards. The parent company is Bell Pottinger.
All the flap over this, so far, yet there is no serious smoking gun, something where a Bell Pottinger employee drastically violated anything except for COI rules (and COI violation is extremely common, if we take COI seriously and include all forms of involvement that would, for example, cause a judge to recuse.)