Married couple paid £5m a year to build cases against our troops
THE company that provides civilian investigators for the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) has almost trebled its turnover in three years to £20.5million, it has emerged.
Red Snapper Recruitment is paid nearly £5million a year by the Ministry of Defence to provide staff, including ex-police officers, to the inquiry.
The agency is owned by husband and wife Martin and Helen Jerrold, who live in a £2million home in Islington, North London.
IHAT was set up by the Labour government in 2010 to examine allegations of murder and torture made by hundreds of Iraqi civilians.
The majority of cases were brought to the unit’s attention by law firms such as Public Interest Lawyers, which closed last month after being stripped of legal-aid funding over alleged irregularities.
Company accounts show the couple were paid a dividend of £318,539 in the 12 months to May 31, 2014, the first year after Red Snapper won the lucrative IHAT deal. The next year’s accounts, for the year ending May 31, 2015, show a further distribution of dividends of £320,260.
The firm’s profits have also risen in the two years since winning the IHAT contract – from £181,980 in May 2013 to £1.1million in May last year.
Mr Jerrold, 45, was forced to step into the spotlight last week to appear before a parliamentary select committee scrutinising the work of IHAT.
Yesterday Mr Jerrold said: ‘We are very proud to support the MoD but we were successful before winning the contract.
‘This is as much to do with knocking down spurious claims [against British soldiers] and clearing them as it is about prosecuting the small minority who have allegations to answer.’