SFO accused as it drops G4S prosecutions
THE Serious Fraud Office has come under fire for wasting millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money and making “huge mistakes” in its 10-year investigation into G4S’S electronic tagging arm as charges against three former executives were dropped.
In September 2020, former managing director Richard Morris, ex-commercial director Mark Preston and former finance manager James Jardine were charged with seven counts of fraud.
The executives of G4S Care and Justice Services, which provided electronic monitoring services, were accused of making false representations to the Ministry of Justice between 2009 and 2012.
The charges were brought after G4S accepted responsibility for three counts of fraud and agreed to pay a financial penalty of £38.5 million, and to pay the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) costs of £5.9m.
Yesterday, prosecutor Crispin
Aylett, KC, offered no evidence in the case against the three former executives, who were due to go to trial in April next year.
Mr Aylett said: “The decision to drop this case is not one that could be taken either quickly nor lightly.” Following a “careful and comprehensive review” it was decided it was “no longer in the public interest” to proceed, he said.
Mr Aylett said: “The defendants have been under suspicion for 10 years and the prosecution are only too aware of the impact the proceedings will have had on them and their families. We recognised the potential unfairness of asking that this should go on for a substantial period of further time.
“We regret the way the case has turned out.”
Mr Justice Johnson formally acquitted Mr Morris, 47, from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, Mr Preston, 51, from Cheshire, and Mr Jardine, 41, from Cumbria.
After the Old Bailey hearing, Mr Morris, who attended court, said he was “delighted” the case was over and thanked his lawyers who “worked so determinedly to expose the truth and dismantle the SFO’S flawed case”.
He said: “From the outset, the allegations against me were plainly wrong. That it has taken 10 years for the SFO to acknowledge as much is a scandal.”
Mr Morris’s lawyer Ross Dixon, of Hickman & Rose Solicitors, blamed the SFO for “failing to understand its own evidence”. He said: “This is not the first time a major fraud prosecution has come unstuck for the SFO after it signed a DPA [Deferred Prosecution Agreement] with the company at the centre of its investigation.”
An SFO spokesman said: “As a public prosecutor we have to make difficult decisions, including ending a prosecution where it is right to do so. In line with the Code for Crown Prosecutors, we have determined it is no longer in the public interest to continue this prosecution.”