How top QC ‘buried evidence of Met bribes to put innocent man in jail’: Whistleblower alerted court that ‘organised crime’ had infiltrated police… then they said HE had perverted course of justice

• Senior barrister Sasha Wass is at the heart of a growing scandal 
• The QC is facing claims in a London courtroom she lied to judges 
• She allegedly tried to hide evidence of police corruption 
• The man who blew the whistle, Bhadresh Gohil, nearly faced jail time 
• A senior officer confirmed evidence of bribes in a report 
• But the Crown Prosecution Service decided against using them in court

By David Rose

One of the country’s top prosecutors is facing professional ruin following sensational claims in a London courtroom that she lied to judges in order to hide damning evidence of police corruption – at the risk of sending an innocent man to jail.

At the heart of the growing scandal, whose origins were exposed by this newspaper in February, is Sasha Wass QC, the barrister who prosecuted entertainer Rolf Harris and the £2 billion rogue trader Kweku Adoboli.

A court has heard claims that Ms Wass not only buried an official report by the Metropolitan Police confirming there was evidence that officers in its anti-corruption unit had taken bribes, but that she prosecuted the lawyer who brought the report to the attention of the authorities for perverting the course of justice.

The alleged attempted cover-up almost led to a lengthy prison sentence for the man who blew the whistle, Bhadresh Gohil.

The revelations were contained in a secret 4,300-page dossier cited in court last Friday. They include the results of an investigation by Scotland Yard’s Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS), which reports to Met Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe.

The inquiry, led by Commander Peter Spindler, was said to show that a Met unit set up to investigate financial corruption was itself corrupted by ex-Met officers working for a private investigation firm, RISC Management.

They allegedly paid bribes running to thousands of pounds to a former colleague, Detective Constable John McDonald, in order to obtain sensitive information.

Mr Gohil, during the course of an appeal against an earlier conviction on fraud charges, was charged in June 2014 with attempting to pervert the course of justice because he claimed that Det Con McDonald was being bribed by RISC and supplied documents to support this. McDonald had been one of the officers who had investigated Mr Gohil at the earlier trial. The police and Crown Prosecution Service insisted his claims were bogus.

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