LONDON METROPOLITAN POLICE ACCUSED OF UNDERWORLD CONSPIRACY

“Met police accused of underworld conspiracy

Fiona Hamilton Crime Correspondent
Last updated at 12:01AM, May 11 2013

Corruption within Scotland Yard has enabled a vast criminal network to operate in London for two decades with virtual impunity, a court was told.

Three Metropolitan Police officers have accused some of their colleagues of leaking police intelligence to alleged criminals, tampering with evidence and attempting to frustrate prosecutions.

In evidence to the High Court this week, one of the detectives alleged that his inquiries into organised crime were thwarted when he was made the subject of a “flawed and malicious” investigation by the Met’s anti-corruption command.

David McKelvey, a former detective chief inspector, also claimed that senior officers were reluctant to take on the underworld group, said to have operated in Soho and East London since the 1980s, because they felt that it was “too difficult and too dangerous”.

He claimed that the Met had failed to take seriously threats against him and two colleagues despite credible intelligence that a £1 million contract had been taken out on them. One intelligence source said an alleged hitman sat outside a police station with a machinegun.

The allegations emerged during the second week of a libel trial in which David Hunt, 52, an East End businessman, is seeking unspecified damages from The Sunday Times over an article in 2010 that accused him of being the head of the network.

Mr Hunt, who owns a property empire, denies the article’s claims that he led a gang involved in murder, drug-trafficking and fraud. He has denied running protection rackets in East London in the 1980s and 1990s and being involved in prostitution in Soho.

A barrister for the three detectives, who began investigating Mr Hunt in 2006, stated in a court document in an earlier hearing that he is the head of a criminal network that has “successfully corrupted police officers and those working with the police over many years”.

Lawyers for Mr Hunt, who has denied all criminal allegations, said that police had relied on criminals as sources and on uncorroborated intelligence to “sex up” their claims. They said the fact that Mr Hunt had never been convicted or even prosecuted for an offence since 1987, despite being placed under prolonged surveillance, pointed to his innocence.

At a hearing in a related action in October 2011, the court was told how the Met and the Serious Organised Crime Agency believe that Mr Hunt is the “head of an OCG [organised crime group] who has not been brought to justice”. Mr Justice Tugendhat, overseeing the case at the time, cautioned that those beliefs did not mean that Mr Hunt was guilty. “
source:
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/law/article3762237.ece

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“Former judge to examine role of police corruption in murder investigation

Review of case of Daniel Morgan will look at links between private investigators, police and News of the World journalists
•
•Vikram Dodd
•The Guardian, Friday 10 May 2013 05.30 EDT

Daniel Morgan, whose brother said the family had endured ‘mental torture’ during years of fighting for justice. Photograph: Rex Features

The home secretary has ordered a review by a former senior judge into the role police corruption played in shielding the murderers of a private detective found with an axe embedded in his head.

Daniel Morgan was murdered in a south London pub car park in March 1987, and his killers have never been brought to justice.

His family believe he was silenced as he prepared to expose corruption at the highest ranks of the Metropolitan police.

The Home Office announced on Friday that an independent panel would examine the case, chaired by the former appeals court judge Sir Stanley Burnton.

It will be a painful exercise for Scotland Yard, which in 2011 accepted that police corruption had shielded the killers, in a letter written by the then acting commissioner, Tim Godwin.

The review is also challenging for News International, which owns the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times. In 2002, the News of the World placed under surveillance the head of the Morgan murder investigation, the former detective chief superintendent David Cook – allegedly on the orders of an executive. The paper physically followed Cook and his young children, “blagged” his personal details from police databases, and tried to access his voicemail and that of his wife.

Cook, a former Met detective, said the inquiry could be as difficult for the Met over the issue of corruption as the public inquiry in 1998 into the Stephen Lawrence case was on the force’s racial failings.

He said: “I consider the Daniel Morgan murder as grave a case for the Metropolitan Police as was the murder of Stephen Lawrence, but instead of race being the issue, this time it is about corruption.”

The announcement of the inquiry is a victory for the Morgan family, who have battled powerful institutions for over a quarter of a century. Morgan’s brother Alastair said the fight they had been forced to wage amounted to “mental torture” and criticised police chiefs over the years who he said had failed to tackle corruption so serious that it had shielded murderers.The review announced on Friday is the second ordered by the home secretary into allegations that past Met corruption shielded murderers. One is already under way into allegations that officers helped protect the killers of Stephen Lawrence, and is being conducted by a senior prosecutor.

Theresa May said the panel would “shine a light” on the circumstances of Daniel Morgan’s murder, its background and the handling of the case since 1987.

Alastair Morgan, Daniel’s brother, said: “Through almost three decades of public protests, meetings with police officers at the highest ranks, lobbying of politicians and pleas to the media, we have found ourselves lied to, fobbed off, bullied, degraded and let down time and time again. What we have been required to endure has been nothing less than mental torture.

“The allegations and evidence of serious corruption within the Metropolitan police – extending to recent history and the highest ranks – remained unaddressed through five police investigations.”

He added: “Over most of this period, we witnessed a complete unwillingness by police and successive governments to face up to what was occurring, and ultimately a complete failure by police leadership to deal effectively with serious police criminality.”

The Morgan family said the terms of reference for the inquiry panel included:

• Police involvement in the murder

• The role played by police corruption in protecting those responsible for the murder from being brought to justice and the failure to confront that corruption

• The incidence of connections between private investigators, police officers and journalists at the News of the World and other parts of the media and corruption involved in the linkages between them.

In 2011, the trial of three men accused of Morgan’s murder collapsed over legal technicalities and police errors.

The prosecution decided not to offer any evidence because it could not guarantee the police could meet rules protecting the defendants’ right to a fair trial. Charges against two other men had been dropped earlier.

One of those acquitted was a former detective, Sid Fillery, who was charged with perverting the course of justice. After the murder he replaced Morgan at Southern Investigations.

The brothers Garry and Glenn Vian were also acquitted, after the prosecutor had to admit police could not be relied upon to ensure the defence had access to any documents detectives may have which could be relevant to resisting the charges.

The case is estimated to have cost between £30m to £50m in investigations and trials over the 26 years since the murder.”

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/may/10/judge-police-corruption-murder-investigation

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“Metropolitan Police discipline 42 employees in two months”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-22375964

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