Transparency International Dossier lists cash-for-peerages 'crimes'
telegraph: More than seven separate criminal offences - including bribery and conspiracy to defraud - may have been committed by the leading players in the "cash-for-peerages" affair.
The world's leading anti-corruption watchdog, Transparency International (TI), has sent a detailed dossier to John Yates, Scotland Yard's Deputy Assistant Commissioner, who is heading the inquiry into the funding of the Labour and Conservative parties.
The eight-page document, compiled by the British branch of TI, signals that the police investigation could be wider and have far more serious consequences than has so far been suggested.
The possible criminal offences that TI UK suggests may have been committed - after a detailed legal analysis of the reported facts of the affair - are bribery, two separate counts of obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception, false accounting, conspiracy to defraud, fraudulent trading, and offences under the Competition and Enterprise Act.
Up to now, police had been expected to concentrate their inquiries on whether the 1925 Honours Act or the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 had been broken.
TI UK's submission also presents 51 questions that it believes should be asked by police - covering everything from the terms of the loans taken out by Labour and the Tories, to nominations for peerages, the awarding of Government contracts, and planning decisions.
The questions also seek to discover which senior politicians knew about secret loans - totalling £14 million for Labour and £20 million for the Conservatives.
Neill Stansbury, project director for TI UK, a non-government organisation that gets £1 million a year funding from the Department for International Development, said: "The UK has a very chequered record of law enforcement on bribery and corruption.
"The government tends to talk big at international conferences, such as the G8, on the need to tackle worldwide corruption, but it does nothing." Read more
db: Time to harry, hassle and hound Blair out of Britain:
The world's leading anti-corruption watchdog, Transparency International (TI), has sent a detailed dossier to John Yates, Scotland Yard's Deputy Assistant Commissioner, who is heading the inquiry into the funding of the Labour and Conservative parties.
The eight-page document, compiled by the British branch of TI, signals that the police investigation could be wider and have far more serious consequences than has so far been suggested.
The possible criminal offences that TI UK suggests may have been committed - after a detailed legal analysis of the reported facts of the affair - are bribery, two separate counts of obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception, false accounting, conspiracy to defraud, fraudulent trading, and offences under the Competition and Enterprise Act.
Up to now, police had been expected to concentrate their inquiries on whether the 1925 Honours Act or the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 had been broken.
TI UK's submission also presents 51 questions that it believes should be asked by police - covering everything from the terms of the loans taken out by Labour and the Tories, to nominations for peerages, the awarding of Government contracts, and planning decisions.
The questions also seek to discover which senior politicians knew about secret loans - totalling £14 million for Labour and £20 million for the Conservatives.
Neill Stansbury, project director for TI UK, a non-government organisation that gets £1 million a year funding from the Department for International Development, said: "The UK has a very chequered record of law enforcement on bribery and corruption.
"The government tends to talk big at international conferences, such as the G8, on the need to tackle worldwide corruption, but it does nothing." Read more
db: Time to harry, hassle and hound Blair out of Britain:
...The prime minister has accused some MPs of all parties of being out of touch with voters on law and order.
Tony Blair told the Observer he wanted to "harry, hassle and hound" criminals into giving up - or leaving Britain. Link
posted by exoplanet at 6:17 PM
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