Fraud case against three ex-G4S executives collapses after 10 year investigation
Charges have been dropped against three former executives of G4S’s electronic tagging arm who were accused of defrauding the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) following a 10-year investigation.
G4S Care and Justice Services had provided electronic monitoring services to the government from 2005 to 2013.
The subsidiary of security giant G4S was accused of misleading the MoJ over the extent of its profits from the tagging contract.
In July 2020, the firm accepted responsibility for three counts of fraud and agreed to pay a financial penalty of £38.5m and the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) costs of £5.9m.
Under the deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) with the SFO, G4S could continue to be considered as a government supplier.
The DPA only applied to the potential criminal liability of G4S Care and Justice Services as a company, and not to any current or former employees.
Former managing director Richard Morris, 47, from Buckinghamshire, ex-commercial director Mark Preston, 51, from Cheshire, and former finance manager James Jardine, 41, from Cumbria had been charged with seven counts of fraud.
The SFO alleged the executives made false representations to the MoJ between 2009 and 2012.
At an Old Bailey hearing before Mr Justice Johnson on Friday, prosecutor Crispin Aylett KC gave no evidence in the case which was 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 with a trial.
He recognised the impact of the case on the defendants who are of good character, adding: “We regret the way the case has turned out.”
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.”
The judge formally acquitted the defendants of the charges.
Speaking after being cleared of fraud charges, Mr Morris said: “I am delighted this matter has finally come to an end.
“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.
“I’d like to thank my family, friends and colleagues for their support. I would also like to thank my legal team who have worked so determinedly to expose the truth and dismantle the SFO’s flawed case.
“I was shocked when I learnt that G4S had entered into a Deferred Prosecution Agreement accusing me of wrongdoing, a wholly untrue allegation.
“This amounted to G4S signing a false confession, plain and simple.
“The outcome of this case shows G4S’s decision to enter into a DPA was unfair and misguided.
“To later learn that the SFO accepted the DPA’s untrue narrative and decided to prosecute me without properly investigating the underlying evidence, was incomprehensible.
“I am of course pleased to be vindicated, but no one should have to go through such an ordeal.
“Without significant changes to the DPA regime and the SFO I fear they will.”
Mr Jardine’s lawyer Joanna Dimmock, said: “After 10 years of delay, mismanagement and misunderstanding of the evidence the SFO have finally recognised this case should never have been brought.
“The SFO knew in 2021 fundamental errors existed which impacted the safety of Mr Jardine’s case. What followed has been a litany of disclosure disasters and breaches by the SFO of over 60 court orders.
“Yet again the SFO has wasted millions of pounds of taxpayers money whilst three men’s lives have been ravaged and put on hold for nearly a decade.
“Mr Jardine is grateful that he can finally put the injustice of the last nine years behind him and begin to rebuild his future with his family.”
At least 10 people have been killed after a fire broke out at a retirement home in northern Spain in the early hours of this morning, officials have said.
A further two people were seriously injured in the blaze at the residence in the town of Villafranca de Ebro in Zaragoza, according to the Spanish news website Diario Sur.
Two people remain in a critical condition following the blaze. Pic: AP
They remain in a critical condition, while several others received treatment for smoke inhalation.
Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at the residence – the Jardines de Villafranca – at 5am (4am UK time) on Friday.
Several residents were treated for smoke inhalation. Pic: AP
Those who were killed in the fire died from smoke inhalation, Spanish newspaper Heraldo reported.
The residence is home to 82 elderly residents.
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The blaze started in one of the rooms, Fernando Beltran, the national government’s top official in the region, told reporters.
All of the victims were elderly residents, he added.
Relatives wait for news outside the care home. Pic: AP
Fire crews, paramedics and police officers remain on site, said a spokesperson for the regional government of Aragon who confirmed the fatalities.
It took firefighters several hours to extinguish the blaze, they said.
The cause of the fire is unknown and is being investigated.
UN climate talks are “no longer fit for purpose” and should only be hosted by countries who are trying to give up fossil fuels, veterans of the process have said.
An open letter to the United Nations, signed by former UN chief Ban Ki-moon, made a dramatic intervention in the 29th COP climate summit, under way in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Frustration over petrostate hosts – following last year’s summit in UAE – as well as the influence of fossil fuel lobbyists, prohibitive costs, and slow progress have been mounting in recent years.
The letter acknowledges the strides COPs have made on ramping up climate policies.
“But it is now clear that the COP is no longer fit for purpose,” the authors said.
“Its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity.”
The letter’s 22 signatories also include former Ireland President Mary Robinson and Christiana Figueres, former head of the UN climate body (UNFCCC) that runs the annual COP summits.
It called for the process to be streamlined and for countries to be held accountable for their promises.
Sky News analysis has found only “marginal” progress has been made since the “historic” pledge from COP28 last year to transition away from fossil fuels.
Pic: AP Photo/Peter Dejong
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The letter also called for “strict eligibility criteria” for host countries to exclude those “who do not support the phase out/transition away from fossil energy”.
This year’s host country, petrostate Azerbaijan, has been engulfed in controversy.
Its authoritarian president Ilham Aliyev used his opening address to criticise western hypocrisy and praise oil and gas as a “gift” from God. His criticism of France, with whom relations have long been tense, drove the French minister to cancel a trip to the summit.
While the government and its COP team run separate operations, host countries are supposed to smooth over disagreements and find consensus between the almost 200 countries gathered.
COP presidencies are also nominating themselves to be climate leaders and throwing their own countries under the spotlight.
Azerbaijan is a small developing country that relies significantly on oil and gas revenues. But it has made slow progress on building out clean power – getting just 1.5% of its energy from clean sources – and led a harsh crackdown on critics in the run up to the COP.
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Azerbaijan team ‘optimistic’ about talks
In an interview with Sky News on Sunday, its lead negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev was unable to say whether Azerbaijan preferred to extract all its oil and gas or seek another, cleaner economic pathway – hard though that would be.
In a news conference yesterday, Mr Rafiyev said the president had been “quite clear” and he would not comment further.
“We have opened our doors to everybody,” he added.
Some diplomats here have hinted that Azerbaijan’s presidency team mean well but might be a little out of their depth. They have never been out in front at previous COPs, but they also only had a year to prepare for their turn hosting the mighty summit.
“My sense of this is that they’re a little underprepared, a little overwhelmed and a little bit short,” said one, speaking anonymously, as is customary for diplomats trying to maintain good relations.
“But I’m not sure that that’s politics. It might just be bandwidth and preparation and things like that.”
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Different regions in the world take turns to host a COP. This year it was up to Eastern Europe, but the selection process took longer than usual due to tensions over Russia’s war in Ukraine and between Azerbaijan and rival Armenia.
Achim Steiner of the UN Development Programme, called it “troubling” that some countries face questions over their host roles.
“Are there countries that are by definition good hosts and others are bad hosts?” he asked.
“In the United Nations, we maintain the principle of every nation, first of all, should have a right to be heard.
“Labels are not always the fairest way of describing a nation. Some of the largest oil producers have hosted this COP in the past, and seemingly this seemed to be a perfectly acceptable phenomenon.”
COP stands for “conference of the parties” and refers to countries (“parties”) who have signed the underlying climate treaty.
Azerbaijan’s COP29 team and the UN’s climate body have been contacted with a request to comment.
World
Body pulled from mine after police cut off supplies to ‘smoke out’ thousands of illegal miners
A body has been recovered from a South African mine after police cut off basic supplies in an effort to force around 4,000 illegal miners to resurface.
The body has emerged from the closed gold mine in the northwest town of Stilfontein a day after South Africa’s government said it would not help the illegal miners.
Around 20 people have surfaced from the mineshaft this week as police wait nearby to arrest all those appearing from underground.
It comes a day after a cabinet minister said the government was trying to “smoke them [the miners] out”.
The move is part of the police’s “Close the Hole” operation, whereby officers cut off supplies of food, water and other basic necessities to get those who have entered illegally to come out.
Local reports suggest the supply routes were cut off at the mine around two months ago, with relatives of the miners seen in the area as the stand-off continues.
Relatives of miners and community members wait at the mine shaft. Pic: AP
A decomposed body was brought up on Thursday, with pathologists on the scene, police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said.
It comes after South African cabinet minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told reporters on Wednesday that the government would not send any help to the illegal miners, known in the country as zama zamas, because they are involved in a criminal act.
“We are not sending help to criminals. We are going to smoke them out. They will come out. Criminals are not to be helped; criminals are to be prosecuted. We didn’t send them there,” Ms Ntshavheni said.
An aerial view of a mineshaft. Pic: AP
Senior police and defence officials are expected to visit the area on Friday to “reinforce the government’s commitment to bringing this operation to a safe and lawful conclusion”, according to a media advisory from the police.
In the last few weeks, over 1,000 miners have surfaced at various mines in South Africa’s North West province, where police have cut off supplies.
Many of the miners were reported to be weak, hungry and sickly after going for weeks without basic supplies.
Illegal mining remains common in South Africa’s old gold-mining areas, with miners going into closed shafts to dig for any possible remaining deposits.
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Relatives of miners and community members wait near the mine shaft. Pic: AP
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The illegal miners are often from neighbouring countries, and police say the illegal operations involve larger syndicates that employ the miners.
Their presence in closed mines has also created problems with nearby communities, which complain that the illegal miners commit crimes ranging from robberies to rape.
Illegal mining groups are known to be heavily armed and disputes between rival groups sometimes result in fatal confrontations.
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