Surge of Net-Roots Support for a Private Prosecution
Since yesterday pledges of support for a private prosecution have come in thick and fast on the main PledgeBank website and a few via Facebook. You can even text 'pledge cash4prosecution' to 60022 from your mobile phone. One substantial financial pledge via email will hopefully not be the last. At this preliminary stage the intention is to convene a legal conference before the end of the month and go through the issues and examine the possible approaches including the establishment of a vehicle with a legally qualified advisory committee.
Guido is keenly aware of potential hurdles and risks. Surely the Attorney General will not be able to argue that the public interest is best served by turning a blind eye to what was manifestly an attempt to circumvent the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 Act? How will the public interest be harmed by testing in a court before a jury the legality of the Loans for Lordships scheme?
One example will give you a flavour of the Loans for Lordships scheme - Gulam Noon has publicly stated that he made a £250,000 donation to the Labour party, which he correctly submitted (via Downing Street) on his vetting papers for the House of Lords Appointments Commission. Two days later on October 5, 2005 Lord Levy, Gulam Noon reportedly claims, telephoned him and referred to the £250,000 donation as a "loan" which need not be disclosed on his vetting papers. The Levy-intercepted and revised vetting papers were submitted to the House of Lords Appointments Commission, now without mention of the £250,000 "loan" / donation. When the Commission independently discovered the existence of the "loan" / donation they blocked the peerage - as presumably Lord Levy knew they would - why else would he intervene in the process? What was the Labour party's chief fundraiser doing intervening in the honours process anyway? Prima facie there is a case to answer. If the CPS won't bring it, they should at least not attempt to block others from doing so.
UPDATE : The first target of one hundred people making pledges of financial support for a private prosecution has been met in less than 24 hours.
34 comments:
Anything to stop that smug bastard 'Sleazy Levy' trying it on with the police with 'Wrongful Arrest' !!!
some will accuse me of being chicken, but can we make leaving Ruth Turner out of this a condition of support ?
At least she isn't prancing around the tv studios with all the crocodile tears about being hard done by. You never know, we may yet need her evidence about what that nasty Jonathan Powell made her do..
This decision by David Perry QC, is susceptible to judicial review, and can be quashed, and an Order of Mandamus can be sought to force the CPS to do its duty.
IM all pledged up and ready to see the bastards swing.We are the public and are interested so fuck the cps.
Funny how the champion of civil liberties does not beleive in the right to be innocent until proven guilty. After a 16 month police investigation, there is no case to answer.
Jonathan Powell's wife has given an interview to the Guardian accusing the police of "gestapo tactics". I guess y'all realise that just as the upshot of Hutton was to neuter the BBC, so the upshot of Cash for Honours will be to neuter the police.
Question: Why was Levy (a party fundraiser) involved in seeing the vetting papers for a Lord appointment (a No. 10 function)?
Did the CPS address this obvious breach in protocol?
You are all mad and demented and clearly have more money than sense.
11:13 AM, I can't help but be reminded of Judge Pickles who remarked that the one thing that really got to him was the large number of guilty men found innocent in cases he presided over.
If you can actually be arsed to read the news coverage, the amount of evidence handed in seems far too much to justify the CPS decision.
Or to put it another way, I bet you were really impressed by Hutton too...
Anon, I would like my own Counsel to decide whether or not there is a case to answer. I know I can't rely on the state to try the state.
Perhaps Mr Noon would care to support this cause? He has been horribly embarassed.
The Peerage-police investigation has embarassed the Government. The Peerage-private-prosecution will embarass the State.
If you win I would ask for future revenues from diaries as payment. It will be interesting to see people put their diaries into their partners names to try to protect future income.
Story in the Times ...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article2116324.ece
It will be useful to everybody to publish the Evans diary - which contains all the "dynamite" evidence and the Government barrister ruled was not admissible.
Come on........how can it not be in the public interest, for the public to prosecute sleazy politicians?
Javelin, I too am amazed by the timesonline story. It appears that Labour has got off not because there is no evidence but because it is apparently inadmissable, despite being dynamite.
According the The Times, the 'independent' QC brought in to quash, sorry, decide this investigation has ruled that there must be 'unambiguous' evidence. Presumably nothing less than a legally binding contract between Sir Christopher and Ld Levy, prepared by their solicitors, would do. And then they wonder why people are losing faith in the Criminal Law...
Anonymous
You are all mad and demented and clearly have more money than sense.
My contribution will be coming out of state benefits, as befits the need.
You are all mad and demented and clearly have more money than sense.
Probably true....but then again I do have got lots of money
His Grace is pleased that you do have got lots of money.
His Grace has very little, but what little he has is dedicated to the pursuit of truth and justice.
And he can write English.
How DARE they arrest him? Don't they know who he is? About his charity vork for the most deservink causes going?
Lord Levy, the central figure in the saga, and Mr Blair's personal fundraiser, is understood to be furious over his treatment, and is considering whether to sue Scotland Yard for wrongful arrest. Friends of Lord Levy are also urging him to complain to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2790959.ece
am saddened but not surprised at the nastiness and jealousies expressed by so many of the posters
I totally agree with all those who remind us that we are all "innocent until proven guilty". Anything else would be wrong. Having heard the evidence (and this is just the evidence that has been made public), how on earth can you conclude anything other than "guilty as charged". Its been proven, get on with it plod, lock them up.
Scary biscuits - yes agreed. Unfortunately in criminal law you need to be beyond reasonable doubt - until civil law the burden is to prove on the balance of balance probablity.
My legal strategy would be to be as 'civil' and as light fingered as possible in the challenge. The goal would not be to try hard to send them to jail for the longest possible term but to try the lest to taint them as with the lightest of accusations. The weight of their office will drag them down not the weight of the crime.
The current administration wants to reduce the standard of proof required by General Medical Council disciplinary hearings from the criminal law standard to the civil law standard i.e. to be able to strike doctors off the register on a balance of probability rather than beyond all reasonable doubt.
How poetic if they were to get a taste of their own medicine.
What's the possible liability if we lose and get costs awarded against us?
Perhaps it might be best to wait until the Commons Public Administration Committee sits and delivers its judgement on the whole affair before starting civil prosecution proceedings. Rumour has it that Blair himself is to be summoned before said committee to account for his behaviour, according to the Sunday Telegraph.
Leave them be if you can't get Blair.
And leave Blair because he's kicked the union's to the side and thereby done us a service. Labour were always going to come back if the Liberals never overtook them, so best at least not to have union dominance.
Only selling honours enabled Labour to avoid this. Hopefully the investigation scared people into avoiding this in future, but so long as the Tories win next election, we'll complete 30+ union-free years, well worth some minor corruption.
According the The Times, the 'independent' QC brought in to quash, sorry, decide this investigation has ruled that there must be 'unambiguous' evidence.
The law is like politics: 99% of them give the decent ones a bad name.
Helm, a journalist and author, writes in today's Observer: 'I know one shouldn't make these comparisons, but I was writing about Nazi Germany right then and I couldn't help think: Gestapo tactics! Pick on the vulnerable, preferably a single woman, living alone. No matter that you may have nothing on her that will ultimately stand up in court - give her a scare.'
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,2132043,00.html
Disgraceful! No single woman living alone should ever be raided by the police for anything unless they've already got cast-iron proof of all her wrongdoing. In which case, they won't need to raid her.
These remarks echoed a series of angry private comments yesterday from Blair's closest political allies. One, accusing the police of heavy-handed tactics and damaging media leaks, described Yates as 'a shit'.
'Everyone who has been at all affected by this investigation will have thought long and hard about what to do now - and be very tempted to take the argument to Yates,' he said. 'But no matter how much anger there is, there is also a desire to put the entire terrible episode behind us.'
I bet a few military families wish they could say the same of their traumas. These people really do believe they're above the law and that rules are for the rest of us.
Like everyone else,I'd like to know the liability for costs if the decision went the wrong way.
Id also like to follow up what one poster said and ask why the Labour party hasnt been charged with false accounting: the party treasurer ha sstated he was completely in the dark about the loans. Surely this is an open and shut case and would really kipper the Labour Party if they were found guilty?
I see, our old friend "Gestapo tactics". I must have missed the bit where Lord Levy was kept naked in a freezing cell for weeks, beaten daily, had his finger nails pulled out and was then hanged with piano wire. Gestapo tactics my arse. And now he's talking about suing the police? As if. The slimeball knows he's had a lucky escape, the last thing he'll want is to see the inside of a court room if he's got any sense.
Guido - just to point out that to fulfil the condition of the pledge there'll need to be 101 sponsors, not 100, as the pledge reads 'only if 100 OTHER people' [pledge support etc].
I expect there are far more than 100 by now anyway - how many are there, by the way?
Levy is guilty as sin This just goes to show that he has several friends in high places who put pressure on the CPS. The case with Noon is clear and there is other evidence out there as well, I just saw a website where the author directly states Levy offered a peerage in exhange for a loan.
I was stunned when I heard the decision and would support a private prosecution.
I don't usually comment on anything but I consider this matter important. How many of the upright citizens who are railing against sleaze, are Freemasons?
Having said that, the best of luck with the action against these bastards, as long as it's being done for the right reasons.
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