By Andrew Rowson
Background. Is there any accountability in Cambridgeshire?
Recent posts on this site (here and here)
have reported on Cambridgeshire County Council’s (CCC) concerted cover-up of
an alleged six-figure benefits fraud by a former Chief Finance Officer. For up to five years, Mr Chris Malyon personally
benefitted from non-executive directorship fees (NED) paid in cash by
council subsidiary Cambridge and Counties Bank Ltd, that should have gone to
the County Council. Mr Malyon, who was a
non-executive director at the bank between November 2013 and October 2018,
repeatedly failed to disclose those taxable benefits in the council’s financial
statements. In his capacity as CFO, he had
a statutory obligation to prepare the accounts and to certify them as “true and
fair”. It is possible, indeed more
likely than not, that CCC, as his employer, also failed to declare his NED fee benefits
in the annual P11D
forms it submitted to HMRC to confirm that its employees were paying the
correct tax.
Mr Malyon tendered his resignation from his NED role at Cambridge
and Counties Bank on the same date (26th September 2018) that auditor
BDO noted the “omission of remunerative benefits required for inclusion”
in its audit
completion report (p18) presented to
CCC’s Audit & Accounts Committee. The
audit partner, Lisa Blake, later admitted to me that the above comment in the report did refer to Mr
Malyon’s NED fees. But she did nothing
to expose the alleged fraud, in breach of her duties under International Standard on
Auditing (UK) 240 (The auditor’s responsibilities relating to fraud in an audit
of financial statements - ISA
240).
Both BDO and subsequently Ernst & Young (EY) colluded
with the county council in covering up the undeclared benefit fraud, the possible
tax fraud and Mr Malyon’s unlawful pay rise in 2017/18 that the Chief Executive
Officer (CEO) fabricated to disguise that year’s undisclosed £45,000 NED fee
from the bank, as reported on this site.
Seeing both audit firms’ determination to bury the story, in
April 2021 I submitted a complaint to Cambridgeshire Constabulary on the matter. For more than two years, the police also
failed to investigate properly. In particular they failed to challenge CCC’s demonstrably
false documents from 2018. In August
2023, the lead detective inspector announced he was dropping the investigation,
but he failed to produce any coherent evidence supporting his decision. In March this year, the same officer forged a
letter, claiming he had written it seven months earlier. Last month, Cambridgeshire Constabulary’s
unaccountable Chief Constable defended his dishonest officer and stated that he
would not pursue the matter any further.
The letter below is addressed to Mr Darryl Preston, Cambridgeshire
and Peterborough’s Police and Crime Commissioner.
20th
September 2024
Dear Mr Preston,
Is Cambridgeshire Constabulary institutionally
corrupt?
In April and May this year I wrote to you about an abortive
police fraud investigation lasting over two years, led by a DCI at
Cambridgeshire Constabulary. I asked to
meet with you. In the first letter I
went into some detail about how the officer leading the investigation had
relied on objectively false documents provided by Cambridgeshire County Council
(CCC) that I had shown him were false over two years earlier.
On 24th May I received a
response from Mr Jack Hudson, the Deputy CEO & Director of Governance
and Compliance at your office. Mr Hudson
advised me to address my complaint to the Chief Constable, who is responsible
for police operational matters. I accept
that was the correct response at the time.
He also wrote that he had forwarded my letters to the Constabulary’s
Complaints Review Team (CRT), who would contact me. I have had no contact from the CRT.
on 18th
August, I wrote a long and detailed letter to Chief Constable Dean, again
setting out the key facts and evidence showing how the officer leading the
inquiry had ignored irrefutable documentary evidence that comprehensively
contradicted the false documents he had relied on. I also explained how the officer, DCI Rowe,
had forged a letter and tried to pass it off as one he had written seven
months earlier (see “The final straw” from p14). I believe that was gross misconduct that
demanded prompt and severe action by the Chief Constable.
I copied my letter to my MP and also to Baroness Taylor of
Stevenage, Under-Secretary of State at MHCLG with an accompanying letter about
the comprehensive six-year cover-up of the alleged fraud by CCC and two
audit firms who had colluded with the local authority to bury the scandal.
I received a disgraceful response
on 3rd September from Chief Constable Dean’s PA, which included
an absolute untruth:
“I’m afraid the Chief Constable does not have anything
to add to what Detective Chief Inspector Rowe has already relayed to you. We
understand that in addition to correspondence from him, he has also visited you
to explain the Constabulary’s position on this.”
The reference to an additional visit from DCI Rowe was 100%
incorrect, as I immediately stated in my response that same
day. I have had no reply from the
Chief Constable or from anyone else at the Constabulary since then. As to “explaining the Constabulary’s
position on this”, you, and the wider public need to know what actually
took place. At a virtual Microsoft Teams
meeting with DI Rowe (as he then was) last August (not at any subsequent
visit to my home), I pointed out for the third of fourth time that the
documents CCC had produced in September 2018, (and on which DI Rowe had based
his entire investigation) were false and unsupported by any real events or
public documents (here and here). At that point DI Rowe pivoted, and “explained”
that I needed to understand that the police had very close links with local
government. The public already knows
that. But that is no justification for
the police also to cover up alleged six-figure fraud and corruption by CCC’s former
CFO, Chris Malyon, and former CEO, Gillian Beasley. As I say, unless this is put right we will
continue to pay for those fraudulent acts for decades to come in Mr Malyon’s
over-inflated pension. Many holders of
public office are implicated, including those who are still determined to cover
up the truth. I include in that list: CCC’s
Head of HR Janet Atkin, Council Leader Lucy Nethsingha, Chair of the Audit
& Accounts Committee, Cllr Graham Wilson, CEO Dr Stephen Moir, Monitoring
Officer, Emma Duncan, and S151 Officer Michael Hudson. That is not even an exhaustive list of those
who knew the facts but did nothing.
Others outside the council who knew and did nothing include the external
auditor, Lisa Blake - formerly of BDO, BDO’s Head of Audit and Assurance, Scott
Knight, and Mark Hodgson from EY, as I have documented publicly on several
occasions.
I believe there can be one of only two explanations for the
Chief Constable’s unaccountably rude reply on 3rd September. Either:
a)
He did not read my letter, and simply instructed
his PA to send the do-nothing response, or
b)
He did read the letter, did see the evidence of
DCI Rowe’s gross incompetence and misconduct over his forged letter, but
decided to cover it up.
The Chief Constable’s reference to a subsequent imaginary visit
from DCI Rowe suggests that the second explanation above is the more
likely. In any event, his response was
wholly unacceptable in a number of ways.
It was a breach of his obligations under the Nolan Principles, and a
breach of his obligations under the police’s ethical
policing principles and the Guidance
for professional and ethical behaviour in policing.
As I mentioned in my first letter to Chief Constable Dean,
in today’s Britain it is no longer a surprise for the public to learn that a
police authority has been branded institutionally corrupt, racist, misogynistic
or homophobic by a reputable public figure.
When I wrote about corruption to the Chief Constable, and accompanied it
with indisputable facts, I hoped he would do everything in his power to
reassure me, with solid, credible rebuttal evidence, that that was not
the case. Alternatively, if he did
acknowledge DCI Rowe’s poor conduct and considered it exceptional, and
unrepresentative of his force, I would have expected him to act responsibly and
take immediate action to defend the reputation of the public body he
leads. In my opinion, putting aside the
facts of the alleged fraud at CCC, any police officer who is found to have lied
to a member of the public and forged documents should be summarily dismissed at
the very least.
But Chief Constable Dean did neither. Instead, his response via his PA confirmed my
worst fears about the prevailing corporate culture at Cambridgeshire
Constabulary, which invariably comes from the top.
Everyone is doing it
Last year, the Financial Reporting Council fined KPMG £30m
for its misconduct in respect of its Carillion audits, including forgery - the fabrication
of documents using dates months before the documents were actually created. Deloitte,
another big-four audit firm, was caught doing the same thing in Canada. Last year it was fined $1.59m. There seems to be no limit to the ethical
misconduct some auditors
today are prepared to sink to. I
have also caught out another county council (West Sussex CC) back-dating
documents. The public expects much
higher standards of behaviour from the police.
Yet forgery is precisely what DCI Rowe did with the two-page
letter he claimed to have written in the space of five minutes on 24th
August 2023, when in fact he wrote it seven months later, as I demonstrated in last
month’s letter to Chief Constable Dean.
I took Mr Jack Hudson’s advice from his letter in May and
addressed my concerns directly to the Chief Constable, who was clearly not
interested. There is no point in my
going to the Complaints Review Team now, for three very good reasons:
1)
CRT failed to contact me following Mr Hudson’s
letter in May,
2)
CRT reports to the Chief Constable, which means it
is unlikely they would challenge him, and
3)
Police complaints procedures, as at many other large
organisations, have a notoriously poor reputation for objectivity.
I have therefore exhausted my complaint to the Chief
Constable, and found his response to be inadequate, indeed, disgraceful.
Two-tier policing
DCI Rowe clearly lied about his forged letter. The lie and the forgery alone invalidate his
“investigation”, which in any event was based on Ms Atkin’s false documents. Cambridgeshire Constabulary is thus not
qualified and is evidently far too closely connected to Cambridgeshire County
Council to undertake a new investigation into Mr Malyon’s undeclared
non-executive director fees and his unlawful 36% pay rise in 2017/18. I am now taking the matter up my MP, to whom
I am forwarding this letter.
There remains the question of ethical standards at
Cambridgeshire Constabulary. When you
accepted the office of PCC in May, you signed an oath,
and made a commitment to abide by your own Code
of Conduct, which specifically
states on page 4:
“The PCC pledges to lead
policing for the people and therefore the PCC is not only responsible for their
own ethical standards, but for the standards of those in their office and those of the Chief Constable.”
I have shown that the ethical standards of DCI Rowe and
Chief Constable Dean fall woefully short of the Nolan Principles, below the
police’s own code of ethics, and well below the standard Cambridgeshire
taxpayers are entitled to expect.
It is important to be clear about what it going on
here. It is called two-tier policing,
and it is nothing new. In Britain, when
a relatively
junior council officer steals from the taxpayer, there is a good chance he/she
will be prosecuted and punished with the full force of the law. But if you are at the top, especially if you
hold one of the three statutory offices at a county council, and you steal much
larger sums of public money, there is every chance the political establishment
will protect you, and even reward you with a six-figure pay-out if you are so
toxic you have to be moved on. I have
seen it time and time again. It is wholly
unacceptable.
Taxpayers’ money that funds the police, including Chief
Constable Dean’s £178,912 salary (£12,000 higher than the Prime Minister’s), is
there to protect the public from criminals, including privileged,
white-collar criminals, not to cover up and bury alleged crime committed by
senior public servants.
In light of events, I am asking to meet with you to discuss how
you will reassure the public that Cambridgeshire Constabulary is not
institutionally corrupt, and how it can demonstrate that it is not too close to
the County Council. To be clear, I am not asking you to interfere with the
operational independence of police officers.
We are some way beyond that now. I
wish to talk with you about the ethical standards of senior police officers – a
completely different matter that is a core part of your official responsibilities.
I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest
convenience.
Yours sincerely,
Andrew Rowson
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