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For our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, who has spent 23 years with The BBC, and 41 years in journalism (when he was trained to use simple language, avoiding jargon), knowledge of corruption was ever-present although PROVING it was notoriously difficult, and this is now underlined by new information which appears to show it may be getting worse.
Figures about it are hazy, and while there are lots of policies showing that organisations oppose it, securing proof for officials when you know it is actually going on is very tough.
I am talking, of course, about CORRUPTION – money changing hands under the table, that sort of thing!
Necessarily this is a dark world, and any statistics about it are murky, but if you go to a number of different sources you arrive at some semblance of truth – and then a picture is painted which is, unfortunately, pretty grim. Around the world the situation appears to be getting worse, not better.
For example Poland used to be a relatively clean country, but it got dirtier from 2015 to 2023 under a populist government. Romania jailed thousands of crooked officials, but others often took their places. In Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia oligarchs have outlasted prosecutors. Under Viktor Orban’s illiberal rule, Hungary has become as corrupt as some countries in Africa and the Middle East.
Italy HAS improved, but only from the low point of Silvio Berlusconi’s scandal-plagued administrations. Greece’s corruption is infamous, and the reforms which the EU and IMF imposed after the Euro crisis did little to fix it. In 2019 a Greek prosecutor who went after Novartis, a drug firm, for bribing doctors was sacked – and then prosecuted herself, even though in America the company admitted guilt and paid $347 million in fines, (she was acquitted last year).
In Wales the policies at least seem to show things are pointing in the right direction, although what is going on under the surface tells another story.
For instance, the ‘Welsh Government Counter fraud and Corruption Policy’ has a fine pronouncement: “The Welsh Government has a zero tolerance to Fraud and Corruption. This policy sets out our commitment to prevent and detect fraud and corruption impacting upon the Welsh Government both internally and externally. Any level of fraud or corruption will be thoroughly investigated”.
South Wales Police (SWP) policy, too, espouses noble principles: “Police corruption covers a range of unacceptable behaviour by officers or police staff. Such misconduct could include but is not limited to:
- theft or fraud, such as making fraudulent claims or stealing from crime scenes
- accessing or giving out confidential information without authorisation
- taking or supplying illegal drugs, or alcohol abuse
- criminal or otherwise inappropriate associations
- having links to organised crime
- using their position to pressure someone into a sexual or other relationship
- posting inappropriate or sexualised content on social media”.
Yet recent events have been rather less than noble for this, the biggest police force in Wales.
There have been a huge number of miscarriages of justice, and a campaign is underway now for a Public Inquiry to establish the truth. This is a form of corruption which is not included on their list.
The miscarriages include but may not be “limited to”: The Cardiff Three (Five), The Cardiff Newsagent Three, The Darvell Brothers, Jonathan Jones (The Tooze Murders), as well as Annette Hewins.
However this shameful list does NOT have on it (“not limited to”) all those innocent people who were convicted of less important crimes than murder, yet who now have a record which will affect them for the rest of their lives, and there is a powerful argument for getting rid of SWP completely.
This has been emphasised, as well, by senior politicians with an Early Day Motion (EDM) in the UK Parliament tabled by Plaid Cymru’s (Plaid’s) Liz Saville-Roberts.
The EDM was then signed by several MPs, declaring: “…this House notes the series of cases since the 1980s investigated by South Wales Police force that resulted in wrongful convictions; further notes the devastating impact that wrongful accusation and imprisonment can have on people subject to miscarriages of justice; expresses concern that many of the perpetrators of these crimes have yet to be found; and calls on the Ministry of Justice to organise a judicial inquiry into all miscarriages of justice that took place between 1982 and 2016”.
Let’s take just one of those cases where the man at the centre of it all mentions ‘corruption’. Mike O’Brien of the so-called Cardiff Newsagent Three was wrongly jailed after a flawed investigation by SWP. Mr O’Brien spent 11 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit – the murder of Cardiff newsagent Phillip Saunders in 1987 and he told me: “…(We) should have a Public Inquiry into all the appalling miscarriages of justice the police have been responsible for. There was corruption at a high level here…”.
A further “…appalling miscarriage of justice” where, it seems, “There was corruption at a high level” is the Cardiff Three/Five case.
Three BLACK men had been convicted of the murder of 20 year old Lynette White (although FIVE were put on trial), when one WHITE man (Jeffrey Gafoor) was finally caught years later through DNA analysis.
He confessed to carrying out the awful 1988 murder, and even apologised, through his barrister, to the others who had been incorrectly jailed.
The five innocent men were arrested in December 1988 after detectives had been on the case for 10 months, and were pursuing a suspect seen nearby (who looked EXACTLY like Gafoor), minutes following the murder.
But when SWP changed the investigating team, and pressure mounted to make an arrest, attention turned to locals. Despite no forensic evidence connecting the five to Ms White’s murder they were taken in.
Tony Paris, Yusef Abdullahi, and Stephen Miller were found guilty in 1990 of the murder, and spent more than two years serving prison sentences having spent the same time on remand, while cousins John and Ronnie Actie were acquitted after being in custody since their arrest.
False eyewitness statements, coerced confessions, and more were used in the police ‘investigation’. However on appeal in 1992 the taped interviews with Mr Miller, who had a mental age of 11, were deemed an example of inappropriate interrogation for reference in future cases, such was their intimidating and coercive nature. It exposes the failings by SWP investigating officers, bolsters demands for a judicial inquiry, and highlights Mr O’Brien’s words that “…There was corruption at a high level here…”
There is another one which is not (in theory) a miscarriage of justice, although the man convicted of them (David ‘Dai’ Morris) died in jail still protesting his innocence, where I know for a fact that corruption took place because I investigated it over several months for an award-winning BBC TV Panorama programme called Fair Cops?.
Mr Morris was convicted of the horrific Clydach murders which took place in 1999, when four people (Mandy Power her elderly disabled mother Doris, and two young children) were beaten to death.
OK, it wasn’t bank notes stuffed into a brown envelope, but it was still corruption.
Mr O’Brien declares that he believes the conviction of Mr Morris IS in fact another miscarriage of justice, and has told documentary-makers: “When I was released from prison I remember…saying ‘I’m going to be South Wales Police’s worst nightmare for what they did to me’, and I meant every word of it”.
So fine words belie what has actually taken place, and the details now which appear to show that corruption could be on the rise around the world…
Details including the Cardiff Newsagent Three case, as Phil was gripped by the rare neurological condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
Tomorrow – The Eye show how recent crisis news about the future of a large car battery firm, as well as problems facing Electric Vehicles (EVs) generally, strengthen doubts concerning a company which proposed a multi-million pound scheme for Wales, but was connected to a fraudster and had a dubious individual as a director.
