Morgan murder: Met Police accused of ‘institutional corruption’

LONDON: The Metropolitan Police has been accused of “a form of institutional corruption” for concealing or denying failings over the unsolved murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan.

A report by an independent panel said the force’s first objective was to “protect itself” for failing to acknowledge its many failings since Morgan’s murder, the panel’s chairman Baroness Nuala O’Loan said. Morgan was killed with an axe in the car park of the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham, south-east London, on March 10, 1987.

Despite five police inquiries and an inquest, no-one has been brought to justice over the father-of-two’s death, with the Metropolitan Police admitting corruption had hampered the original murder investigation.

The Met owes Morgan’s family, and the public, an apology for not confronting its systemic failings and those of individual officers, the report said.

In a statement through their lawyer, the family of Morgan said: “We welcome the recognition that we – and the public at large – have been failed over the decades by a culture of corruption and cover-up in the Metropolitan Police, an institutionalised corruption that has permeated successive regimes in the Metropolitan Police and beyond to this day.”

The Independent Panel’s report, which runs to more than 1,200 pages, expressed concern that within the Met “a culture still exists that inhibits both organisational and individual accountability”.