Police fail to share evidence: CPS

 Altaf money-laundering case

LONDON: The failure of the UK police to share evidence with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), gathered in their multi-million pound Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM)-related money-laundering investigation, has led to suspicions of political pressure to drop the case altogether.

Last week the police announced they were dropping the bail conditions on the MQM leader Altaf Hussain and hiskey officials Muhammed Anwar, Tariq Mir and four others, including Sarfraz Merchant. The lobbying agency Bell Pottinger, looking after the MQM interests, and the MQM lawyers, familiar with the evidence that the police had gathered and shared some of it with them, were convinced that charges would be pressed and it’s in this context that Altaf Hussain was advised to appoint a successor.

This correspondent can exclusively reveal that in a surprising break with normal procedure the police did not pass on the evidence of suspected MQM money laundering to the CPS. In an interview with this reporter, the CPS spokesperson revealed that the police officers had not approached the CPS to “make a charging decision”.

Generally in the British system the CPS reviews police evidence and make a decision on whether or not to press charges. It’s highly embarrassing for the police to spend so much money in an investigation and then to conclude that they don’t even have enough evidence to send the file to the CPS and observers say they only explanation is that the police were pressured to drop the case.

While the police cancelled the bail conditions of the MQM leader Altaf Hussain and other accused they also said that the money-laundering investigation would continue under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

When pressed if the police had shown to the CPS the files containing evidence at any stage of the investigation in three years, the CPS spokesman categorically denied ever seeing the “police evidence” and said that no contact in this regard had been made by the police for the CPS prosecutors to weigh whether or not allow the charges on money-laundering allegations.

The spokesperson said that it was understood in the CPS that the Metropolitan Police was investigating the MQM related money-laundering case under what it called the “Operation Turreted”.

“We understand that the police is still investigating it. They (the police) will present evidence to us when they are ready, the investigation is on-going. We have not been shown till today what the evidence is. The charging decision has to be made by the CPS but we have not been asked to make a charging decision,” explained the CPS spokesman. He added that the decision to cancel bails of the money-laundering suspects was a police decision and neither the CPS was consulted by the police nor it had anything to do with the CPS.

The response by the CPS is in sharp contrast to the statements made by the police about the money-laundering investigation.

When asked if the CPS had been consulted about the money-laundering investigation, a police spokesman initially told this correspondent that the CPS was “consulted on a regular basis” and “where the evidence is available in a case a file is put to the Crown Prosecution Service for a decision to be made as to if there is sufficient to support a prosecution at that time”.

But when told that the CPS had categorically stated that the police had not shared the evidence with the prosecution authority, the spokesman refused to give a clear answer saying that “all areas of legislation would be considered” as part of an investigation. “The Crown Prosecution Service would decide on any charges should the investigation establish that laws may have been broken.”

When asked if the police was suggesting that it had not presented the evidence to the CPS because it had yet to assess the evidence or whether there were other political reasons behind the investigation, the police spokesman said vaguely: “The evidence would be assessed … as per below CPS decides on charges.” The police spokesman said he will not answer anymore questions on this topic.