Crime

Credit Suisse has been fined almost £150m as part of a global settlement for its role in the “tuna bonds” scandal that tipped Mozambique into a financial crisis.

The bank will pay a total of $475m (£344m) to settle an investigation into the role it played in the $2bn scandal that sent shockwaves through the east African country.

A subsidiary for the Swiss bank pleaded guilty of conspiracy to commit wire fraud at a hearing in Brooklyn on Tuesday, while Credit Suisse entered into a three-year deferred-prosecution agreement with the US Justice Department.

And the folks on the government side who nicked the money and spent it on themselves, their punishment is?

A senior member of a watchdog at one of Britain’s biggest prisons has been accused of smuggling drugs and phones into the jail.

The watchdog has been arrested and suspended from their post on the prison’s independent watchdog after a police investigation.

Prison sources said police were alerted from a tip-off which claimed the watchdog was bringing in the drugs and phones after striking up a relationship with one of the inmates in the jail.

And what sort of relationship might that be?

We might even find out the sex – or perhaps gender – of the visitor at some point…..

Could work:

But critics have said the format of the tour is at odds with the grisly subject matter.

The tour’s promotional image shows what appears to be a woman running through a darkened alleyway with a silhouette of Jack the Ripper behind her.

Guy Walters, a writer and historian, told The Telegraph: “I’m a keen runner and I’m also a historian, but there are times when the two things should not be combined.

“Running is about self-improvement, fitness and fun. Jack the Ripper was a disgusting murderer of women. The two things don’t go together.

“What I find strange about horror is how it diminishes with time. Nobody would suggest doing a Yorkshire Ripper run so why is this acceptable?

That’s the one where someone chases you through Sheffield waving a hammer? Could work, could work….

What’s that allegedly doing there?

Protesters rallied outside the Supreme Court in Cyprus on Wednesday as lawyers launched an appeal against a young British woman’s conviction for allegedly lying about being gang raped while on holiday.

Since she’s been convicted why is it an allegation?

Or is this some linguistic thing about appeals that I don’t know about?

It is impossible to know how much of the surge in reported hate crimes against LGBTQ people is due to escalating harassment and violence, and how much is down to the increased willingness of victims to inform the authorities. What we do know that is that recorded homophobic and transphobic hate crimes have jumped every year since 2015, and yet with an estimated four in five still going unreported, the already grisly figures only hint at a far bleaker reality.

The incidents vary in nature and severity: from abuse hurled at someone identified as LGBTQ because of their appearance, or mannerisms, or a fleeting or profound show of affection towards a partner;

When a hate crime, which should be reported, now includes mispronouning someone, through shouting pansy at them, to actually beating them up on leaving a pub, whereas in times gone by only that last would qualify, we can take a stab at trying to explain the rise in reported LGBTQ hate crimes.

As the definition has changed so has the incidence.

If we do that interesting thing of going out and observing actual human beings the general societal attitude is hugely better than it was back then. Well, except among certain groups of new arrivals but then that’s also something not to be spoken of, isn’t it?

There are no openly trans national politicians,

Nonsense. I worked rather hard to get one elected as an MEP. True, I’d not argue that was the most inspired candidate selection ever but whatever errors there were were nothing to do with her being trans.

The former custodian of the Castle Howard stately home has been charged with attempted rape in addition to historic child sex offences he has already denied.

Simon Howard, 65, who ran the 17th property in North Yorkshire for 30-years, was charged last week with three offences against one woman.

It was always a bit weird when his brother turned up and demanded the keys back.

It is understood the allegations came to light following publicity after Mr Howard was charged with historic sex offences dating back to 1984.

Hmm…..

Gay people have been urged by the Metropolitan Police to avoid “dimly lit areas” and “listening to loud music” following a suspected homophobic murder.

Ranjith “Roy” Kankanamalege, 50, was found dead on August 16 in Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, where a crime scene is still in place.

Mr Kankanamalege’s injuries were caused by blunt force trauma, a post-mortem confirmed, and the death is being treated as a homophobic hate crime.

Wandering around back alleyways might contribute to your being attacked if you’re gay but of course it has no influence at all on your possibility of being raped if you’re female.

I have got that all the right way around, haven’t I?

Army major tricked foreign governments into sending him tanks
Michael Whatley told German, Swedish and Belgian officials the vehicles were for a museum display – but he sold them for up to £105,000 each

Old military kit does get sold off. Collectors sometimes buy. Museums though get first dibs and often don’t have to pay. You can see the attraction of being one of the two, museum or collector, one one side of the process, moving to t’other side on t’other.

Actually, this is true of a lot of kit out there. Old computers can have a value, being a charity that collects them for the kiddies can be – and I’m sure is – done. RNLI pricing on old boats is likely to vary.

Of course, none of this is as bad as setting up a 99/1 partnership in order to gain grants from charities that don’t fund individuals.

A “smitten” prison officer helped her inmate lover escape from jail, who then went on to strike up a relationship with a second woman while on the run, a court heard.

What was it that attracted you to the lying thug?

So, the Venezuelan government is trying to track down naughty boys in the slums. They’re offering cash rewards for those who dob them in.

Hmm.

Wanted posters for Carlos Luis Revete, known as El Koki, offer $500,000 for information leading to his arrest

Well, yes, except $ is the sign both for USD and the Bolivar (increasingly not) fuerte. Meaming this could in fact, given exchange rates, mean a reward of 12.5 US cents. Which is a massive sum for dobbing in the local murderous gangster, innit?

The place was Dubai. The star was Tina Turner. “As the American pop legend belted out Simply the Best,” write authors Simon Clark and Will Louch, “guests sipped vintage champagne served from an ice bar that was melting slowly into the Arabian sand on the beach, fire dancers performed and cigar rollers flown in from Cuba handed out their aromatic wares.”

The host of the party was Arif Naqvi, founder of Abraaj, a private equity fund that managed nearly $14bn and had stakes in a hundred companies. Its investors were treated to oratory from Bill Clinton, the former US president, and dinner with Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon. Arif’s promise to give capitalism a conscience seduced western governments and billionaire Bill Gates.

But it was all a lie, a fairy tale. In their gripping new book, The Key Man, British journalists Clark and Louch tell how Arif helped himself to the private equity group’s money, pocketing $780m, half of which is still missing. The account raises questions over whether “impact investing” and “stakeholder capitalism” are less about poverty alleviation for the world than guilt alleviation for the Davos elite.

It’s nothing to do with impact investing, Davos or stakeholder capitalism. It’s to do with criminality. To echo Willie Sutton, “So Mr. Naqvi, why’d you start a private equity fund?” “Because that’s where the money is”.

Drawing wider economic lessons from this is ridiculous.

A former Labour MP sexually assaulted an aide in his Westminster office and fired her when she refused his advances, an employment tribunal has ruled.

Mike Hill, the former Hartlepool MP, was found to have repeatedly harassed his parliamentary staff member, and climbed into her bed and rubbed against her.

Mr Hill sexually assaulted the woman at work on more than one occasion, and victimised her when she rejected him by changing her employment terms and conditions then making her redundant.

Book ‘Im, Danno!

She said in her witness statement that Mr Hill had been her friend for several years when he suggested she moved to London to work in politics, and they live together in a flat to cut costs.

In September 2017, she claimed that he told her he loved her. When she rejected him, she claims he apologised and said he still wanted her to work and live with him in Pimlico, central London.

He continued to pursue her when they moved in together, the tribunal heard.

Perhaps not the wisest of moves…..

Eric Adams, borough president of Brooklyn who served in the New York Police Department for over two decades, won the party primary after a campaign promising to strike the right balance between public safety and ending racial injustice in policing.

“New York is going to show America how to run cities,” Mr Adams said on Wednesday as the final votes were being counted. “I understand crime, and I also understand police abuse, and I know how we can turn around not only New York, but America.”

Didn’t Rudy Giuliani already do this once?

A legal challenge to prevent transgender inmates with convictions for sexual or violent offences against women being imprisoned alongside other women has been rejected by the high court.

A female former inmate, who claims she was sexually assaulted by a transgender women prisoner with a gender recognition certificate (GRC) while in HMP Bronzefield in 2017, asked judges to declare the justice secretary’s policies on the care and management of trans prisoners in England and Wales to be unlawful.

The claimant, known only as FDJ, argued her human rights were violated by having to be in the same prison as transgender women prisoners with convictions for sexual or violent offences against women.

As stated this is clearly the right decision. Because victory for the idea would mean that the human rights of a female prisoner would be violated if she were to be in prison with natal females who were convicted of sexual or violent offences against women.

Which, you know, doesn’t work.

Sure, there might be other reasons not to put meat and two veg in among the wimmins but this can’t be one of them.

Child sex abuse victims have been accused of lying by police and ignored by mental health services, leading to suicide attempts, an official inquiry has found.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) spoke to 56 victims and survivors of child sexual abuse between the ages of 11 and 21, and 77 specialist child sexual abuse support workers.

The findings, published in a report called Engagement with Children and Young People, show children claimed police accused them of lying when they tried to report abuse.

Some people who have claimed to have been abused children have indeed been lying. So, what is anyone supposed to do?

The Britten/Brammall case isn’t the only one either. The whole Satanic Abuse thing was made up out of whole cloth as well. And so on.

It’s also true that some to many children claiming abuse are not lying – abuse happened and they suffered it.

So, how to sort between these two situations?

Fewer than one in ten domestic abuse victims are seeing their attackers prosecuted because of a “shocking” failure by the police to pursue cases, says HM inspectors of police (HMI).

More than three quarters of cases of domestic abuse-related crimes are being dropped by officers without the perpetrator being charged, according to the investigation by HMI.

This represents an 18.6 per cent increase on the 59.5 per cent of cases shut five years ago, according to official data collected by the inspectorate. Just nine per cent resulted in a charge down from 23.2 per cent in 2016, with the remainder handled through cautions or community resolutions.

No. 90% of claims of domestic abuse do not lead to a charge. And a claim of a crime having been committed is not the same as a crime having been committed. This before we even get to ideas about enough evidence and all that.

As to the rate declining – we have in recent years been rather widening our societal definition of what constitutes abuse, haven’t we? So we’d expect claims to rise and fewer of them to meet the criminal standards…..

On Monday, a French woman, Valérie Bacot, will walk into a court to be tried for killing her stepfather turned husband. She has admitted shooting him dead and believes she should be punished.

In her defence, she is expected to tell the the hearing at at Chalon-sur-Saône in Burgundy how Daniel “Dany” Polette made her life hell from the day he raped her when she was 12, to the day he died 24 years later while prostituting her.

The ending of the story being right that is. We do indeed need to have a system which examines then sorts out such events.

Perhaps he was a complete bastard who deserved it. Perhaps it’s all a tissue of lies. So, some system is needed to see what really did happen. Who is – if anyone is – culpable and who – if anyone – should be punished.

Fortunately we have such a system, it’s called the courts and the individual process in a specific case is called a trial.

Good, so that’s sorted then.

A member of the Rochdale gang who raped and groomed girls as young as 13 has said he should not be deported because he had not committed “that big a crime”.

Adil Khan, 51, and fellow gang member, Qari Rauf, 52, are fighting deportation by the Home Office, where they would be sent to Pakistan following convictions for serious sexual offences against young girls.

Khan, speaking through a translator, told an immigration tribunal hearing on Tuesday: “We are not that big a criminal. We have not committed that big a crime. I’m innocent. I’m not committing any crime. The journalists made us out to be big criminals.”

Sure, convicted criminal making a plea in court. Adjust expectations to suit.

But still, depends upon what you call a “big crime” really, doesn’t it?

This blokes in trouble then:

When an Australian underworld figure began distributing customised phones containing the app to his associates as a secure means to communicate, police could monitor their messages. The gangs believed the system was secure because the phones did not have any other capabilities – no voice or camera functions were loaded – and the app was encrypted.

Wonder where they broke it?

If they die more than a year and a day after the incident, not murder, if less, could be?

A man has been charged with murder following the death of a woman who died 21 years after being set on fire.

The year and a day is archaic? A guide not a rule? An invention by novelists?