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MPs ask Met police commander to clarify evidence on private investigators
Commander Peter Spindler will be asked why he did not tell Commons committee about investigation into alleged payments
http://www.guardian....ators?fb=nativeA Metropolitan police commander will be asked clarify evidence he gave to parliament about his knowledge of police officers being paid by private investigators for information, the Guardian has learned.
Commander Peter Spindler runs the Met department that since October last year has been investigating allegations that police officers were paid £20,000 by private investigators working for James Ibori, a notorious Nigerian fraudster.
His department, the Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS), arrested three former Scotland Yard police officers and a serving detective on Wednesday as part of the ongoing investigation into the bribery claims.
The arrests came 24 hours after the Commons home affairs select committee heard detailed allegations about the case, which was described by a lawyer as an undetected case of "apparent corruption right at the heart of Scotland Yard".
The committee chair, Keith Vaz MP, said he would be writing to Spindler "concerning the evidence he presented to the committee in February". The request is understood to be a reference to comments the commander made to MPs in evidence on 7 February, when he told the committee he had not seen evidence of police officers being paid by private investigators.
Asked directly by Vaz if he had "seen evidence of police officers receiving payments for information" from private investigators, Spindler replied: "I have not, in my experience."
He added: "But it would not surprise me. What I was going to say was that the private investigators are described as an increasing threat to law enforcement in their activities as corrupters."
Police said Spindler had taken Vaz's question to mean proven evidence.
However, MPs are likely to want to ask Spindler why he made no mention of a case – which his detectives had spent four months investigating – involving allegations that private investigators paid police tens of thousands of pounds.
Invoices and other documents appearing to support the allegations that private investigators paid bribes for confidential information about the Ibori investigation were posted anonymously to the Met in August last year. Spindler's department began investigating the allegations three months later, in October.
Spindler is understood to have taken over as head of the DPS around September and in recent weeks is known to have taken a keen interest in the Ibori case. His detectives are understood to have had an "open mind" about the authenticity of the documents for several months.
Vaz said on Wednesday: "I and the committee were shocked by the serious allegations concerning payments to police that were raised in the home affairs select committee [on Tuesday].
"The arrest of three former police officers now working for Risc Management and a serving Metropolitan police officer in connection to bribery is a serious matter."
He added: "The committee has had a longstanding interest in the relationship between the police and private investigators, particularly the revolving door between the professions. We will be writing to all those named in the evidence session and to Commander Spindler from the Met's Directorate of Professional Standards concerning the evidence he presented to the committee in February."
In his evidence to parliament in February, Spindler also said he "believed" private investigators may be involved in corrupting police officers but gave no further details. "We have intelligence, but proving it is a different matter. From a professional standards perspective, we have been investigating private investigation companies since the late 1990s."
He also told the inquiry: "What I will say is that we have more investigations and more evidence about inappropriate relationships with journalists than we do with private investigators. So there is more intelligence about leaks to the media than information leakage to private investigators."
The commander went on to say that national law enforcement bodies had recently identified private investigators as one of four types of potential "corrupters" of police officers. He told the committee that contact between private investigators and police was known to occur, but admitted there was no system for recording meetings.
"We believe it [contact] exists … there are a significant number of officers who in retirement will work in private security, in the private investigation industry," he said. "Their serving colleagues will be looking for future employment and, towards the end of their service, may well increase their contact as they look at what their future opportunities are."
Pressed by the Labour MP David Winnick over whether that was "ethical", Spindler replied: "It depends on the nature of the contact. The private security and private investigator industry has a legitimate purpose in our society. They take a lot of work away from the police service, working for the corporate sector in due diligence and fraud investigations. These are all matters that will greatly assist the police service if they are dealt with by companies."
