NAO report finds G4S and rival Serco continued to charge for tagging criminals many years after removing the electronic equipment from their homes
G4S is being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office, alongside Serco, over claims they overcharged the Ministry of Justice for tagging offenders Photo: Alamy
The Ministry of Justice has refused an offer from security firm G4S to hand back £24.1m that it has now admitted it “wrongly” billed for tagging criminals.
G4S made the offer on the eve of Wednesday’s appearance by new chief executive Ashley Almanza before MPs on the Public Accounts Committee – and just as a report from the National Audit Office provided fresh details of the tagging scandal.
The public spending watchdog found that G4S and rival Serco had continued to charge the taxpayer for tagging criminals many years after removing the electronic equipment from their homes.
Chris Grayling, the Justice Minister, launched an investigation in July after discovering evidence that the taxpayer had been overcharged, in some cases for tagging prisoners who were dead or back in prison.
The situation has since escalated into a criminal probe after the Serious Fraud Office said earlier this month that it was examining the contracts.
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As the scandal erupted, G4S hired law firm Linklaters to carry out an independent review. On Tuesday it admitted the law firm had found circumstances in which G4S “wrongly considered itself to be contractually entitled to bill for monitoring services when equipment had not been fitted or after it had been removed”.
G4S said it had “apologised” and “issued credit notes totalling £23.3m for amounts incorrectly billed between 2005 and May 2013” and a further £800,000 covering “June 2013 to date.” The company has also incurred £2m of professional fees. All sums were provided for at the half-year results.
A Ministry of Justice spokesman stressed, however, that it would not accept any sum until it had finished its own audit of the contracts. “The money has not been accepted and we are working with both companies to find exactly how much the taxpayer has been overcharged,” the spokesman said.
Mr Almanza said: “The way in which this contract was managed was not consistent with our values or our approach to dealing with customers. Simply put, it was unacceptable and we have apologised to the Ministry of Justice.”
G4S accepted that “the company’s assessment of these matters and the credit notes may not agree with the Ministry’s audit findings”.
The full scale of the scandal was made clear in the NAO report, which for the first time showed:
• G4S billed the taxpayer £4,700 for monitoring an offender even though the equipment had been removed 935 days earlier.
• Serco had been unable to install equipment at a criminal’s address but carried on charging for almost five years, at a cost of £15,500.
• A criminal was handed four separate court orders for four offences, leading Serco to bill the taxpayer four times “rather than one charge for the subject”.
• G4S charged for 612 days’ tagging – at a cost of £3,000 – even though it had been informed the offender had been sent to prison and the company had removed the monitoring equipment from his home.
G4S insisted that, having “conducted an extensive search and review of emails and numerous interviews with relevant employees”, Linklaters had “not identified any evidence of dishonesty or criminal conduct by any employee of G4S”.
Spending on electronic tagging has run to £722m since G4S and Serco were handed the contracts in 2005.
G4S stressed there had been a wholesale shake-up of senior management in recent months, including the arrival of a new chief executive, finance director and head of the UK business, adding pointedly that: “The executive previously responsible for the UK businesses is no longer working at G4S.”
Richard Morris, its former head of UK and Irish operations, departed last month. He has been replaced by Eddie Aston, who was recruited in July.
The Cabinet Office is reviewing all other G4S and Serco contracts with central Government, effectively barring them for bidding for such work until the review is complete.
Mr Almanza will be joined by Serco chairman Alastair Lyons at Wednesday’s PAC hearing.
G4S shares rose 3.5 to 260.3p, while Serco was 16.5 higher at 440.2p.
Kean Marden, an analyst at Jefferies, said: “G4S has issued an apology, stresses that senior management has been changed, and notes the newly-created position of group head of risk and programme assurance.
“This mirrors Serco’s statement on 25 October and, in our view, reads like a checklist of actions that the government wanted G4S/Serco to take before normalising relations. We continue to believe that this issue is reaching an endgame.”
By Alistair Osborne and David Barrett
5:16PM GMT 19 Nov 2013
Find this story at 19 November 2013
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2013

Company has apologised to Ministry of Justice and issued credit notes for £23.3m incorrectly billed between 2005 and 2013
G4S said that an external review had confirmed it had been wrong to consider it was contractually entitled to bill for monitoring offenders when tags had not been fitted or after they had been removed. Photograph: Jeff Blackler/REX
Private security company G4S has admitted it has overcharged the Ministry of Justice more than £24m on its contract for the electronic monitoring of thousands of offenders in England in a practice that was going on for years.
The admission by one of the government’s largest suppliers comes just 24 hours before G4S and other outsourcing corporate giants, Serco, Atos and Capita are due to be grilled by the powerful Commons public accounts committee on Wednesday over their failings on public sector contracts.
G4S said an external review it had commissioned by the law firm Linklaters had confirmed it had been wrong to consider it was contractually entitled to bill for monitoring offenders when tags had not been fitted or after they had been removed.
G4S said it had apologised to the MoJ and issued credit notes for £23.3m that had been incorrectly billed between 2005 and May 2013.
A further credit note for £800,000 is to be issued to cover continued overcharging that has happened since June.
The security company said the Linklaters review had not identified “any evidence of dishonesty or criminal conduct by any employee of G4S in relation to the billing arrangements under the electronic monitoring contracts.”
The G4S statement added that it had “wrongly considered itself to be contractually entitled to bill for monitoring services when equipment had not been fitted or after it had been removed”.
The admission by the company comes after the Serious Fraud Office announced earlier this month that it was launching a criminal investigation into G4S and Serco for overcharging on criminal justice contracts.
The G4S statement was timed to coincide with the publication of a National Audit Office memorandum that shows that, in some instances, both contractors were charging the justice ministry for months or years after electronic monitoring activity had stopped. The charging continued even in cases where offenders had been sent back to prison or even died.
The NAO also says the firms charged the ministry over similar timescales when electronic monitoring was never undertaken and charged multiple times for the same individual if that person was subject to more than one electronic monitoring order at the same time.
Serco has also said it will refund any amount that it agrees represents overcharging.
The justice ministry has not yet agreed to any refund offers made by either firm.
In July, the justice secretary, Chris Grayling, revealed that G4S and Serco had overcharged the government by “tens of millions of pounds” on the tagging contracts. This claim was disputed at the time by G4S. Grayling also announced that accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers was carrying out a forensic audit into the contracts. A G4S whistleblower working in the call centre dealing with tagging was involved in raising initial concerns about billing practices.
The NAO gives examples of the disputed overcharging practices in its memorandum prepared for Wednesday’s showdown between MPs and the outsourced companies. They include:
• The justice ministry was charged £3,000 for 612 days monitoring of an offender who had been sent to prison for two years 20 months earlier. G4S removed the tagging equipment but kept on billing because the court had not provided the relevant paperwork.
• On 28 October 2010, G4S removed tagging equipment from the address of an offender where a number of breaches of curfew had been reported. The court failed to confirm the tag was no longer required even when chased in December 2012 so billing continued until 20 May 2013. The total bill was £4,700 for 935 days without a tag being in place.
• Serco billed £15,000 for almost five years’ monitoring in a case where it was unable to install tagging equipment in July 2008 at an address where the subject was due to be arrested. In October 2010, when Serco visited the property it was told nobody had been living there for 18 months.
Ashley Almanza, the G4S Group chief executive, said the company’s announcement was an important step in setting the matter straight and restoring trust.
“The way in which this contract was managed was not consistent with our values or our approach to dealing with customers. Simply put, it was unacceptable and we have apologised to the Ministry of Justice,” Almanza said.
“As part of a wider programme of corporate renewal, we have changed the leadership of our UK business and we are putting in place enhanced risk management and contract controls.
“We remain committed to working with the ministry and the UK government to resolve this matter and to provide enhanced oversight of service delivery and contract performance.”
The MoJ said it was not prepared to comment while a criminal investigation was under way.
The Cabinet Office is carrying out a government-wide review of G4S and Serco contracts but G4S said that no evidence had so far come to light that suggested that similar billing practices applied to other government contracts.
Both Serco and G4S withdrew from the tendering process for the next generation of electronic tagging. But both companies have been allowed to bid for £450m-worth of probation contracts but will not be awarded them unless they are given a clean bill of health over the tagging dispute.
Alan Travis, home affairs editor
theguardian.com, Tuesday 19 November 2013 11.58 GMT
Find this story at 19 November 2013
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Cost: Scandal-hit security firm G4S facing claims it charged the Government for tagged people who were either dead or back in prison
Security firms faced a criminal probe today over claims it charged the taxpayer to tag offenders who were dead or back in prison.
Justice Secretary Chris Grayling called in the Serious Fraud Office to consider investigating G4S Care and Justice Services, part of the company disgraced last year for failing to supply enough Olympic security staff.
Another firm, Serco Monitoring, was also believed to have charged wrongly. Mr Grayling told MPs that the sums involved ran to “tens of millions” of pounds.
The bombshell allegations sent the two companies’ shares on the FTSE 100 falling sharply.
In a statement to the Commons, Mr Grayling said officials spotted “what appeared to be a significant anomaly in the billing practices” while preparing new contracts for electronic tagging.
“It appeared that we were being charged in ways not justified by the contracts and for people who were not in fact being monitored,” he said.
To the astonishment and fury of MPs, he added: “It included charges for people who were back in prison and had had their tags removed, people who had left the country, and those who had never been tagged in the first place.
“There are a small number of cases where charging continued for a period when the subject was known to have died.
“In some instances, charging continued for a period of many months and indeed years after active monitoring had ceased.”
Mr Grayling added: “The House will share my astonishment that two of the Government’s biggest suppliers would seek to charge in this way. The House will also be surprised and disappointed to learn that staff in the Ministry of Justice were aware of a potential problem and yet did not take adequate steps to address it.”
Serco had agreed to co-operate fully with a sweeping forensic audit, and said its senior managers were not aware. “They do not believe anything dishonest has taken place,” said Mr Grayling.
However, G4S had refused to take part in an additional forensic audit, leaving him no option but to call in the SFO.
“I should state that I have no information to confirm that dishonesty has taken place on the part of either supplier,” he added.
“But given the nature of the findings of the audit work that has taken place so far, and the very clear legal advice that I have received, I am today asking the Serious Fraud Office to consider whether an investigation is appropriate into what happened in G4S.”
But G4S sources stressed no evidence of dishonesty had been discovered by either the MoJ review or its own inquiry carried out with the assistance of external experts.
They said the firm had co-operated fully with the MoJ and was given the choice of another audit by management consultants or a referral to the SFO.
G4S had preferred calling in the SFO, they added, to investigate any claims of dishonesty.
They insisted that they had found “absolutely no indication” that it had not complied with the terms of its contract.
But shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan was stunned by the allegations.
“To the public this appears a straightforward fraud – obtaining property by deception,” he said.
Keith Vaz, Labour chairman of the Commons home affairs committee, added: “G4S should never have got another Government contract after the shambles of the Olympics.”
Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude announced a government-wide review of contracts held by G4S and Serco.
Serco Group, which runs the Boris Bike scheme, said it would repay any amount agreed to be due and that given the investigation, it had decided to withdraw from the re-tendering process for the electronic monitoring service.
The company’s chief executive Christopher Hyman said: “We will not tolerate poor practice and behaviour and wherever it is found we will put it right.”
Joe Murphy, Political Editor
Nicholas Cecil
Published: 11 July 2013
Updated: 08:03, 12 July 2013
Find this story at 12 July 2013
© Evening Standard Limited

Taxpayers were charged tens of millions of pounds for ‘phantom’ electronic tags on criminals who were either dead, in jail or had left the country.
Two private firms, G4S and Serco, are accused of wrongly billing for tens of thousands of tags which had either been removed or simply never fitted.
Estimates suggest up to one in six of the 18,000 tags the Ministry of Justice was billed for every day were not real.
Taxpayers could have overpaid two private companies for their work tagging criminals
Last night ministers asked fraud investigators to look at G4S, after the company refused to allow forensic auditors access to its books and emails between senior executives.
Justice Secretary Chris Grayling took the dramatic step after pledging to recover ‘every last penny’ owed to the public purse.
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He told MPs the scandal could date back as far as 1999, when tagging of criminals began in England and Wales. Since then the taxpayer has spent £1billion on tagging and monitoring offenders. The current contracts began in 2005.
Mr Grayling condemned the overcharging as ‘wholly indefensible and unacceptable’. In some cases, bills were paid for months or years after tags were taken off, he said.
G4S’S ROLL OF SHAME
OLYMPIC SECURITY
Just two weeks before the start of the 2012 Olympic Games, G4S admitted it was unable to supply more than 10,000 security guards it had promised.
Army and police personnel were drafted in to fill the gap (pictured above), with the company eventually picking up the £88million bill.
PROSTHETIC TAG
In 2011, two G4S workers placed an electronic tag on an offender’s false leg, meaning he could simply take it off.
Christopher Lowcock wrapped his prosthetic limb in a bandage to fool staff who set up the device in his home.
PRISONER DIES
Angolan prisoner Jimmy Mubenga died in 2010 after being restrained by G4S guards on his deportation flight. Three G4S staff were arrested on suspicion of manslaughter but charges were not brought because of a lack of evidence.
BIRMINGHAM KEYS
In 2011, a set of keys went missing at Birmingham Prison, a jail managed by G4S. Inmates were locked in their cells for an entire day, and new locks had to be fitted at a cost of £250,000.
He also launched a disciplinary investigation into former officials in the department after discovering contract managers were aware of billing issues in 2008, but ‘nothing substantive was done’.
Details of a ‘significant anomaly in billing practices’ within the deals emerged during a routine review as ministers prepared to negotiate contracts for satellite tags.
It found ‘charges for people who were back in prison and had their tags removed, people who had left the country and those who had never been tagged in the first place’, Mr Grayling said.
Charges were also made in a ‘small number of cases when the subject was known to have died’.
He added: ‘In some instances, charging continued for a period of many months and indeed years after active monitoring had ceased.’
The bill to taxpayers is put in the ‘low tens of millions’.
Tags are put on criminals after their early release from prison or as part of their community service.
Most involve a 12-hour curfew from 7pm to 7am, allowing the criminal, in theory, to work. A box in the offender’s home sounds an alert if the tag goes out of range or stops working.
Audits have also been launched into all other contracts between the Government and the two firms, both major suppliers to Whitehall. G4S received £1billion in revenue from UK Government contracts last year, while Serco made £2billion.
Serco has withdrawn its bid from the current tendering process for new satellite tags, while G4S is expected to be excluded after refusing to pull out.
Serco agreed to co-operate with a new audit but has said it does not believe ‘anything dishonest has taken place’.
G4S rejected the new audit and last night a spokesman insisted it has ‘always complied totally with the terms of the contract’.
The Serious Fraud Office will consider whether an investigation is appropriate into what happened at G4S, Mr Grayling said.
Indefensible: Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said G4S had rejected a demand for a new forensic audit
The firm’s reputation was shredded last year by its failure to fulfil the security contract for the Olympics. Thousands of armed forces and police personnel were called in to fill the gap and the company was forced to pick up the tab.
In May, G4S chief executive Nick Buckles quit with a £1.2million payoff. Several senior managers were sacked in the wake of the Olympic fiasco.
The price of shares in both firms plunged yesterday following the announcement, wiping £176.4million from G4S’s value and £269.6million from Serco.
G4S group chief executive Ashley Almanza said: ‘We place the highest premium on customer service and integrity and therefore take very seriously the concerns expressed by the Ministry of Justice.’
Serco group chief executive Christopher Hyman said: ‘Serco is a business led by our values and built on the strength of our reputation for integrity. We are deeply concerned if we fall short of the standards expected.’
By Jack Doyle and Peter Campbell
PUBLISHED: 11:52 GMT, 11 July 2013 | UPDATED: 08:19 GMT, 12 July 2013
Find this story at 11 July 2013
© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Serious Fraud Office investigates G4S claim of over-charging for government contracts
Whitehall contracts running into billions of pounds are being urgently reviewed after the Government disclosed that two major firms had charged the taxpayer to monitor non-existent electronic tags, some of which had been assigned to dead offenders.
In an announcement that throws the Coalition’s privatisation drive into disarray, the Serious Fraud Office was called in to investigate G4S, the world’s largest security company, over contracts dating back over a decade.
Serco, one of Britain’s largest companies, also faces an inquiry by auditors over its charges for operating tagging schemes.
The firms supply an array of services to the public sector from running courts, prisons and immigration removal centres to managing welfare-to-work schemes and the Atomic Weapons Establishment.
Between them the two companies receive around £1.5bn a year from the taxpayer, but their contracts are worth billions of pounds because the vast majority run for several years.
They were also hoping to cash in on moves by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to hand them further large contracts to operate prisons and supervise offenders in the community.
The process of awarding all contracts was put on hold last night as the inquiries got underway.
The MoJ began investigating all its agreements with the two firms, including the running of major prisons, while the Cabinet Office started scrutinising all other Government contracts with G4S and Serco.
Shares in both companies fell sharply after the announcement by Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary.
Shares in G4S – which suffered torrid publicity over its mishandling of the last year’s London Olympics security contract – finished the day 12.6p down at 213p. Serco tumbled by 54p to 626.5p.
Each of the companies relies heavily on Britain both for income and burnishing its international reputation. The move by the Government is unlikely to result in the wholesale loss of contracts, as the firms have few competitors of the same size but is a blow to their standing worldwide.
Mr Grayling’s announcement came after an audit discovered G4S and Serco had overcharged taxpayers by up to £50m, billing them for offenders who were dead, back in custody or had left the country. According to one MoJ source, the companies charged for 18,000 offenders when the actual number was around 15,000.
Mr Grayling said latest estimates suggested taxpayers had been overcharged by the companies to the tune of “low tens of millions” since the electronic monitoring contracts were signed in 2005. He also disclosed that ministry staff could have known about the practice for five years and face possible disciplinary action.
He said in a Commons statement: “The House will share my astonishment that two of the Government’s biggest suppliers would seek to charge in this way.
”The House will also be surprised and disappointed to learn that staff in the Ministry of Justice were aware of the potential problem and yet did not take adequate steps to address it.“
Mr Grayling said he was asking the Serious Fraud Office to investigate the G4S contracts as the company had refused to co-operate with a further audit to rule out wrongdoing.
An investigation by PriceWaterhouseCoopers found that overcharging could have dated back as far back as 1999 when earlier contracts were signed.
Serco has agreed to withdraw from the current tender process for an electronic monitoring contract worth up to £1m, while Mr Grayling plans moves to exclude G4S as it is still attempting to bid.
Serco had also been the leading bidder for prison contracts in Yorkshire, but Mr Grayling will delay their award until the fresh audit is complete.
An urgent review of contract management across the Ministry of Justice’s major contracts has also been launched and will report by autumn, he said.
G4S and Serco were also among companies preparing to bid for a range of payment-by-results contracts to supervise low to medium-level offenders across England and Wales.
Ian Lawrence, general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers union, said: ”We’ve long maintained that these companies are unfit for purpose when it comes to holding important public contracts. The outcome of the initial investigation into G4S and Serco suggests a good deal of malpractice has been discovered.“
Ashley Almanza, the G4S group chief executive, said: ”We place the highest premium on customer service and integrity and therefore take very seriously the concerns expressed by the Ministry of Justice. We are determined to deal with these issues in a prompt and appropriate manner.“
Serco Group’s chief executive, Christopher Hyman, said: ”Serco is a business led by our values and built on the strength of our reputation for integrity.
“These values lie at the heart of the many thousands of our people who are endeavouring to deliver the highest standard of service to our customers around the world. We are deeply concerned if we fall short of the standards expected of all of us.”
Sadiq Khan, the shadow Justice Secretary, said: “Given the scale of the allegations, the Government must immediately call in the police and the Serious Fraud Office to investigate both companies as fraud has potentially taken place.”
Security breach: Other G4S fiascos
* G4S faced fierce criticism last year following the botched handling of its Olympics security contract. It failed to deliver the numbers of security staff it had promised and the Government was forced to bring in additional armed forces personnel. The firm will take a £70m hit over the bungled contract with Games organisers, Locog.
* Earlier this week an inquest jury ruled an Angolan man who died after being restrained by three G4S guards as he was being deported from the UK was unlawfully killed. Jimmy Mubenga, 46, died on a plane bound for Angola in October 2010. The Crown Prosecution Service said it would reconsider its decision not to bring criminal charges in the wake of the verdict.
* In January, multimillion-pound plans by three police forces to outsource services to G4S collapsed. Hertfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner, David Lloyd, said the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Strategic Alliance had discontinued negotiations with the firm.
However, last month it was revealed Lincolnshire’s police force now spends the lowest amount per head of population on policing in England and Wales after it handed over the bulk of its back-office functions to G4S.
Nigel Morris
Friday 12 July 2013
Find this story at 12 July 2013
© independent.co.uk

Justice secretary tells MPs he has called in Serious Fraud Office to investigate private security firm for overcharging
The overcharging included billing for tracking the movements of people who had died. Photograph: David Davies/PA
The Serious Fraud Office has been called in by the justice secretary to investigate the private security company G4S for overcharging tens of millions of pounds on electronic tagging contracts for offenders.
Chris Grayling told MPs the overcharging included billing for tracking the movements of people who had moved abroad, those who had returned to prison and had their tags removed, and even people who had died.
He said he had made the decision after G4S refused on Wednesday to co-operate with a voluntary forensic audit of its billing practices and to withdraw as a potential bidder for the next generation of tagging contracts worth up to £3bn.
“At this time I do not have evidence of dishonesty by G4S but I have invited the Serious Fraud Office to investigate that,” he said.
Whitehall sources say that a new forensic audit will look at a central allegation that the justice ministry was being billed for the tagging of 18,000 offenders a day when only 15,000 were actually being monitored – raising the prospect of being charged for 3,000 “phantom” offenders or one in six of all those on tags.
Grayling told MPs that G4S and a second major supplier, Serco, had been overcharging on the existing £700m contract, with the Ministry of Justice being billed for non-existent services that dated back to at least 2005 and possibly as long ago as 1999.
Grayling added that it included charging for monitoring people who were back in prison and had had their tags removed, people who had left the country, and those who had never been tagged in the first place.
“There are a small number of cases where charging continued for a period when the subject was known to have died,” he told the Commons.
“In some instances, charging continued for a period of many months and indeed years after active monitoring ceased. This is a wholly indefensible and unacceptable state of affairs. The house will share my astonishment that two of the government’s biggest suppliers would seek to charge in this way.”
Shares in Serco fell about 8% and for G4S almost 6% by the close on Thursday.
The decision to call in the SFO follows an audit by PricewaterhouseCoopers commissioned by Grayling in May after billing discrepancies were discovered during a re-tendering process. Under the contracts the movements of more than 20,000 offenders are monitored using electronic ankle tags at any one time.
“The audit team is at present confirming its calculations but the current estimate is that the sums involved are significant, and run into the low tens of millions in total, for both companies, since the contracts commenced in 2005,” Grayling said.
Serco, which is one of the government’s biggest and most important suppliers, agreed on Wednesday to fully co-operate with a forensic audit to establish whether any dishonesty took place on its part. It has also agreed to withdraw from bidding for the £3bn next-generation tagging contract.
“They have said they take the issue extremely seriously and assure me that senior management were not aware of it. They do not believe anything dishonest has taken place, but we have agreed that if the audit does show dishonest action, we will jointly call in the authorities to address it,” Grayling said.
Serco was the leading bidder to take over the management of a prison in South Yorkshire. Grayling said that decision had now been delayed until the voluntary forensic audit was completed.
The Cabinet Office is to review all G4S and Serco contracts held across government as a result of the tagging scandal. The Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, had already started preparations for a register of companies holding public sector contracts to detail their track record in the wake of G4S’s failure last year to fulfil its contract to provide security guards for the London Olympics.
Grayling, who had the attorney general, Dominic Grieve QC, next to him when he made his Commons statement, said he had taken the decision to call in the SFO “given the nature of the findings of the audit work that had taken place so far, and the very clear legal advice that I have received”.
He said the SFO was being asked to consider whether an investigation was appropriate, and to confirm “whether any of the actions of anyone in that company represent more than a contractual breach”.
The justice secretary has started a formal process to determine whether to exclude G4S from the next 10-year tagging contract which is due to start shortly. He has also taken action within the justice ministry after disclosing that his own officials became aware in a limited way of some of the problems in 2008 but failed to take adequate steps to address them.
He said an entirely new contract management team had been put in place. “The permanent secretary is also instituting disciplinary investigations to consider whether failings on the part of individual members of staff constitute misconduct”, he said.
The shadow justice secretary, Sadiq Khan, said the disclosures were “truly shocking” and the police should be called in immediately to investigate Serco as well as G4S. “There can be no cosy relationship with either company if we are to truly get to the bottom of these very serious allegations,” he said.
G4S said the justice ministry was an important customer and it was committed to resolving its concerns. It said it was conducting its own review and would reimburse any overbilling it identified. It said it was not aware of any indications of dishonesty or misconduct.
Ashley Almanza, the G4S chief executive, said: “We are committed to having close and open relationships with our customers and we strive to work in partnership for the mutual benefit of our organisations.
“We place the highest premium on customer service and integrity and therefore take very seriously the concerns expressed by the Ministry of Justice. We are determined to deal with these issues in a prompt and appropriate manner.”
Serco Group’s chief executive, Christopher Hyman, said: “Serco is a business led by our values and built on the strength of our reputation for integrity. These values lie at the heart of the many thousands of our people who are endeavouring to deliver the highest standard of service to our customers around the world. We are deeply concerned if we fall short of the standards expected of all of us.”
Alan Travis, home affairs editor
The Guardian, Friday 12 July 2013
Find this story at 12 July 2013
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary, has asked the Serious Fraud Office to investigate security firm G4S after a review found the Government had been overcharged by tens of millions of pounds in its electronic tagging contract.
A review has found G4S and rival security company Serco both over-billed the taxpayer for running the tagging schemes, in what the minister said was a “wholly indefensible and unacceptable state of affairs”.
It included charging the government for tagging offenders who had died, been returned to prison, left the country or who had never been put on the tagging scheme in the first place, Mr Grayling told the House of Commons.
Ministry of Justice sources said although they typically had 15,000 offenders on a tag at any one time G4S and Serco had been charging them for 18,000 – meaning one in six was spurious.
It also emerged civil servants first became aware of some of the problems in 2008 but failed to take appropriate action – and Mr Grayling said some may now face disciplinary action.
“I am angry at what has happened and am determined to put it right,” said Mr Grayling.
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“This has included instances where our suppliers were not in fact providing electronic monitoring.
“It included charges for people who were back in prison and had had their tags removed, people who had left the country, and those who had never been tagged in the first place but who had instead been returned to court.
“There are a small number of cases where charging continued for a period when the subject was known to have died.
“In some instances, charging continued for a period of many months and indeed years after active monitoring had ceased.
“The House will share my view that this is a wholly indefensible and unacceptable state of affairs.
Mr Grayling said he expected MPs would share his “astonishment” that two of the government’s two biggest contractors would behave in such a way.
He added: “The audit team is at present confirming its calculations but the current estimate is that the sums involved are significant, and run into the low tens of millions in total, for both companies, since the contracts commenced in 2005.
“It may date back as far as the previous contracts let in 1999.”
Serco has agreed with a Ministry of Justice proposal for a further investigation, and allow inspection of its internal emails.
But G4S, which was widely criticised for its failure to fulfil security requirements at last year’s Olympics, has rejected that proposal, said Mr Grayling.
“I should state that I have no information to confirm that dishonesty has taken place on the part of either supplier,” he told MPs.
“But given the nature of the findings of the audit work that has taken place so far, and the very clear legal advice that I have received, I am today asking the Serious Fraud Office to consider whether an investigation is appropriate into what happened in G4S, and to confirm to me whether any of the actions of anyone in that company represent more than a contractual breach.”
Mr Grayling first launched an investigation into G4S and Serco in May after an internal audit uncovered a “significant anomaly” in the billing process.
The Ministry of Justice brought in external auditors to find out how much the two companies have incorrectly claimed from the taxpayer, which uncovered the remarkable details announced by Mr Grayling to the Commons.
He said: “I am making changes in my department because it is quite clear that the management of these contracts has been wholly inadequate.
“Enough knowledge came into the department to find out about these issues some years ago but it was not acted upon.
“Proceedings are likely to include, or may well include, disciplinary proceedings to establish precisely what did go wrong.”
Spending on electronic tagging has run to £700 million since G4S and Serco were handed the contracts.
Mr Grayling said no-one had been put in danger and the problem was purely to do with the billing arrangements. The contracts were awarded by the Labour government in 2004 and are ministers are currently going through a process to re-allocate the work.
Serco has pulled out of the bidding process but Mr Grayling said he was “disappointed that G4S still feel it appropriate to participate”.
By David Barrett, Home Affairs Correspondent
12:40PM BST 11 Jul 2013
Find this story at 11 July 2013
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2013
 

The shambolic Olympic security firm G4S is bidding for the right to print Britain’s banknotes, it emerged last night.
The embattled group has teamed up with a French company to try to get its hands on the lucrative £1billion contract.
Currently the work is done by the British firm De La Rue, which was first commissioned to print UK banknotes at the outbreak of the First World War.
G4S, which has faced calls to be barred from public work after a string of scandals, wants to take over the contract
Now G4S, which has faced calls to be barred from public work after a string of scandals, wants to take over the contract.
It has joined forces with France’s Oberthur Technologies, which would take control of the printing process itself.
Labour MP Keith Vaz, who has called for the company to be blacklisted from future taxpayer contracts, demanded G4S pull out of the bidding.
He said: ‘G4s have failed the public on numerous occasions.
‘At a recent public meeting Jon Shaw, a G4S director, agreed with the Home Affairs Select Committee that companies that fail to deliver on public contracts should be on a high risk register.
The group faced public outrage last summer when it failed to provide enough guards for the Olympic venues. The army was drafted in to make up the shortfall
‘In light of this they should withdraw their application for this important contract until they have got their house in order.’
Before 2003 the Bank of England managed its own banknote printing.
In 2003 the Bank gave the work to De La Rue, which has held the contract for ten years.
Now it is has put the job out to tender.
The winning company will be responsible for printing notes from 2015 to 2025, with the possibility of extending the work even further to 2028.
But even if G4S and its Franco partner win, they will have to print the notes in the UK.
Any successful company can only print the notes using the Bank’s secure printing works in Debden in the Epping Forest.
From there the notes are taken securely to the Bank’s cash distribution centres around the country.
The Bank has issued paper banknotes ever since the central bank was created in 1694 as a way of raising money for King William III’s war against France.
But now it is planning to issue plastic notes, which can survive a spin in the washing machine.
Polymer banknotes, as well as being hard to fake, are durable and stay cleaner for longer because the material is more resistant to dirt and moisture.
Whichever firm wins the contract will have to be able to produce them as well as paper notes, the Bank has said.
Current provider De La Rue entered the plastic banknote market earlier this year with deals to supply Fiji and Mauritius.
G4S has been embroiled in a number of public blunders over the last 18 months.
The group faced public outrage last summer when it failed to provide enough guards for the Olympic venues.
The army was drafted in to make up the shortfall, and G4S was forced to pay compensation.
In July the company was accused of charging taxpayers for electronic tags on prisoners who were either dead, in jail or had left the country.
Ministers said they would review the company’s entire portfolio of government work – worth almost £1billion a year.
The blunders happened on the watch of flamboyant boss Nick Buckles, who was forced to resign earlier this year after a humiliating warning that the company’s profits would fall short of expectations.
G4S refused to comment last night. The Bank of England also refused to comment.
By Peter Campbell
PUBLISHED: 01:11 GMT, 27 September 2013 | UPDATED: 13:31 GMT, 27 September 2013
Find this story at 27 September 2013
© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Indian nuclear scientists haven’t had an easy time of it over the past decade. Not only has the scientific community been plagued by “suicides”, unexplained deaths and sabotage, but those incidents have gone mostly underreported in the country, diluting public interest and leaving the cases quickly cast off by police.
Last month, two high-ranking engineers – KK Josh and Abhish Shivam – on India’s first nuclear-powered submarine were found on railway tracks by workers. They were pulled from the line before a train could crush them, but were already dead. No marks were found on the bodies, so it was clear they hadn’t been hit by a moving train, and reports allege they were poisoned elsewhere before being placed on the tracks to make the deaths look either accidental or like a suicide. The media and the Ministry of Defence, however, described the incident as a routine accident and didn’t investigate any further.
This is the latest in a long list of suspicious deaths. When nuclear scientist Lokanathan Mahalingam’s body turned up in June of 2009, it was palmed off as a suicide and largely ignored by the Indian media. However, Pakistani outlets – perhaps unsurprisingly, given relations between the two countries – kept the story going, noting how quick authorities were to label the death a suicide considering no note was left.
Five years earlier, in the same forest where Mahalingham’s body was eventually discovered, an armed group with sophisticated weaponry allegedly tried to abduct an official from India’s Nuclear Power Corporation (NPC). He, however, managed to escape. Another NPC employee, Ravi Mule, had been murdered weeks before, with police failing to “make any headway” into his case and effectively leaving his family to investigate the crime. A couple of years later, in April of 2011, when the body of former scientist Uma Rao was found, authorities ruled the death as suicide, but family members contested the verdict, saying there had been no signs that Rao was suicidal.
Trombay, the site of India’s first atomic reactor. (Photo via)
This seems to be a recurring theme with deaths in the community. Madhav Nalapat, one of the few journalists in India giving the cases any real attention, has been in close contact with the families of the recently deceased scientists left on the train tracks. “There was absolutely no kind of depression or any family problems that would lead to suicide,” he told me over the phone.
If the deaths of those in the community aren’t classed as suicide, they’re generally labelled as “unexplained”. A good example is the case of M Iyer, who was found with internal haemorrhaging to his skull – possibly the result of a “kinky experiment”, according to a police officer. After a preliminary look-in, the police couldn’t work out how Iyer had suffered internal injuries while not displaying any cuts or bruises, and investigations fizzled out.
This label is essentially admission of defeat on the police force’s part. Once the “unexplained” rubber stamp has been approved, government bodies don’t tend to task the authorities with investigating further. This may be a necessity due to the stark lack of evidence available at the scene of the deaths – a feature that some suggest could indicate the work of professional killers – but if this is the case, why not bring in better trained detectives to investigate the cases? A spate of deaths in the nuclear scientific community would create a media storm and highly publicised police investigation in other countries, so why not India?
This inertia has led to great public dissatisfaction with the Indian police. “[The police] say it’s an unsolved murder – that’s all. Why doesn’t it go higher? Perhaps to a specialist investigations unit?” Madhav asked. “These people were working on the submarine programme – creating a reactor – and have either ‘committed suicide’ or been murdered. It’s astonishing that this hasn’t been seen as suspicious.”
Perhaps, I suggested, this series of deaths is just the latest chapter in a long campaign aiming to derail India’s nuclear and technological capabilities. Madhav agreed: “There is a clear pattern of this type of activity going on,” he said.
INS Sindhurakshak (Photo via)
The explosions that sunk INS Sindhurakshak – a submarine docked in Mumbai – in August of this year could have been deliberate, according to unnamed intelligence sources. And some have alleged that the CIA was behind the sabotage of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
Of course, the deaths have caused fear and tension among those currently working on India’s various nuclear projects. “[Whistleblowers] are getting scared of being involved in the nuclear industry in India,” Madhav relayed to me. Their “families are getting very nervous about this” and “many of them leave for foreign countries and get other jobs”.
There are parallels here with the numerous attacks on the Iranian nuclear scientist community. Five people associated with the country’s nuclear programme have been targeted in the same way: men on motorcycles sticking magnetic bombs on to their cars and detonating them as they drive off. However, the Iranian government are incredibly vocal in condemning these acts – blaming the US and Israel – and at least give the appearance that they are actively investigating.
The same cannot be said for the Indian government. “India is not making any noise about the whole thing,” Madhav explained. “People have just accepted the police version, [which describes these incidents] as normal kinds of death.”
If the deaths do, in fact, turn out to be premeditated murders, deciding who’s responsible is pure speculation at this point. Two authors have alleged that the US have dabbled in sabotaging the country’s technological efforts in the past; China is in a constant soft-power battle with India; and the volatile relationship with Pakistan makes the country a prime suspect. “It could be any of them,” Madhav said.
But the most pressing issue isn’t who might be behind the murders, but that the Indian government’s apathy is potentially putting their high-value staff at even greater risk. Currently, these scientists – who are crucial to the development of India’s nuclear programmes, whether for energy or security – have “absolutely no protection at all – nothing, zero”, Madhav told me. “Which is amazing for people who are in a such a sensitive programme.”
By Joseph Cox Nov 25 2013
Find this story at 25 November 2013
© 2013 Vice Media Inc

Under the Freedom of Information [FOI] Act publicly-funded organisations have 20 working days to answer or notify the applicant if they need more time to answer. Some organisations with well managed records answer more quickly than others but none has been quite as slow as the Ministry of Defence. Its first response to my FOI request came more than six months later.
And there was no acknowledgment of my application, although this is a legal requirement.
I had asked about the mysterious deaths of computer programmers and scientists, some working for Marconi, some for other defence contractors, and others for the MoD and the government communications headquarters GCHQ.
The 25 deaths in the 1970s and 1980s led to countless articles in many countries around the world, including France, Italy, Germany, Poland, and Australia. Separate TV documentaries were made by crews in the UK, US, Canada and Australia. The MoD’s press officers received countless calls from journalists about the deaths; and Lord Weinstock, the then managing director of GEC, one of the government’s biggest defence contractors and at that time Marconi’s parent company, set up an inquiry.
It was carried out by Brian Worth, former Deputy Assistant Commissioner at New Scotland Yard. He concluded that “on the evidence available that the suicide verdicts reached were credible on their own facts, and in the four cases where open verdicts were returned the probability is that each victim took his own life”.
One of the Marconi computer programmers, from London, had gone to Bristol where he tied his neck to a tree and apparently drove off in his car. Less than three months earlier another Marconi programmer from London had travelled by car to Bristol where he apparently jumped off the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Police stopped the cremation of his body as the service was taking place, to investigate further.
Letters to the coroner from the dead man’s friends were unanimous in their scepticism that the programmeer had committed suicide. Police found a tiny puncture mark on the man’s left buttock.
The local coroner alluded to a possible “James Bond” link. He said: “As James Bond would say, ‘this is past coincidence,’ and I will not be completing the inquest today until I know how two men with no connection with Bristol came to meet the same end here.” He did not discover why.
The two dead programmers had been working on highly sensitive projects for the government.
If the MoD had been so swamped with information that it could not answer my FOI request quickly, this would have explained its late reply. In fact the poor official who spoke to me had spent months looking for material and found nothing at all. Not one piece of paper. The official reply was that the MoD has no recorded information on any of the cases I had mentioned. So much for the ministry’s record-keeping.
It was as if the deaths had never happened.
By Ted Ritter on November 29, 2006 9:40 AM | 2 Comments
Find this story at 29 November 2006
© www.computerweekly.com

LONDON — In this trench-coated city, where real-life stories of spies and moles and double agents often rival the best fiction, the peculiar deaths of nine British defense scientists in the last 20 months have stirred suspicions that the cases might be connected-and that espionage might be involved.
Those who have studied the deaths-among them opposition politicians, a Cambridge University counterintelligence specialist and some investigative journalists-are loathe to draw any definitive conclusions, because the evidence, although intriguing, is scant.
But they do believe that the seemingly isolated cases bear enough connections and similarities to at least warrant a government investigation into whether some terrorist group or foreign government is involved.
The Conservative government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, however, insists that the deaths, most of them apparent suicides, are mere coincidences, at best attributable to the unusually high stresses associated with secret defense research.
“The idea that they might have been bumped off by foreign agents is just straight out of James Bond,“ scoffed a Defense Ministry spokesman.
To be sure, the facts would seem to be the stuff of a crackerjack spy novel. Five of the dead scientists worked at classified laboratories of the Marconi electronics company, a defense subsidiary of General Electric Corp. that happens to be the subject of an ongoing fraud investigation into alleged overcharges on government contracts.
Several of the scientists reportedly were working on top-secret research into submarine detection and satellite defenses related to the “Star Wars“
antimissile program. Marconi has declined to comment on their fates.
While some of the deaths appeared to be suicides, circumstances surrounding others were decidedly bizarre. One Marconi computer scientist, Vimal Dajibhai, 24, plunged to his death from a Bristol bridge in August, 1986. He was found with his pants lowered around his ankles and a tiny puncture wound in his left buttock.
The Bristol coroner returned an open verdict in the case, and the puncture wound, according to a coroner`s spokesman, “was a mystery then and remains a mystery now.“
Another Marconi scientist, Ashad Sharif, 26, was found inside his car in October, 1986. He was nearly decapitated, with one end of a rope tied around a tree and the other end around his neck.
The coroner ruled the death a suicide. But Computer News, a weekly London publication that first drew attention to the series of scientists` deaths, reported that a relative summoned to identify the body said he saw a long metal shaft lying on the floor of the car, near the accelerator pedal. The shaft, the relative said, could have been used to wedge down the accelerator. A third Marconi scientist, David Sands, 37, was killed in March, 1987, when his car-containing two full gasoline cans in the trunk-slammed into the wall of a building. Sands` body was burned beyond recognition, with identification made from dental records. The coroner in the case returned an open verdict, ruling that there was neither sufficient evidence of suicide nor of foul play.
What has complicated the arguments of those who would dismiss the espionage theories as mere fantasy is the fact that stranger things have actually happened in Britain.
Ten years ago, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident who broadcast anticommunist programs on the British Broadcasting Corp. world radio network, was murdered when an unknown assassin, presumed to be a Bulgarian spy, jabbed him in the leg with an umbrella.
The umbrella carried a microscopic pellet laced with a deadly poison that killed Markov within a few days but left no trace in his bloodstream. The pellet is on display at Scotland Yard`s famed Black Museum.
The British have had a more recent reminder of the spies among them every Sunday for the last month, courtesy of the venerable Sunday Times. The paper has been carrying a serialized interview with Harold (Kim) Philby, the infamous Soviet KGB double agent who managed to infiltrate the highest levels of Britain`s intelligence service 30 years ago and betray the entire Western alliance.
It is knowledge of such history that leads Randall Heather, a counterintelligence researcher at St. Edmund`s College, Cambridge, to at least entertain the possibility that the Soviets are capable of a sophisticated attack on Britain`s defense scientists.
“I restrain myself from engaging in conspiracy mania,“ said Heather.
“But it is possible that we are seeing a very quiet type of terrorism here, directed at very specific targets. It is possibly an attempt to intimidate the small group of scientists who work in these fields.
“These are not normal types of accidents and suicides. These are not normal types of people who are dying.“
The most recent death did appear to be a “normal“ suicide. On March 25, the body of a Marconi computer scientist, Trevor Knight, was found in his car inside his garage, with a hose connected to the exhaust. A coroner`s inquest ruled that Knight, 52, committed suicide and died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
But normal or not, Knight`s case prompted a call in the British Parliament for an official government inquiry into the scientists` deaths.
“Some of these cases are very, very strange indeed,“ said Douglas Hoyle, a Labor Party member of Parliament who is pressing for the government inquiry.
“I mean, does anyone really commit suicide with his trousers halfway down? What was the mark on (Dajibhai`s) buttock? A lot of these deaths just don`t look like ordinary suicides. The question is: is there some common element?“
April 17, 1988|By Howard Witt, Chicago Tribune.
Find this story at 17 April 1988
© www.chicagotribune.com

LONDON — Even considered individually, the mysterious and brutal deaths cry out for attention.
Vimal Dajibhai plunged 250 feet from a suspension bridge in southwest England, 100 miles from home, in August. When his body was discovered on the hard ground below, small, unexplained puncture marks were found on his buttocks.
A month later, Ashad Sharif died after he looped one end of a rope around his neck, attached the other end to a tree, got into the driver’s seat of his car and sped away.
Then at the end of March, David Sands loaded his car with cans of gasoline and drove it at 80 miles an hour into an abandoned roadside cafe south of London, where it exploded in a fireball so furious that his body had to be identified by dental records.
Considered together, the deaths of these young, apparently well-established professional men share some disturbing characteristics that many in Britain say cry out for explanation.
All were defense researchers working for the sprawling Marconi organization, a major electronics defense contractor. All three were involved in sensitive, defense-related projects. All apparently were suicides, although in none of the cases has a convincing motive been advanced, and there were no witnesses to any of the deaths.
These deaths – along with the unexplained death in February of a fourth defense scientist and the disappearance in January of yet another – have caused no end of speculation and concern in the tightly knit, highly secretive world of defense research.
“I do not wish to be accused of inventing plots more suited to a television thriller than real life,” said John Cartwright, parliamentary defense spokesman for the opposition Liberal-Social Democratic alliance. ”But I think the circumstances of these . . . cases and the possible links between them stretch the possibility of coincidence too far.”
But the government has steadfastly resisted Cartwright’s calls for an official inquiry, contending that there is no evidence of a conspiracy.
“I agree that it is odd that all three were computer scientists working in the defense field,” said Lord Trefgarne, the junior defense minister, “but there any relationship stops.”
*
Marconi, which employed Dajibhai, Sharif and Sands before their deaths, said an internal investigation disclosed no connection among the three men.
“We employ 35,000 people in 18 separate sister companies,” said a spokesman. “These individuals were working on separate programs for separate companies at separate locations.”
And yet many questions remain unanswered. Why should Dajibhai and Sharif die in Bristol, a city far away from their homes and with which they had no apparent connection?
Why should Avtar Singh-Gida, a Ph.D. student working on a Ministry of Defense-funded project at Loughborough University in central England, disappear without a trace in January two days before his wedding anniversary, when he had already bought his wife a gift and a card?
Tony Collins, a reporter who has investigated the incidents for the weekly Computer News, says that his work has led him to conclude that the three Marconi scientists were all involved in a narrow field of underwater-simula tion projects, an area in which he says Britain leads the world.
“I have no evidence to link them at the moment, but I believe there is a case for investigation,” Collins said in an interview. “The government probably feels there’s not enough evidence. It wouldn’t be like the British to rush into an inquiry.”
Others have raised questions about the fact that the names of two of the men who died and the one who is missing – Dajibhai, Sharif and Gida – indicate that they are from the Indian subcontinent or are of Indian origin.
“I’m very suspicious of this. For a fluke there’s too much in it,” Andreas Fingeraut, a defense economist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said in an interview.
“Some of the top computer programmers in the U.K. happen to be people of Indian descent. They have specialized in it and are very good,” he said.
“I’m not saying they’re a security risk, but maybe somebody, somewhere thought they were.”
Others who may not believe in a conspiracy theory have suggested that the deaths and disappearance could be saying something else: that the world of high-technology defense research has become so competitive that it is driving some of its youngest and brightest workers to suicide.
“People in the defense industry are under tremendous pressure all the time. Competition is tough. The pressure is on for people to come up with new ideas,” said Anthony Watts, who writes about maritime defense research for a publication called Navy International, based in Surrey, England.
“The question of whom you can talk to about your work, and how much you can say is uppermost in people’s minds,” he continued. “It’s a strain on people’s families. Perhaps in the end, some of them crack up.”
Martin Stott, Cartwright’s aide in Parliament, also brought up that theme in an interview last week.
“We wonder whether there was something about the work they were doing that might force them to come out and take their lives. Maybe we’re putting too much pressure on these people,” he said.
Yet those looking for some theme, some reason behind the deaths and disappearance, are finding it difficult to know where to begin.
The first death was reported on Aug. 5, when Dajibhai, 24, was found in the gorge below Clifton Bridge near Bristol. Marconi officials say he worked for Marconi Underwater Systems at Watford, near London, as a junior software engineer checking torpedo-guidance systems. It is not known why he traveled so far from his home in London.
The police inquest into his death returned an open verdict, meaning that it could not be determined whether he was killed, died accidentally or committed suicide.
But in the March 5 edition of Computer News, Collins reported that Dajibhai’s family was not satisfied with the police investigation. And people familiar with the case said that Dajibhai seemed happy, had just purchased a new suit and new shoes, and was looking forward to beginning a new career in London’s financial district.
Although Sharif’s death officially was ruled a suicide, many believe it is just as puzzling. Sharif, 26, worked on electronic test equipment as a computer analyst with Marconi Defence Systems at Stanmore, north of London.
Police in Bristol said that a tape recording found in his car lent support to the verdict that he took his own life. But Collins quoted a member of Sharif’s family who contends that the taped message had “nothing to do with death.”
Sands, 36, was employed by a Marconi subsidiary, Easams Ltd., when he drove his car at high speed into the roadside restaurant in the early morning of March 31. A coroner’s ruling on his death is expected next month.
Police were reported to have said that he was depressed and had argued with his wife, but others said Sands had just returned from a vacation in Venice with his wife and showed no signs of depression.
Marconi officials contend that Sands’ work, although classified, had nothing to do with underwater research. But that certainly was the area of expertise for Gida, 26, who was working on an unclassified government-funded contract on sonar transmission.
He was last seen Jan. 8, when he and a colleague were testing acoustic equipment at a reservoir near the University at Loughborough. Both men went for separate lunches, and Gida did not return. Police are still investigating his disappearance.
Dajibhai and Gida lived in the same building at Loughborough University when they both were students, and a Marconi spokesman said they were “nodding acquaintances.” But there is no evidence to link the others.
The mystery appeared to deepen last weekend, when police in Oxfordshire reported details of the death of Peter Peapell, 46, a lecturer at the Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham and a former Defense Ministry employee.
He was found dead Feb. 22 under the car in the garage at his home. The car engine was running and the garage door was shut, but an inquest returned an open verdict, which means it could not determine whether Peapell’s death was murder, suicide or an accident.
Yet even those who are searching for some link among these deaths are cautious about adding Peapell’s name to the list. He did not work for Marconi, nor was he involved in underwater research. “I’m rather wary of lumping all these people together,” said Stott, Cartwright’s aide.
Still, Peapell’s death notice seemed to add to the sense of unknown permeating all these cases. Stott and others believe the only way to clear the air is through an official inquiry.
“It may well be that this is all coincidence, a series of mysterious but isolated incidents,” he said. “But it is very strange, and we ought to get to the bottom of it.”
By Jane Eisner, Inquirer Staff Writer
Posted: April 12, 1987
Find this story at 12 April 1987
© http://articles.philly.com

LONDON (AP) _ Police on Sunday confirmed the death of a metallurgist involved in secret defense work – the fifth such case in the past eight months in which authorities have been unable to establish the cause of death.
A sixth scientist, a research expert on submarine warfare equipment at the University of Loughborough, vanished in January.
The government has rejected opposition demands for an investigation, saying there was ”no evidence of any link (in the deaths) at this stage.” But Home Secretary Douglas Hurd has ordered police involved in the individual cases to contact each other about the deaths.
John Cartwright, the defense spokesman for the centrist Liberal-Social Democratic Party alliance, renewed his call for an inquiry by the governing Conservative Party following Sunday’s confirmation of the metallurgist’s death.
Even if all the cases were suicides, he said, ”it must raise some question about the pressures under which scientists are working in the defense field.”
Police in Thames Valley confirmed Sunday that Peter Peapell, 46, a lecturer at the Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham near Swindon, died on Feb. 22 from carbon monoxide poisoning.
An inquest returned an open verdict, making no ruling on the cause of death. Police said Peapell was found underneath his car in the garage of his home. The car’s engine was running and the garage door was shut, according to the report. His wife told reporters he was happy and had no reason to commit suicide.
Cartwright said he believed there were ”grounds for concern” and urged police to reinvestigate Peapell’s ”worrying” death.
Last Monday, David Sands, 37, a computer expert at a subsidiary of the British defense contractor Marconi Co. Ltd., was killed when he drove his car, loaded with gasoline cans, into an abandoned cafe in Surrey.
Press Association, Britain’s domestic news agency, said Sands had just completed three years’ work on a secret air defense radar system for the Royal Air Force at Easams, a subsidiary of Marconi and part of Britain’s giant General Electric Company.
Last year, two other Marconi scientists also died.
Vimal Dajibhai, 24, a programmer with Marconi Underwater Systems who reportedly was working on Britain’s self-guided torpedo Stingray missile, was found dead last August beneath a suspension bridge spanning the River Avon in Bristol, western England.
Relatives and friends testified he had no reason to commit suicde and an inquest returned an open verdict.
Ashad Sharif, 26, a computer expert with Marconi Defense Systems, died near Bristol in October. A police report said he apparently tied one end of a rope to a tree, the other around his neck, got into his car and drove off, strangling himself. An inquest returned a verdict of suicide.
Richard Pugh, a computer design expert, was found dead in his home in Essex in January. The circumstance of his death have never been explained.
A seventh scientist, Avtar Singh-Gida, 26, disappeared in January in northern England while conducting experiments on underwater acoustics. His disappearance is still under police investigation.
AP , Associated Press
Apr. 5, 1987 11:34 PM ET
Find this story at 5 April 1987
© 2013 The Associated Press.

Alan Rusbridger is being grilled by MPs – but he has published nothing that could be a threat to national security
The Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, is due to appear before the House of Commons home affairs select committee on Tuesday to answer questions about his newspaper’s publication of intelligence files leaked by Edward Snowden. Unlike the directors of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, who gave evidence recently before the intelligence and security committee, Rusbridger will not be provided with a list of questions in advance.
There are at least five legal and political issues arising out of Snowden’s revelations on which reasonable opinion is divided. These include whether Snowden should enjoy the legal protection accorded a whistleblower who reveals wrongdoing; whether his revelations have weakened the counter-terrorism apparatus of the US or the UK; whether, conversely, they show the need for an overhaul of surveillance powers on both sides of the Atlantic (and even an international agreement to protect partners like Germany); whether parliament has been misled by the services about the extent of intrusive surveillance; and whether the current system for parliamentary oversight of the intelligence and security services is sufficiently robust to meet the international standards laid down by my predecessor at the UN, Martin Scheinin.
These questions are too important for the UN to ignore, and so on Tuesday I am launching an investigation that will culminate in a series of recommendations to the UN general assembly next autumn. As in the case of Chelsea Manning, there are also serious questions about sensitive information being freely available to so many people. The information Snowden had access to, which included top-secret UK intelligence documents, was available to more than 850,000 people, including Snowden – a contractor not even employed by the US government.
There is, however, one issue on which I do not think reasonable people can differ, and that is the importance of the role of responsible media in exposing questions of public interest. I have studied all the published stories that explain how new technology is leading to the mass collection and analysis of phone, email, social media and text message data; how the relationship between intelligence services and technology and telecoms companies is open to abuse; and how technological capabilities have moved ahead of the law. These issues are at the apex of public interest concerns. They are even more important – dare I say it – than whether Hugh Grant’s mobile was hacked by a tabloid.
The astonishing suggestion that this sort of journalism can be equated with aiding and abetting terrorism needs to be scotched decisively. Attacking the Guardian is an attempt to do the bidding of the services themselves, by distracting attention from the real issues. It is the role of a free press to hold governments to account, and yet there have even been outrageous suggestions from some Conservative MPs that the Guardian should face a criminal investigation.
It is disheartening to see some tabloids give prominence to this nonsense. When the Mail on Sunday took the decision to publish the revelations of the former MI5 officer David Shayler, no one suggested that the paper should face prosecution. Indeed, when the police later tried to seize the Guardian’s notes of its own interviews with Shayler, Lord Judge, the former lord chief justice, refused to allow it to happen – saying, rightly, that it would interfere with the vital role played by the media to expose public wrongdoing.
When it comes to damaging national security, comparisons between the two cases are telling. The Guardian has revealed that there is an extensive programme of mass surveillance that potentially affects every one of us, while being assiduous in avoiding the revelation of any name or detail that could put sources at risk. Rusbridger himself has made most of these decisions, as befits their importance. The Mail on Sunday, on the other hand, published material that was of less obvious public interest.
An even closer example is Katharine Gunn, the GCHQ whistleblower who revealed in 2003 that the US and UK were spying on the missions of Mexico and five other countries at the UN, in order to manipulate a vote in the security council in favour of military intervention in Iraq. Like Snowden, her defence was that she was acting to prevent a greater wrong – the attempt to twist the security council to the bellicose will of the US and UK. She was charged under the Official Secrets Act, but the case was dropped because the director of public prosecutions and attorney general rightly concluded that no jury would convict Gunn.
There can be no doubt that the Guardian’s revelations concern matters of international public interest. There is already an intense debate that has drawn interventions from some of the UK’s most senior political figures. Wholesale reviews have been mooted by President Obama, Chancellor Merkel and Nick Clegg, Britain’s deputy prime minister. Current and former privy councillors and at least one former law officer have weighed in.
In the US, a number of the revelations have already resulted in legislation. Senior members of Congress have informed the Guardian that they consider the legislation to have been misused, and the chair of the US Senate intelligence committee has said that as a result of the revelations it is now “abundantly clear that a total review of all intelligence programmes is necessary”.
In Europe, and particularly in Germany (which has a long and unhappy history of abusive state surveillance) the political class is incandescant. In November the Council of Europe parliamentary assembly endorsed the Tshwane International Principles on National Security and the Right to Information, which provide the strongest protection for public interest journalism deriving from whistleblowers. Lord Carlile, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation in the UK, took part in the drafting of the principles and has endorsed them as an international template for resolving issues such as the present one. Many states have registered serious objections at the UN about spying, and there are diplomatic moves towards an international agreement to restrict surveillance activity. In direct response to the Guardian’s revelations, Frank La Rue, the special rapporteur on freedom of expression, has brought forward new guidelines on internet privacy, which were adopted last week by the UN general assembly.
When it comes to assessing the balance that must be struck between maintaining secrecy and exposing information in the public interest there are often borderline cases. This isn’t one. It’s a no-brainer. The Guardian’s revelations are precisely the sort of information that a free press is supposed to reveal.
The claims made that the Guardian has threatened national security need to be subjected to penetrating scrutiny. I will be seeking a far more detailed explanation than the security chiefs gave the intelligence committee. If they wish to pursue an agenda of unqualified secrecy, then they are swimming against the international tide. They must justify some of the claims they have made in public, because, as matters stand, I have seen nothing in the Guardian articles that could be a risk to national security. In this instance the balance of public interest is clear.
Ben Emmerson
The Guardian, Monday 2 December 2013 18.21 GMT
Find this story at 2 December 2013
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For most of my life student politics has been little more than a joke. Suddenly it’s become both serious and admirable

Why are some of the most powerful people in Britain so terrified of a bunch of students? If that sounds a ridiculous question, consider a few recent news stories. As reported in this paper last week, Cambridge police are looking for spies to inform on undergraduate protests against spending cuts and other “student-union type stuff”. Meanwhile, in London last Thursday, a student union leader, Michael Chessum, was arrested after a small and routine demo. Officers hauled him off to Holborn police station for not informing them of the precise route of the protest – even though it was on campus.

The 24-year-old has since been freed – on the strict condition that he doesn’t “engage in protest on any University Campus and not within half a mile boundary of any university”. Even with a copy of the bail grant in front of me, I cannot make out whether that applies to any London college, any British university – or just any institute of higher education anywhere in the world. As full-time head of the University of London’s student union, Chessum’s job is partly to protest: the police are blocking him from doing his work. But I suppose there’s no telling just what threat to law and order might be posed by an over-articulate history graduate.

While we’re trawling for the ridiculous, let us remember another incident this summer at the University of London, when a 25-year-old woman was arrested for the crime of chalking a slogan on a wall. That’s right: dragged off by the police for writing in water-soluble chalk. Presumably, there would have been no bother had she used PowerPoint.

It all sounds farcical – it is farcical – until you delve into the details. Take the London demo that landed Chessum in such bother: university staff were filming their own students from a balcony of Senate House (the building that inspired the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, appropriately enough). Such surveillance is a recent tradition, the nice man in the University press office explains to me – and if the police wanted the footage that would be no problem.

That link with the police is becoming increasingly important across more and more of our universities. London students allege that officers and university security guards co-ordinate their attempts to rein in demonstrations while staff comment on the increased police presence around campus. At Sussex, student protests against outsourcing services were broken up this April, when the university called in the police – who duly turned up with riot vans and dogs. A similar thing happened at Royal Holloway university, Surrey in 2011: a small number of students occupied one measly corridor to demonstrate against course closures and redundancies; the management barely bothered to negotiate, but cited “health and safety” and called in the police to clear away the young people paying their salaries.

For most of my life, student politics has been little more than a joke – the stuff of Neil off the Young Ones, or apprentice Blairites. But in the past few years it has suddenly become both serious and admirable, most notably with the protests of 2010 against £9,000 tuition fees and the university occupations that followed. And at just that point, both the police and university management have become very jumpy.

For the police, this is part of the age-old work of clamping down on possible sources of civil disobedience. But the motivation for the universities is much more complicated. Their historic role has been to foster intellectual inquiry and host debate. Yet in the brave new market of higher education, when universities are competing with each other to be both conveyor belts to the jobs market and vehicles for private investment, such dissent is not only awkward – it’s dangerously uncommercial. As Andrew McGettigan, author of The Great University Gamble, puts it: “Anything too disruptive gets in the way of the business plan.”

Last month it appeared that Edinburgh University had forced its student union to sign a gagging clause (now withdrawn). No union officer is allowed to make any public criticism of the university without giving at least 48 hours’ notice. University managers reportedly made that a deal-breaker if the student union was to get any funds.

The managers of the University of London want to shut down the student union at the end of this academic year. The plan – which is why Chessum and co were marching last week – is to keep the swimming pool and the various sports clubs, but to quash all university-wide student representation. After all, the students are only the people paying the salary of the university vice-chancellor, Adrian Smith – why should they get a say? The plan, it may not surprise you to learn, was drawn up by a panel that didn’t number a single student. What with sky-high fees and rocketing rents in the capital, you might think that the need for a pan-London student body had never been higher. But then, you’re not a university manager on a six-figure salary.

Where universities were historically places of free expression, now they are having to sacrifice that role for the sake of the free market. For students, that comes in the form of a crackdown on dissent. Yet the twentysomethings at university now will end up running our politics, our businesses and our media. You might want these future leaders to be questioning and concerned about society. Or you might wonder whether sending in the police to arrest a woman chalking a wall is proportionate. Either way, you should be troubled.

Aditya Chakrabortty
The Guardian, Monday 18 November 2013 20.00 GMT

Find this story at 18 November 2013

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