The new scandal, published in Sunday Mail said British detectives plotted with private investigators to hack into email accounts and cell phone of UK’s former Foreign Minister, Lord Malloch-Brown; former Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, MET, Cressida Dick and Nemat Shafik, Permanent Secretary at the Department for International Development, DFID.
However, Scotland Yard has kept mum over the allegation. The plot was said to have been executed in 2009 when detectives from the MET’s anti-corruption and money laundering unit, SCD6, were investigating Ibori, who a few months ago pleaded guilty to select charges of money laundering and fraud.
London’s The Mail on Sunday said the officers involved were those already being investigated over bribery allegations while it investigated Ibori. A whistleblower, who blew the current scandal in a letter to Britain’s Commissioner of Police, Sir Paul Stephenson, said in 2009, there were fears within the SCD6 which is being funded by the Department of International Development, DFID, that bosses at the DFID were about to withdraw financial support for the unit.
Their fears prompted them to seek the assistance of RISC Management, a private detective agency, to hack into email accounts and mobile phones of the top public servants. RISC Management is also being investigated for its role in the bribery scandal.
Britain’s most senior policewoman and a senior Whitehall civil servant, also said to have been targeted, told police about alleged ‘communications interceptions’ in two cases and an ‘attempt’ in another. It is claimed the detectives involved were part of an elite Metropolitan Police anti-corruption and money-laundering unit called SCD6.
Last Saturday, the Met declined to say how seriously it is taking the claims or to what extent, if any, they form part of a wider inquiry into the activities of SCD6.
The inquiry— which centres on bribery allegations and has so far led to four arrests— was triggered by evidence supplied by the same whistleblower.
Funded by the Department for International Development, SCD6 investigated foreign politicians who laundered stolen assets through Britain. In 2009, however, there were fears that DFID was about to withdraw its financial backing because of concerns about the unit’s performance.
It is against this background, alleges the informant, that a private detective agency and serving officers tried to intercept the ‘communications’ of three powerful individuals who, it was thought, would have knowledge of the plans threatening the unit’s survival.
One was Lord Malloch-Brown, then a Foreign Office Minister who was ‘routinely briefed’ about the progress of SCD6 investigations.
The other two were Cressida Dick, then a Deputy Assistant Commissioner at the Yard, and Nemat Shafik, Permanent Secretary at DFID. Although Scotland Yard was first alerted to the claims last July, Lord Malloch-Brown, the former UN deputy secretary-general, knew nothing about them until contacted by The Mail on Sunday last week.
He said: ‘I do anticipate pursuing this and finding out more. If true, if rogue officers would do something like this to senior Government figures, then that’s pretty alarming.’
The hacking claims were first raised in a letter sent anonymously by the whistleblower to the then Met Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson. It said RISC Management, a London-based private detective agency, along with ‘certain serving officers attempted to intercept email and telephone communications of Cressida Dick’.
The whistleblower, who claims to be an RISC insider, said this happened after Ms Dick had been ‘approached to investigate the activities of certain officers’.
The letter went on to say that ‘other communications interceptions appear to include’ Lord Malloch-Brown and Ms Shafik.
It was accompanied by a detailed dossier containing claims that officers were paid cash by private investigators in return for information about a notorious Nigerian. This would later form the basis of the Met investigation into SCD6.
Ms Shafik, who is now deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, also knew nothing about the claims until last week. Her spokesman said she did not wish to comment, adding: ‘It’s a police matter.’
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