NEWS – “without comment”
Posted by: Ian (D. Withers)
Met agreed to compensation 18 months after the family announced lawsuit plans
By Stephen Wright and Richard Pendlebury
Published: 17 July 2023
The family of the murdered private detective Daniel Morgan are to receive a ‘significant’ six-figure pay-out from Scotland Yard over the decades-long corruption that has blighted the hunt for his killers.
The settlement comes two years after a bombshell official report into the case branded the Metropolitan Police ‘institutionally corrupt’ and accused it of more than 30 years of covering-up and incompetence.
The out-of-court agreement – approved by London mayor Sadiq Khan – marks another hugely damaging day for the Met and its controversial former commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick.
The £16million independent panel report in June 2021 found that Dame Cressida personally placed ‘hurdles’ in the way of the search for the truth about the axe killing of Mr Morgan in 1987.
In a damning verdict, it found her force had been more interested in protecting its reputation than in cracking what has been dubbed the ‘most investigated unsolved murder in the history of the Metropolitan Police’.
The family of the murdered private detective Daniel Morgan (pictured) are to receive a ‘significant’ six-figure pay-out from Scotland Yard over the decades-long corruption that has blighted the hunt for his killers
The family of the murdered private detective Daniel Morgan (pictured) are to receive a ‘significant’ six-figure pay-out from Scotland Yard over the decades-long corruption that has blighted the hunt for his killers
No one has been brought to justice for the murder of Mr Morgan in a south London pub car park in 1987. Pictured: The car park of the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham, south-east London, where Mr Morgan was murdered
No one has been brought to justice for the murder of Mr Morgan in a south London pub car park in 1987. Pictured: The car park of the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham, south-east London, where Mr Morgan was murdered
Baroness O’Loan, who led the inquiry, described the institutional corruption finding as equivalent to the Macpherson report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, which concluded the force was ‘institutionally racist’.
Dame Cressida dismissed the findings of the withering report and declined demands to resign, only to lose her job months later after a string of scandals – including her handling of the VIP sex abuse inquiry Operation Midland – which dogged her time at the helm of Britain’s biggest force.
The confidential compensation deal with the Morgan family, said to have been agreed in the last few days, is a vindication of the Mail’s acclaimed coverage of the case, which started with a gripping three-part series – the Met Corruption Files – in 2014.
That series and our subsequent investigations exposed suspected overlapping corruption in the Morgan and Stephen Lawrence police inquiries, and named and shamed key figures accused of criminality including the murdered man’s crooked ex business partner, Jonathan Rees. He has denied any involvement in the brutal killing.
No one has been brought to justice for the murder of Mr Morgan in a south London pub car park in 1987. The 37-year-old was found with an axe lodged in his skull and £1,000 in banknotes in a pocket.
After five separate criminal inquiries and an inquest, at an estimated cost of £30million, it was hoped that the eight-year panel inquiry would finally uncover the truth.
Instead, it became clear after the publication of Baroness O’Loan’s report that the stench of ‘institutional corruption’ pervading the Met meant the family are unlikely ever to get justice.
The settlement comes two years after a bombshell official report into the case branded the Metropolitan Police ‘institutionally corrupt’ and accused it of more than 30 years of covering-up and incompetence. Pictured: Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley
The Met agreed to pay compensation to the Morgan family – led by the victim’s campaigning brother Alastair – 18 months after they announced plans to sue the force, alleging that a decades-long cover-up of corruption was continuing.
Despite the inquiry’s findings against Dame Cressida and the force, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (Mopac) – the body that oversees the Met – decided she would not face disciplinary action.
Announcing the landmark claim in December 2021, the Morgan family solicitor, Raju Bhatt, said the civil claim alleged misfeasance in public office as well as breaches of the Human Rights Act.
Dame Cressida would be named as a defendant for her actions, with the lawsuit alleging widespread wrongdoing as identified by the inquiry report.
Mr Bhatt said: ‘The claim alleges deliberate abuse or bad faith in the exercise of powers by any officer of the Crown with knowledge or reckless indifference to the consequences of such conduct.’
The claim dated back to 1987 and alleged wrongdoing immediately after the killing, when one suspect worked on the murder investigation, running through to recent years.
Mr Bhatt said: ‘The repeated failure over decades to confront corruption includes the obstruction of the independent panel’s work and the response of the Met to that panel’s findings.’
The Met rejected the findings of the panel, insisting it was not institutionally corrupt and that it had not obstructed the panel’s work. The panel blamed obstruction for its inquiry taking eight years as it fought for documents.
Exact details of the pay-out to the Morgan family are covered by a confidentiality clause but multiple sources have confirmed that the settlement is a ‘significant six-figure sum’.
Full Article at: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12306093/Met-Police-settlement-Daniel-Morgan-family.html