A new start – Customs and Excise prosecutions

Gavin McFarlane of Temple Chambers Cardiff

The recent history of Customs and Excise has been marked by a series of enquiries into mishandled investigations and prosecutions, notably, the Butler and Gower/Hammond reports. The set of cases that involved the largest sums of money, both in terms of duty and legal costs, are known collectively as ‘London City Bond’. They stemmed from investigations into allegations of illegal diversion of duty-suspended excise goods back on to the domestic retail market; estimates of the revenue lost to the Exchequer vary, but start at around UK£1 billion. These events led first to an enquiry on behalf of the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee and the Attorney General by senior accountant John Roques and, after the collapse of the criminal litigation, to the detailed enquiry carried out by High Court judge Sir Neil Butterfield. The Metropolitan Police is currently engaged in examining the use of evidence by Customs and Excise in the London City Bond cases. In the course of its ‘Operation Gestalt’, 20 serving and retired customs officials have been named, and the department’s head lawyer and director of law enforcement suspended.