Mendacity, dishonesty and fraud

In English law, to lie or to be guilty of a dishonest act does not necessarily involve the person responsible in criminality. Gavin McFarlane of Titmuss Sainer Dechert and London Guildhall University explains.

Late winter and spring in the United Kingdom have been enlivened by a liberal sprinkling of bold headlines carrying accusations and counter accusations of mendacity by, amongst others, ministers of the Crown and captains of industry. In the normal course of events it would merely be amusing to witness one’s betters abusing each other in the language of the gutter but most of the recent cases are coloured by human tragedy due to the potential for plant closures and consequent loss of employment. The starting point for this commentary is the allegation made on behalf of the Secretary of State for Trade that he was lied to by senior executives of the car manufacturer BMW in connection with the sale of the Rover business at Longbridge. These accusations were hotly denied by spokesmen for the company. Shortly afterwards another war of words broke out but this time the discontented rumblings began at the German end. At the end of March the German Environment Ministry claimed that the British company British Nuclear Fuels Ltd had lied when it claimed, in a press release, that Germany had agreed to lift its ban on importing reprocessed nuclear fuel from BNFL’s Cumbrian processing operation at Sellafield. According to the Germans, the press release issued by BNFL was about as “reliable as its forged test results.”