Taken to the cleaners
The money's not dirty but we'll have it anyway
SINCE 1986, the courts have had the power to seize assets of people convicted of certain offences. Their powers were extended in 1988 and again in 2002. Upon conviction, the CPS makes an application for a Criminal Confiscation Order and – in the case of Geoff, an innocent man – a whole new nightmare begins for him and his family.
What happens is that the CPS produces what it calls the Benefit Figure, the financial benefit of carrying out the crime. In Geoff’s case it says the benefit is £2.2million - the value of 77kg of cocaine at 80 per cent purity. We then enter an Alice In Wonderland scenario whereby this Benefit Figure is then multiplied by the number of people convicted of being part of the plot, thus magically turning £2million into £6million. This crazy logic is, at the time of writing, being contested by defence barristers and the House of Lords is expected to rule on the matter at the beginning of 2008.
In any event, the CPS will then call in a financial investigator who will examine the finances of each of the defendants and produce a second figure - the total assets of the person convicted. This Section 16 document contains an account of what the person owns: property, pensions, cash, vehicles – everything. If the assets figure is greater than the benefit, the CPS says the person should pay an amount equal to the benefit; if the assets figure is less, then this is the amount the person is asked to pay. If he doesn’t, he has his sentence extended.
What is important to understand is that it doesn’t matter if the financial investigator is satisfied that the assets can all be seen to have come from legitimate means – the order will still be made for that amount. There is no need to prove that any of it is dirty money. And this is what happened when the investigator looked at Geoff’s books – everything he owned was clearly the product of four decades of hard work, he was clean as a whistle. It is also interesting to note that this process is not carried out before trial – surely if there is evidence of dubious financial transactions going on the jury might want to hear about it. And more importantly, in Geoff’s case, the fact that there was nothing untoward going on in his finances would have been further evidence of his innocence, but this information – sourced by the prosecution and therefore beyond doubt - was never put in front of the jury.