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Priti Patel Tells MPs Daniel Morgan Investigation ‘Litany Of Mistakes’, Report Says Police ‘Corrupt’

© REUTERS / JESSICA TAYLORParliament session at the House of Commons in London
Parliament session at the House of Commons in London - Sputnik International, 1920, 15.06.2021
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On the night of March 10, 1987 private investigator Daniel Morgan, 37, was axed to death in the car park of the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham, south east London. There have been five investigations but nobody has ever been convicted of the crime.

An independent panel has said the investigation of the unsolved murder of Daniel Morgan showed “a form of institutional corruption" within the Metropolitan Police.

Home Secretary Priti Pate, who was criticised last month for delaying the publication of the report, told the House of Commons it made for "deeply alarming" reading and showed there had been a "litany of mistakes" around the original investigation of the crime.

​Mrs Patel said the Met’s actions had "irreparably damaged the chances of successful prosecution".

The independent investigation by a panel led by Baroness Nuala O’Loan - a former police ombudsman in Northern Ireland - was due to publish its report on Monday, 17 May, until Mrs Patel ordered a delay so it could be reviewed by Home Office lawyers.

​That angered Mr Morgan’s family but on Tuesday, 15 June, they put out a statement which said: "We welcome the recognition that we - and the public at large - have been failed over the decades by a culture of corruption and cover-up in the Metropolitan Police, an institutionalised corruption that has permeated successive regimes in the Metropolitan Police and beyond to this day."

The report found no fresh evidence of police involvement in the murder but said the original investigation was poor and a second probe was “pathetic”.

At a press conference Ms O’Loan said: "The family of Daniel Morgan has suffered grievously as a consequence of the failure to bring his murderer or murderers to justice: The unwarranted assurances which they were given, the misinformation which was put into the public domain, and the denial of failings in the investigation.”

​"We believe that concealing or denying failings, for the sake of an organization's public image is dishonesty, on the part of the organisation, for reputational benefit. This constitutes a form of institutional corruption," added Ms O’Loan.

In March 2011, the Crown Prosecution Service dropped murder charges against Morgan's former business partner Jonathan Rees, 56, Garry Vian, 50, and his brother Glenn, 52. Charges against former detective sergeant Sid Fillery, 63, and another man, James Cook, had been dropped in February 2010.

All five men have always strenuously denied any involvement in Morgan's murder.

Morgan and Rees were partners in a private detective firm, Southern Investigations but after Morgan's death the firm would become deeply involved in murky journalistic practices at the News of the World, which closed down in 2011 after details emerged of widespread phone hacking by journalists.

In 2017 Peter Jukes, co-author of the Untold podcast, told Sputnik he did not believe anyone would ever be convicted of Daniel's murder, because the first two inquiries had been so "thoroughly corrupted."

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