FSA starts criminal proceedings against former iSOFT directors

Readers' comments (4)

• John Harding | 6 Jan 2010 11:57 am

  It is quite right and proper that those who are believed to have broken the law should be brought before the relevant court. I have no problem with this.
  
  What I do object to however is that he FSA is bringing the case rather than the Crown.
  
  This makes the FSA, a statutory body the investigator, prosecutor, prosecution witness, self styled public protector, consumer champion and 'Uncle Tom Cobbly and all'.
  
  In these circumstances I doubt there is any Magistrate who won't just roll over and rubber stamp a verdict of guilty. Then what? a fine and maybe a prison term? Fines payable to whom? surely not the FSA, they don't need to go to court to top up their 'Bonus and Pension Pots' and as far as prison terms are concerned this must be down to the CPS. After all even the Police in the UK have to provide details of a suspects actions to the CPS before prosecution can proceed.
  
  No this is out of order. If the FSA believe that a Criminal offense has been committed then they should present their evidence to the CPS and invite them to prosecute.
  
  If the FSA believe that these charges are so serious as to warrant court action then what of its own 'misleading statements'? In their case it is apparently sufficient to just admit that 'their systems' were not up to the job of doing the 'Statutory Regulation' for which they were set up. Being incompetent is OK lads, have another bonus.
  
  Could go on but really this action is just about the FSA creating more and more activity to try to show that it is important and on top of its brief.
  Such a shame that they have so little knowledge and expertise of what the vast majority in the finance industry do. Incidentally employing more and more 'big names' is more window dressing and providing jobs for the boys. What cost, what benefit and what are these people actually going to do?

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• Peter French | 6 Jan 2010 3:10 pm

  Dear Sir,
  
  Far too many people in the financial services industry and banking have been allowed to get away with fraud. The number of mortgage brokers who have been closed down by the FSA and the shear scale of mortgage fraud, has been bad enough. Clearly the FSA has discovered so much wrong doing by bad hats, however despite clear evidence of fraud on the part of these villains how many have faced legal consequencies? However the scale of utter negligent mangement on the part of UK banks and other financial services companies in theUK, which threaten the very economic future of the country,
  in monetary terms is far more damaging. Just two men should be named. Fred Goodwin and Adam Applegarth both chairmen of gigantic financial institutions who were unqualified in banking and have lumbered the Nation with debts which will take a generation to pay off, yet they have been well rewarded for their irresponsible and negligent bad management at a cost thousands of times as much as a few small fraudsters. Yes, the FSA should spend their time searching out villainous bad management, within the banking/finance industry, the unfair charges, appalling bad management, innacurate pruduct descriptions, and what has happenend at Key Data and other financial institutions who have ill served the public. Yes, of course it is good that they have investigated and taken action against what are really small time fraudsters, however in such cases the prosecution and proceedings should be in the hands of the CPS and the evidence handed to the fraud squad for action. The truth is that the sentences for massive fraud and for the scale of crime needs to be addressed, as those sentences have been inadequate.
  
  The FSA should do their job of regulating so as to deter theft by inspecting and using the information which GABRIEL should help provide. When they find fraud, it is a matter for the Police and CPS to deal with and for the Courts to sentence miscreants to very long sentences as a deterent.
  
  I feel that the Conservative Party to eliminate the FSA has been driven by the fact that they have not best prioritised their activities so as to direct their energies to deal with the worst of the problems and they should direct their efforts into the big scale rip off by Banks and product providers and measures to deter fraud and malpractice, but once they suspect criminal activties, there are better agencies to take the matter forward. To preserve democratic processes, we must avoid having one tool of Government which is regulator, investigator, prosecutor, judge and sentencer all wrapped up in one. My concern with the FSA is that it has too wide a remit and is in danger of doing so much so that it has lost much support and now we in the industry are faced with yet another attempt to get regulation right after first attempting to do it, following the Gower report in the mid 1980s.

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• Simon Webster | 6 Jan 2010 3:22 pm

  10/10 Mr Harding

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• Judge Jeffreys | 7 Jan 2010 5:30 pm

  The government has vested in the FSA, a member of the "executive" and not a member of the judiciary, powers that it (the government) does not hold accountable and especially accountable to the judiciary themselves. The FSA itself is unfit for this quasi judicial role!
  
  Lord Lester of Herne Hill QC and Monica Carss-Frisk were of the opinion that the FSMA 2000 was bad law and in breach of the Human Rights Act. Anthony Speaight QC took this view also.
  
  The FSA has failed every regulatory task set it and now it has a judicial role!

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