Michael Ward case: A state-sponsored miscarriage of justice?

Last month, I sat for two interviews with Empowering The Innocent.

Part 1

The first of these interviews – referred to as “Part 1” – provided an Overview of what I claim amounted to a major State-sponsored Abuse of Process in the bringing of criminal proceedings against me for political reasons, not because of a genuine belief that I had committed criminal misconduct. The proceedings had been triggered in July 1991 by Ministers (and former Ministers) of the Thatcher Government in a conspiracy involving Mohamed Fayed (the then owner of Harrods); the merchant bank Morgan Grenfell (now part of Deutsche Bank); and the Mail on Sunday newspaper. These parties colluded in a secret agenda to overturn the findings of dishonesty on the part of Fayed in his purchase of Harrods. I had given evidence to the Inquiry into Fayed’s purchase of Harrods (referred to as the House of Fraser Inquiry). The evidence I had given to the House of Fraser Inquiry had had nothing whatever to do with the purported misconduct alleged against me. Fayed and his co-conspirators seized upon complaints made against me by a man with a record of fraud and blackmail – complaints of which I had been cleared eight months earlier.

I explained how at every stage in the lengthy subsequent proceedings (1991-2021), as my case passed from one part of the criminal justice system to another, and as I looked with hope to the next stage for the honesty which I knew would set me free, I discovered only more dishonesty. A key component of this dishonesty was the very obvious “noble cause corruption” which saw every stage of a dishonest system whitewash the misconduct of previous stages (a corrupt mindset advocated by some judges at the highest levels, for example, by Lord Denning: “It is better that some innocent men remain in jail than that the integrity of the English judicial system be impugned."- BIRMINGHAM SIX).

I am a victim of a State-sponsored miscarriage of justice at which, at every stage of the proceedings, from start to finish, pro-State Officials and pro-State Judges saw to it that I was

charged and convicted and that any appeal I pursued would fail. Examining the comprehensive evidence I have put together over many years, no other explanation is feasible.

Part 2

Part 2 focused upon the Criminal Cases Review Commission (“CCRC”). I explained how the CCRC itself committed criminal misconduct against me. I further explained how the FactFinder in my first application to the CCRC later told me that the CCRC had refused references of my cases to the Court of Appeal for “political reasons” – in order to cover up gross misconduct on the part of one of its own Founding Commissioners who, at an earlier stage in his career as Deputy Director of the SFO, had mishandled inquiries into my complaints about the Mail on Sunday by lying, including to the then Attorney General. As a consequence of these lies, I was ordered to serve a second prison sentence. I explained that

the CCRC’s misconduct and its years of cover up amounted to conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. The CCRC cannot be trusted and is not fit for purpose.

I concluded my interviews with Empowering The Innocent by asserting that, upon analysis of

what happened to me over a thirty year fight for justice, the criminal justice system itself cannot be trusted. Even if, as is almost certainly true, the system works in the majority of cases, the dishonesty which manifested itself at every stage of the proceedings in my case –from the first complaints against me to the Department of Trade and Industry (“DTI”) by a disaffected Director in September 1990, to my currently-ongoing third application to the CCRC in 2025 – involves dishonesty which is systemic in nature and cannot be dealt with simply by admitting the truth. The system needs radical overhaul.

I am aware that many persons hold the view that failings in the criminal justice system do not matter provided the guilty are convicted. Of course, this line of thinking is inherently flawed. If the proceedings in a given case are inherently dishonest and even corrupt, how can one be sure that the convictions which follow are justified?

In any event, as relates to my case, I am innocent of the offences upon which I was convicted. I can prove this. The purposes of today’s article is to explain this. I do so summarily. My case is extremely complex and I would not be able to go into detail in an article such as this.

Proof of innocence

I was the Founder and former Chairman/CEO of European Leisure PLC (“EL”).In 1993, following investigations by the DTI and the Serious Fraud Office (“SFO”), I was charged with a variety of criminal offences. These charges were split into two parts, to be dealt with at two trials in 1994-1995. These trials were before different juries and different trial judges.

What now follows are summary analyses of each case which demonstrate how I was convicted upon false evidence and grave breaches of proper procedure.

First case

The Proceedings

The first trial dealt with allegations arising out of an April/May 1990 contested takeover bid by EL for a rival company called Midsummer Leisure PLC (“ML”).

The prosecution alleged that I had conspired (with others) to defraud shareholders of ML by

orchestrating an unlawful share support scheme, artificially raising the price of EL shares in order to convince ML shareholders to accept the EL takeover bid.

The prosecution alleged that this had been achieved by me engaging in unlawful share dealings in EL (and encouraging others to do so) with the intent of creating a false market in the shares of EL.

The prosecution also contended that payments made by EL to two companies which provided services to EL – Dantice Limited and Fininvest Limited – had been paid out as compensation for losses incurred by these companies and/or their agents/co-conspirators in

buying shares in EL as part of the unlawful share support scheme.

These allegedly false invoices were stated by the prosecution to be “consequences of the conspiracy to defraud” and not “evidence of the conspiracy to defraud”. The jury was told to

acquit on the invoices if there had not been an unlawful share support scheme in place.

This case was said by the prosecution to have been on similar lines to the then famous Guinness case. I was convicted by the jury upon a 10-2 majority verdict. The Court of Appeal

refused my appeal against conviction.

Alleged conspiracy to defraud by way of share dealings

The prosecution’s core proposition was that I had conspired to defraud shareholders of ML by creating a false market in EL shares in order to lift the price of EL shares to a level higher than their real value. The prosecution said this had been accomplished by me engaging in secret, and undisclosed, share transactions and encouraging others to do the same.

Yet, as confirmed by the trial judge, the prosecution was forced to admit as follows:

“The Crown accepted that the actual market in European Leisure shares throughout the time

of the bid was an absolutely proper, fair and open market and that Midsummer shareholders

assenting the bid had swapped their shares at perfectly proper market prices”.

The above forced acknowledgement on the part of the prosecution demonstrates the ludicrousness of the prosecution’s core proposition:

• When a share price is at all times “absolutely proper, fair and open market” it is extremely unlikely that intelligent persons with plenty of money available to them had intended to falsify it. Indeed, the absence of even a flicker of an improper share price movement strongly indicates the lack of any such intention.

• Not a single one of the ordinary tell-tale signs of persons engaged in an unlawful share support scheme (including, for example, manner of purchase, timing of purchase, use as reference price in circulars to shareholders, false statements made to shareholders) were present. Indeed, the opposite is true.

• In Guinness, the percentage of Guinness’ share capital said by the prosecution to have been part of the share support scheme was 25%. In the EL case, the equivalent percentage was 0.25%. It would have been impossible to create a false market in the EL case with such minute purchases.

• Other than in my case, there has never been a charge of conspiracy to defraud by way of unlawful share support brought against anyone in the UK, or anywhere else on Planet Earth, in which “The prosecution accepted that the actual market in the (bidding company’s) shares throughout the time of the bid was an absolutely proper, fair and open market and that (the target company’s) shareholders assenting the bid had swapped their shares at perfectly proper market prices”. It makes no sense whatsoever.

Tape-recorded evidence alleged to show my intention to falsify the value of EL shares

Consequent upon the prosecution’s admission that “The Crown accepted that the actual market in European Leisure shares throughout the time of the bid was an absolutely proper, fair and open market and that Midsummer shareholders assenting the bid had swapped their shares at perfectly proper market prices”, the centrepiece of the Crown’s case of conspiracy to defraud – described as “vital” by the prosecution – was a tape-recording of conversations which had taken place in the course of the takeover bid between me and a fellow director called Michael Quadrini. The conversations evidenced my state of mind in the course of the bid – my intentions or mens rea.

Quadrini (who, not known to the EL board of Directors at the time, had a history of fraud and blackmail) told the court that I had put pressure upon him to engage in share transactions in order unlawfully to strengthen the EL share price. Quadrini told the court that in order to prove this, as well as allegedly in order to protect himself, he had made secret tape recordings of our conversations in the course of the takeover bid which he estimated had amounted to up to twenty hours of conversation. He had then given these tapes to his gardener, a man called Steve, with instructions to create a new tape-recording and “leave on only those parts which are damaging to Michael Ward…the juicy bits”. The result was a new tape-recording of twelve minutes in length comprising six brief extracts of conversation, each of about two minutes in length. None of these extracts had a proper start or finish. Some of the edited conversations had been “internally edited” (i.e. content removed from within the soundbites themselves). The tape-recording was accorded the Exhibit Reference “MQ35”.

It follows from the above that the contents and meaning of MQ35 amounted to all important evidence on the central count of conspiracy to defraud. The prosecution told the jury that the tape-recording showed me encouraging Quadrini to break the law and that I was guilty.

The defence denied that it showed me to be guilty, pointing to one or two exculpatory sentences. The defence also mounted an attack upon the accuracy, completeness, and provenance of the tape-recording. It told the jury the tape-recording was profoundly unsafe as evidence in a criminal trial, that it had been created as part of a programme of attempted blackmail (there was copious evidence of this), and that the jury should ignore it.

As with the alleged share purchases, the above demonstrates the ludicrousness of the prosecution’s core proposition:

• Notwithstanding the wholesale corruption of this tape-recording MQ35, the contents which remained did not reveal me breaking the law. What I was talking about on the tape-recording were perfectly lawful strategies aimed at strengthening the EL share price. There is nothing unlawful in trying to strengthen a share price, including in the course of a takeover bid. It depends upon how the objective is sought to be realised. The strategies being advocated by me were lawful. Indeed, they are in common use right up to today. Other statements made by me on the tape-recording captured me insisting that any share purchases transacted should be both cleared by, and then processed by, EL’s Financial Advisers including the Director of Compliance, Robert Wilson. Had I been wanting to break the law, why would I insist such purchases were both approved by, and transacted through, EL’s Financial Advisers including the Director of Compliance?

• Evidence which would have helped acquit me at trial had been deliberately withheld from me by the SFO Case Controller – breaching the prosecution’s duties of disclosure. Among this deliberately-withheld exculpatory evidence was legal advice from a top DTI lawyer, who had listened to the tape-recording four years before my trial, and who had written that the tape-recording did not show me breaking the law.

• Evidence which emerged ten years after my trial revealed that the Judges of the Court of Appeal had not understood the law which applied in my case. The CCRC would later admit this fact. However, the CCRC would whitewash the misconduct and/or inadequacy of judges in the case by saying that although the Judges of the Court of Appeal had not understood the law, the jury would have. This extraordinary contrivance shows how the CCRC review of my case had been a dishonest process aimed at refusing references of my cases in all circumstances.

• The tape-recording ought never to have been admitted into evidence at my trial. Never in British history has a tape-recording been created to “leave on only those parts which are damaging to [the defendant]…the juicy bits” been admitted into evidence in a criminal trial. Apart from the trial Judge and, later, the Judges of the Court of Appeal (none of whom could see anything wrong or unfair with using such a corrupted tape-recording to convict a person and send him to prison), I wager that no one in this country would consider it “safe” or “fair” for the prosecution to rely upon a tape-recording in which up to 99% of its original content had been deliberately edited off by a man known to the prosecution to be a fraudster and blackmailer in order to “leave on only those parts which are damaging to [the defendant]…the juicy bits”.

• Not satisfied with the wholesale corruption of this tape-recording by Quadrini and his gardener, the SFO itself then further corrupted the tape-recording. It altered three words which Quadrini and his gardener had heard when listening to the original tape-recording. It did so in order to convert an exculpatory statement into an inculpatory one. This amounted to conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. This additional editing of MQ35 can be traced to a policeman on the SFO Inquiry. Evidence shows it was also known to the SFO Case Controller. The CCRC Commissioner responsible for my case, Edward Weiss, told my Barrister and my Solicitor that “MQ 35 is not particularly inculpatory of Ward”. He later lied when denying having said any such thing in order to protect the Court of Appeal which, not understanding the Law, had described the contents of the tape-recording as “glaring” and “damning” evidence of conspiracy to defraud. My only appeal to the Court of Appeal in 1997 was presided over by Judges who had not understood the law. They castigated me for conduct which was lawful. They sent me to prison for bringing disrepute to the London financial markets when I had been implementing the law, not breaching it. It is deeply unfair to be obliged to attend before Judges of the Court of Appeal who do not understand the Law and who send an innocent person to prison for behaviour that was lawful.

Monies paid out upon invoices for services to EL said to have been paid to indemnify

losses on unlawful share purchases

Unlike in the Guinness case, monies were not paid out to persons/companies which had never done business with the bidding company. They were paid out to two companies which had carried out services to EL:

• One of these were paid to a company called Fininvest Limited whose Finance Director insisted at my trial that the monies EL had paid to it had been “morally owed”. The money was morally owed to Fininvest for work done upon instructions given by EL. Moreover, he insisted that shares had been purchased in EL because of a belief that the shares would increase in value whether or not the takeover bid succeeded (i.e. “a good two-way bet”). The latter is the exact opposite of an unlawful share support scheme. By punishing me for paying the invoice, the Court of Appeal was sending out the following message “Do Not Pay Out Money To Suppliers When It Is Morally Owed”.

• With regard to the payment of invoices submitted by the second company, Dantice Limited, Ian Henderson of the CCRC told my lawyers in the course of his CCRC FactFinding mission “I am struggling to find any evidence of knowledge of falsity on Michael Ward’s part”. There was no evidence of my knowledge of the falsity of the Dantice invoices. Quite the opposite. I was confident that the invoices were appropriate and correct. Moreover, I had been instructed to make the payments by EL’s Financial Advisers who had investigated allegations that the monies were not due. The Advisers had concluded that the monies were due. Bizarrely, the Dantice Director who had submitted the invoices, and all but one of the persons before me to have approved payment, were subsequently not charged or they were acquitted upon the instructions of the trial Judge. How can the issuer of false invoices (who had either done the work or had not done the work) have been innocent, yet me – who merely counter-signed the invoices at later stages upon the instructions of my company’s Financial Advisers – been guilty?

• For technical legal reasons, the prosecution took upon itself the burden of proving that the monies paid to Dantice Limited had been used to buy shares or to indemnify buyers for losses incurred on share buying. It was explicitly stated that the monies paid out had to be shown to have gone to purchasers of EL shares. Yet, by the end of the trial, despite a multitude of inquiries and investigations, the prosecution had not been able to point to a single share transaction funded with Dantice money or indemnified with Dantice money. The prosecution’s undertaking to prove this additional limb had been a contrivance aimed at securing my conviction come-what-may. The trial Judge had let this contrivance happen. For its part, the Court of Appeal pretended that the prosecution had proven this additional limb, an extraordinary finding contradicted by every other lawyer who dealt with this matter at the time of trial or who have investigated the matter in the last thirty years.

Second case

The Proceedings

The second trial dealt with allegations that I had lied to the SFO at a Section 2 Interview and had procured a false invoice/receipt from an American woman called Lyn Russell (a purported Los Angeles-based designer and antique dealer) as cover for monies paid into my

bank account.

I was also charged with several other counts including conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. I was acquitted of these.

The proceedings were corrupt:

• The invoice/receipt from Lyn Russell (together with a second letter sent a few weeks later threatening to report me to the Inland Revenue) had been addressed to me at my home in London but not sent to me. Instead, the letters were sent to a health club in South London with which I had no connection whatsoever. I knew nothing of these two letters when attending at interview with the SFO. I would obviously not have mentioned Lyn Russell had I known of this correspondence. It was a “set up”.

• Every one of the prosecution’s witnesses can be shown to have lied under oath and/or to have provided falsified documents to the court.

• The principal witness, a man called Brooke Anderson, had told the jury he was “a very straight, fair, person” when the truth was he was a fraudster who had defrauded HMRC of hundreds of thousands of pounds. Among his other criminal misconduct, he had pretended to his clients to have had numerous professional qualifications in order to win business and to charge extra fees. Not one of these purported professional qualifications were truthful. Anderson was a liar and perjurer. He gave the jury three mutually-inconsistent versions of every important fact. The prosecution claimed to the jury that he was a truthful witness whose only misconduct in life had been to throw a deckchair at a rock concert.

• Another prosecution witness, former City Editor of the Mail on Sunday Clive Wolman, lied to the jury about his secret payments to Anderson as well as his offer to Anderson of a secret “conviction bonus”. Wolman had also sworn a witness statement for the SFO, a few days before the trial’s commencement, making devastating allegations against me which he had fabricated. This false witness statement was part of a strategy with Anderson to portray me as violent and threatening. It can be seen to have contaminated the subsequent trial proceedings. I contend this was at least as serious a perversion of the course of justice as the false witness statement in the case of Tulisa Contostavlos (which resulted in both defendants being acquitted upon the directions of the trial judge, including a defendant who had already pleaded guilty, and the News Of The World’s “Fake Sheikh” being sent to prison). Wolman also admitted having received documents stolen from my home by Anderson upon his instructions and in return for secret cash payments. He said he had not thought it was for him to return them to me.

• The witness Lyn Russell, who had flown over from Los Angeles to give evidence, was later discovered to have attempted to defraud the SFO by claiming expenses she had not incurred. It was also later discovered that she had lied about her business and was reliant upon the American Food Stamp programme.

• The prosecution relied upon a document in my own handwriting (referred to as Document 51) for which nobody claimed responsibility in terms of provenance I.e. the prosecution could not say from where the document had come, who had discovered it, when it had been discovered, why it had not been “spoken for” by any prosecution witness, and why no one had been interviewed about it.

• The prosecution described Document 51 as my “blueprint” to lie to the SFO. Superficially, it could give such an impression. However, careful analysis of the wording of Document 51 shows it was not, nor could have been, my “blueprint”. The wording of my answers at my SFO interview were inconsistent with the wording on the so-called “blueprint”. Some of the wording was factually incorrect. Furthermore, it contained none of the information one would expect to find in a “blueprint”.

• Notwithstanding agreeing to admit Document 51 into evidence at the request of the prosecution, and despite its lack of provenance, the trial judge refused to admit a document upon which the Defence intended to rely which had been written by my secretary, the accuracy of whose contents were capable of documentary proof. The document included a note of a telephone call received by my secretary from Brooke Anderson who was seeking to introduce me to “Lyn The Designer”. This note was of huge potential importance to me. However, the Judge refused me permission to introduce it into evidence.

By Michael Ward

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