Brown, Peter

Peter Brown was convicted in August 1999 of conspiracy to cheat and received a sentence of five years’ imprisonment and a confiscation order in the sum of £688,050 (reduced to £350,000 on appeal) with 1 year and 6 months’ imprisonment consecutive in default.

The CCRC received an application for review of the conviction in April 2004.

Mr Brown’s prosecution had been one of 14 concerning diversion frauds that occurred in the UK between 1992 and 1998. These prosecutions arose from an inquiry by Her Majesty’s Customs & Excise (HMCE) called Operation Methuselah.

In these cases, consignments of excise goods were diverted away from the normal UK bonded warehouse systems in order to evade the duties payable on them.

The largest bonded warehouse company in the UK was London City Bond (LCB).

By the time of the CCRC’s review, several of those convicted of frauds that had operated through LCB warehouses had successfully appealed their convictions.

The appeals had been successful on the basis that HMCE had failed to disclose the identity, role and involvement of their “participating informants”.

The LCB’s manager had been, alongside his brother, a witness at most of the “LCB trials”. They had also been participating informants, working with HMCE during their investigation.

However, the HMCE officer charged with handling these informants, as well as the senior officers managing the investigation, had failed to register and handle the informants in accordance with prevailing guidelines.

During the successful appeals, it was found that details of errors and omissions by HMCE officers were not disclosed to defence teams.

In most of the trials, the Crown had sought authority to withhold information pertaining to the informants by means of Public Interest Immunity hearings.

Even at these hearings, it emerged the true extent of the informants’ roles was not revealed.

The Court of Appeal ruled that other LCB cases were “tainted beyond redemption” by the misconduct of those involved in the prosecutions.

For these reasons, the CCRC concluded that there was a real possibility the Court of Appeal would take the same view in Mr Brown’s case.

The Court of Appeal upheld the conviction in November 2005.