Deputy sets deadline for illegal raid cost answers
Monday 25th February 2013, 4:00PM GMT.
POLITICAL moves have been made to force the disclosure of how much taxpayer money has been spent in costs and damages following an unlawful police raid on a law firm’s premises.
The Guernsey Press has been rebuffed despite repeated attempts to get Treasury and Resources to release the information.
Now Vale deputy Matt Fallaize, pictured, has given the Home Department until later this week to answer or face either written or oral questions in the States.
It follows two years of legal wrangling over a police raid of AFR Advocates’ Court Place headquarters at 3am in June 2010.
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Good for you Deputy Fallaize.
There is no real reason for keeping this information secret, other than to protect those responsible for the loss of public money.
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And that is precisely why they don’t want to release the information, ditto the several million pound payment to fisherman.
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Stephen John / Phil
This will not be released, ever.
I have yet to find the fishermans payout in the audited accounts.
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It will not appear in the audited accounts as a stand alone figure. It will be hidden somewhere in the Crown costs…Their entire figure appears as one in the audit with no breakdown provided. So we will just have to know that the circa £4,000,000 was in there.
I am disgusted about this, still !!!
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Phil
Where did you get the several million figure from? Where is your evidence for this statement?
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Dave Jones
I’ve heard £3.9m mentioned several times lately.
Unfortunately, speculation will be rife for so long as it is hushed up.
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Dave
Only what I’ve read and heard, perhaps you could confirm that the payment was not several million? Perhaps if we had some politicians with some balls then we wouldn’t have to be treated like mushrooms. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, if only we had a FOI law then PERHAPS the electorate may actually be able to find out the levels of hushed up payments made by the States on a regular basis?
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Dave Jones, where is your evidence that it ISN’T £4,000,000 ?
It’s our money, tell us how you spent it.
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GM
It is extrordany the utter rubbish people will believe, so someone plucks a figure out of the air, tells a couple of people and all of a sudden it becomes fact.
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Dave Jones cant confirm or deny the figures mentioned?
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Well Dave Jones.You and 44 other deputies are in a position to root out the true figure and advise the actual bill payers how much the bill was
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Dave Jones
That’s Guernsey for you. There may well be no truth or accuracy in it, and who knows where that suggested figure came from? But as I said earlier, if the correct figure is hidden from the taxpayer then speculation will continue. Taxpayers seem to be getting highly resentful of such secrecy and concealment of government payments using OUR money. The longer it goes on, the worse it will become.
I confidently predict that the fishing settlement figure will be revealed within a maximum of 3 months from now.
We did not use our votes at the election so that we could be treated like mushrooms. This House needs to wake up and smell the coffee.
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Paha maybe the public sector’s fed up of being crucified by nay-sayers over every decision they make, good or bad?
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GOod decisions!….some examples?
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Agreed. Glad to see at least one brave member of the States who knows what probity means.
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Welcome back Stephen John, we have not heard from you in a long time, unless you are lurking behind a pseudonym of course.
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Well done, Mr. Fallaize! Someone with some guts.
(And where are the rest of the Deputies who espoused openness, accountability, transparency etc. at election-time?)
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Valeite
Thanks for your kind words.
I always post under my real name.
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Are prosecutions/resignations pending or an Internal Inquiry promised into Police failures ?
Or are the law makers permitted to be law breakers ?
Surely an external inquiry by an out of Island Police Force would be appropriate in this case.
An illegal raid in the early hours of the morning when the Advocates Office was a few hundred yards away from the police station.
Surely they could have sent one officer around there in normal opening hours.
Instead of that we now have this total shambles, which as well as upsetting a legitimate firm of Advocates is upsetting the voting public.
Unless the truth outs very soon, I and many many will not be voting at the next election for the bunch of blatantly lying and deceitful deputies who promised a more open government.
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well done matt,but please keep an eye out for a tank parked outside your house at dawn.
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Matt Fallaize is one of the very few deputies with integrity (Dave Jones is another, even though I don’t agree with all of his views). We need to back Matt all the way and any deputy worth his/her salt should too. Too many people are getting away with murder.
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Hooray for Deputy Fallaize !
Whilst he is there could you ask them to disclose the ‘settlement figure’ paid to the European trawling company in 2011. Said to be circa £4,000,000 !!!
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Well done Matt. At last a deputy who isn’t afraid to ask the questions that we all want answers to. This is nothing more than a cover up by the law officers, Guernsey police and the Home department to try and save themselves the embarasment of having wasted yet more taxpayers hard earned cash.
I thought Deputy Le Tocq’s comment about the GP’s editor and its reporting of this story was rich today, which he described as ‘despicable’. I think he should re-direct this comment towards those responsible for this fiasco.
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I was alarmed to read in today’s GEP that Deputy Le Tocq has stated
that he “thinks The Editor has been despicable over this matter and you can quote me on that”
What next ?
A 3AM raid on the Digard Household or the Press Offices and the banning of Freedom of Speech ?
I have a different opinion on who has perhaps behaved in or who is behaving in a despicable manner.
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Guernsey Fudge and Forest
I agree totally.
Deputy Le Tocq is badly misreading the public’s view of the blocking of this type of information.
Richard Digard – keep up the good work. Without the GP’s pressure, how much else would have been suppressed in the past 2 or 3 years?
Fortunately, GP pressure does actually work.
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Let’s just hope that Deputy Le Tocq’s answer in the Assembly is completely full and frank otherwise that ‘despicable’ comment will haunt him until he is thrown out in 2016
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If Deputy Le Tocq doesn’t come clean on this cover up of taxpayers money then as Deputy Chief Minister he needs to resign.
This is from his election manifesto last year so we’re about to find out if he is a man of his word or if it was all just p*ss and wind to get elected again.
‘THIS island deserves to be represented democratically by people you can trust, respect and rely upon.
Politics should be about serving our community, helping us all to work together for one another’s good, not about personal ambitions and agendas.
We must therefore all work hard to identify, encourage and support politicians who will be worthy of serving us all in this way.
I believe that all those holding public office must work hard to restore the confidence and esteem that has been eroded in recent years.
My motto is PUBLIC SERVICE not self-service.
If the last four years have been challenging, then the next four are likely to be even more so.’
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The corruption on this island is an absolute disgrace. I applaud Matt for speaking up, but I hope these aren’t just empty words to placate us plebs, and we actually get the information we are entitled to. The response from all the other deputies has been shameful, nothing more than hiding away to avoid the hot potato.
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Many of you have no idea how bad the corruption really is – that it is nauseating, would be no exaggeration.
As someone who has experienced it for 20 years over a piece of land that my family own in the town centre, I can tell you that the unceasing back scratching and naive connivance of a loose cabal of politicians and civil servants who believe that the ‘public should not know’ is often breathtakingly stupid.
But then, they have never been called to account before. That is about to change.
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Where does Mike Brown stand in this? As Chief Executive of the States of Guernsey surely he should be the one accountable?
http://www.guernseyfinance.com/key-personnel/mike-brown/
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Another cover up, how utterly, sickeningly hypocritical of the lot of them.
Still waiting for someone to be held accountable for the 2.6 mill we were scammed out of, but needless to say, ol’ ‘elect me I believe in accountability’ Gav has let it all go very quiet on that front.
What a total and utter shower this latest States are. Yes they’ve had some difficult situations to deal with that are not all of their own making, but that’s not what I object to, it’s the appalling, dishonest self serving manner in which they’ve dealt with these situations, acting like they have no responsibility to act in the best interests of the people who put them in these positions, that really hacks me off.
I will never EVER vote again, as the only thing that appears to happen every 5 years or so is that we replace one lot of idiots with another.
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Scarlett
I bet there are some individuals out there who are both extremely responsible and are willing to work in the interests of their compatriots, thereby putting the current government to shame. Perhaps posters as well as television and radio adverts can be used to attract desired individuals when the next election approaches.
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