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Tuesday 7 June 2011

Legal Aid Abuse Sinks To New Low

I earn a decent salary, I live in a lower middle class area, I am purchasing my own house via a mortgage, I have no other notable debt, and some savings ...... And I wouldn't qualify for any Legal Aid.  Legal Aid was devised by lawyers in Parliament in 1949, to help the very poor, & those arrested with no means of paying for help. The latest figures suggest that it now costs the UK taxpayer £2bn a year (a higher per capita cost than anywhere else in the world), and is now available to around 29% of adults. The very poor and the very rich ..... but not me and probably not you!

But if you are a Millionaire, or even a Billionaire, you can arrange your affairs in such a manner that you will qualify for Legal Aid in the UK .... Asil Nadir, the Turkish Cypriot millionaire, returned to the UK last August to contest fraud charges that he ran away from 20 years ago. He allegedly secretly transferred nearly £200m from 'Polly Peck' to companies in northern Cyprus in the two years before the group went out of business in 1990. Nadir also emerged as the owner of £25m-worth of properties in northern Cyprus purchased by Polly Peck. The ownership of another £22m of properties was unclear because no owner was recorded ...... and he is now to receive Legal Aid. How any democratic government justifies giving tax payers money to pay for the legal defence team of a millionaire, who allegedly defrauded thousands of their law abiding citizens, is so beyond my grasp, that I actually despair of the UK ..... it has gone completely mad. 

His bail conditions included a £250,000 bail surety already paid to the court, he had to surrender his passport, and wear an electronic tag, and reporting to a police station once a week. He's also prohibited from going near any airport..... why would he? He is living in a £20,000-a-month rented house in Kensington, and his trial is not expected to take place until 2012. Is he getting Housing Benefits as well to pay for the house, or could he live somewhere cheaper and use the savings of £18,000 a month to pay for his own legal defence? or was that too complicated for the Legal Aid Assessment teams to work out?

Of course there have been others ....
  • Jim Morrison, a Scottish millionaire, who was estimated to have a £300 million fortune before his firm crashed in 2009, got Legal Aid.
  • The Maxwell boys, Kevin and Ian, .... got Legal Aid.
  • Ernest Saunders, the only man known to be cured of Alzheimer's, also got Legal Aid.
  • Dr Jawad Hashim, who reputedly owned six homes and employed servants, qualified for Legal Aid.
What have these men got in common?
All Got Legal Aid in the UK.
The crime, isn't necessarily that they get it, after all in some circumstances the Legal Aid Board, which decides on eligibility, cannot take into account any assets, because they are either claimed by the other party in the case, or frozen by court orders, which may leave them technically broke (although assets and funds 'transferred' to family e.g. wife, or funds held in properties abroad, should be counted in the calculation).

No, its the fact that if they win they never are seen to repay the costs to us, which really irks me. Every time this has happened, MP's have promised to reform Legal Aid to stop such rampant abuses, but quietly shelve the reforms, until the next time .... and they wonder why Parliament and MP's are held in such low esteem.

This is so shameful a betrayal of those who pay the taxes (and that means single people working on anything over £7,475pa), to finance this shambles of a justice system, that its hard to think of what else to say.

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