UK's SFO drops prosecution of three former G4S executives

The three ex-employees of G4S subsidiary G4S Care and Justice Services, which had a contract to electronically monitor criminal defendants and released prisoners, had been charged with seven counts of fraud by false representation between 2009 and 2012. Former managing director Richard Morris, 47, ex-commercial director Mark Preston, 51, and former finance manager James Jardine, 41, had denied all of the charges.

Britain's Serious Fraud Office on Friday dropped its criminal prosecution of three former executives at security company G4S for allegedly defrauding the British government over an electronic tagging contract. The three ex-employees of G4S subsidiary G4S Care and Justice Services, which had a contract to electronically monitor criminal defendants and released prisoners, had been charged with seven counts of fraud by false representation between 2009 and 2012.

Former managing director Richard Morris, 47, ex-commercial director Mark Preston, 51, and former finance manager James Jardine, 41, had denied all of the charges. Their trial was supposed to begin in January, but was adjourned because of disclosure issues. An application by the defendants to halt the prosecution was due to be heard later this month.

However, the SFO's lawyer Crispin Aylett told Judge Jeremy Johnson that the agency had decided that it is "no longer in the public interest to proceed with this case". Morris, Preston and Jardine were formally acquitted at a brief hearing at London's Old Bailey on Friday.

An SFO spokesperson said in a statement: "As a public prosecutor we have to make difficult decisions, including ending a prosecution where it is right to do so." Morris' lawyer Ross Dixon said in a statement: "This case collapsed because the SFO failed to understand its own evidence, failed to secure significant evidence … and only at the eleventh hour disclosed key material that undermined its case.

"It is deeply worrying that, after such a long time, only now has the SFO offered no evidence." In 2020, the SFO reached a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) with G4S Care and Justice Services.

The company agreed to pay a fine of 38.5 million pounds ($46.1 million) and the SFO's legal costs of almost 6 million pounds. G4S Care and Justice Services, a wholly-owned subsidiary of G4S, had also paid 121 million pounds to Britain's Ministry of Justice in 2014 to settle civil claims in relation to the provision of tagging services.