Peculation In The City

EDM number 173 in 1993-94, proposed by Austin Mitchell on 03/12/1993.

That this House notes that Roger Levitt got a mere community service sentence for misappropriating ú20 million and Terry Ramsden a suspended sentence for the ú323 million fraud in the collapse of Glen International; notes that these sentences follow a long line of failures by the Serious Fraud Office, whose success rate in contested cases is only 40 per cent; insists that the reputation of the City of London as a protective haven for unpunished peculation, corruption and sleaze can only be redeemed by ending a system of self regulation which has become the mafia regulating the mafia by a light and loving touch and substituting a powerful and effective framework of statutorily based independent regulation, like the American Securities and Exchange Commission with power to loose the certain vengeance of the terrible swift sword of retribution through enquiries, fines, disqualifications, closures, and punishment by both civil and criminal cases; and calls on Her Majesty's Government to introduce such a powerful framework quickly so as to end a regulatory force which lets wealthy grinning fraudsters escape with millions and disport themselves in northern Cyprus, Spain, the home counties, anywhere convenient to plot their next coup, while those in poverty languish in prison for failure to pay poll tax, television licences, even water rates, all imprisoned for being poor.

This motion has been signed by a total of 84 MPs, 2 of these signatures have been withdrawn.