Serious Fraud Office v Papachristos & Anor
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
- LORD JUSTICE FULFORD
- MR JUSTICE MACDUFF
- MRS JUSTICE ELISABETH LAING DBE
Areas of Law
- Criminal Law and Procedure
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
In the Southwark Crown Court, Miltiades Papachristos and Dennis Kerrison were convicted of conspiracy to corrupt. The convictions were based on their involvement in bribing Indonesian officials to secure contracts for their employer, Innospec Limited. Both appealed, challenging the validity of adding a narrower conspiracy charge late in the trial and arguing that the jury directions were confusing and unfair. However, the application for leave to appeal against conviction was ultimately denied. Kerrison’s sentence was reduced from four to three years upon review.
Judgment
Lord Justice Fulford :
Introduction
On 18 June 2014 in the Southwark Crown Court (Judge Goymer and a jury) the applicants, Miltiades Papachristos (aged 51) and Dennis Kerrison (aged 70), were convicted unanimously following a trial lasting some 15 weeks of conspiracy to corrupt, contrary to section 1(1) Criminal Law Act 1977 (count 2).
On 4 August 2014 Papachristos was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment and Kerrison was sentenced to 4 years’ imprisonment.
In the present proceedings, the single judge referred Papachristos’s application for leave to appeal against conviction to the full court, and he refused bail and directed an expedited hearing.
Thereafter, the Registrar referred Kerrison’s application for leave to appeal against conviction and sentence to the full court.
The Central Issue on the Appeal
The central issue on this application is whether the evidence revealed:
a broad conspiracy to give corrupt payments as an inducement to secure contracts relating to two or more of Innospec’s products (which included TEL), together with a sub-conspiracy that involved securing contracts for TEL alone which, as a matter of law, should have been charged as a separate offence, or
a broad conspiracy to give corrupt payments as an inducement to secure contracts relating to two or more of Innospec’s products (which included TEL) of which an individual would be guilty if he had agreed corruptly to secure contracts for TEL alone and he was unaware that his involvement was a part of the wider agreement corruptly to procure contracts for other Innospec products.
The Background
The applicants worked for a company called Associated Octel Company Limited. In July 2006 Octel became known as Innospec Limited. It is located at Innospec’s Manufacturing Park in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire and it is a subsidiary of Innospec Inc, a NASDAQ listed, non-trading holding company based in Delaware, USA (for convenience, this chemical manufacturing company will simply be referred to as Innospec throughout the remainder of this judgment).
The principal activities of Innospec and its subsidiaries are to manufacture and distribute fuel additives and other specialty chemicals to industrial and consumer markets worldwide. The business is divided into three sections: fuel specialties, active chemicals and octane additives. Tetraethyl Lead (“TEL”) is an anti-knock fuel (octane) additive for use in motor gasoline. TEL raises the octane level of the gasoline used in motorca