b) Professor
Rider's Statement
438. The statement by Professor
Rider strongly implied that Ms Francesca Pollard[193]
was the main source of the evidence of a campaign against him
orchestrated by Mr Al Fayed. It also noted that although the
case papers had been sent to the Acting Director of Public Prosecutions,
no further action was taken in view of the difficulty of proving
charges largely on the basis of Ms Pollard's uncorroborated testimony
The fact that in 1991 Ms Pollard, after several years in the
Al Fayed camp, switched sides and published her "apology"
to Lonrho was alluded to in my recent report on a complaint against
Mr Michael Howard.
439. In a statement through
his solicitors, Mr Al Fayed accepted that he had been critical
of Professor Rider's role in relation to the Trade and Industry
Select Committee but strongly denied having done "anything
untoward" as far as either Professor Rider or the Committee
were concerned.
The Credibility
of Mr Royston Webb
440. In his oral evidence,
Mr Webb responded to the challenge by Mr Hamilton to his
reliability as a witness by claiming that Mr Hamilton had
described him in a statement to the inquiry as "fastidious".
Moreover, he appeared on his own behalf: Mr Al Fayed had not
put him forward as a witness, a fact which was confirmed by Mr
Al Fayed's solicitor and which accords with my own understanding.[194]
441. As regards the transcript
produced by Mr Greer of his telephone conversation with him on
20 October 1994, Mr Webb did not see any discrepancy, of the sort
claimed by Mr Hamilton, between his remark that he had
had little to do with Mr Hamilton and his comment in his
own written statement that he had not been surprised to learn
of the cash payments allegation against Mr Hamilton. Mr
Webb accepted that, had he used the phrase `I had nothing to do
with Mr Hamilton', the charge of inconsistency might have
had some validity - but that was not what he had said.
442. According to Mr Webb,
another telephone conversation had taken place with Mr Greer -
he thought just after the one recorded in the transcript - in
which similar matters had been discussed. I took this up with
Mr Greer who stated that there had, indeed, been a second conversation,
but before 20 October. This had not been recorded and
so no transcript existed.
443. Mr Webb vigorously
rejected as a slur on his professional standing any imputation
by Mr Hamilton that he had been party to any morally questionable
practices whilst in Mr Al Fayed's employment and strongly denied
that he was under any pressure or inducement from Mr Al Fayed
to give evidence in a particular way.
444. Subsequently, towards
the end of the inquiry, I wrote to Mr Webb in order to offer him
the opportunity to respond to Mr Hamilton's detailed analysis,
in his written submission, of Mr Webb's evidence. Unfortunately,
Mr Webb was abroad at the time and had not been able to reply
before this report was completed.
The Credibility
of Ms Bozek, Ms Bond and Mr Bromfield
445. Ms Bozek, Ms Bond and
Mr Bromfield all vehemently repudiated the suggestion that they
had come under any pressure, financial or otherwise, to tailor
their evidence to suit Mr Al Fayed.[195]
Ms Bozek added that she had not even spoken to Mr Al Fayed about
the matter.[196]
446. It was Ms Bozek's credibility
that Mr Hamilton most directly questioned and in relation
to which he adduced the evidence of Mr Betterman concerning the
case of Mr Ho Cheesing. In response, Ms Bozek flatly denied the
claim that she had lied to immigration officials and said that
Mr Ho Cheesing's arrival and application for a work permit had
been dealt with by Mr Betterman. For his part, Mr Betterman,
in a supplementary statement, claimed that he had been based in
Dubai at the time and that the arrangements relating to Mr Ho
Cheesing had been handled in Mr Al Fayed's office.
447. In an attempt to clarify
the position, I wrote to the Home Office asking for information
about the nature of the inquiries that had been made by the immigration
authorities about Mr Ho Cheesing and what, if any, declarations
or undertakings had been given on his behalf. The Home Office
has informed me that no records exist of inquiries made by the
Immigration Service on his application for entry.
448. In view of the particular
attack by Mr Hamilton on Ms Bozek's reliability as a witness
of fact I thought it right to seek a character reference from
her current employers, the solicitors Allen and Overy.
449. In a statement dated
25 March 1997,[197]
Mr T J House, a partner at the firm, explained that Ms Bozek had
applied for a training contract in 1992 and was subsequently offered
a position as a trainee solicitor "on her own merits".
After completing law school she joined Allen and Overy on a two-year
contract in February 1996. In November 1992, Allen and Overy
had taken up a reference on Ms Bozek from Birkberk College, University
of London, where she had studied for her BA as a part-time student.
The reference had been very positive in all aspects and included
the observation "I can vouch for her integrity".
450. So far as his own judgement
of Ms Bozek was concerned, Mr House concluded with the following
remarks:
"During her year
with the firm [Ms Bozek] has met the high standards we expect
of our trainee solicitors. I have never had the slightest reason
to doubt her honesty and reliability.
I have formed a high
opinion of [Ms Bozek]. She has been working for some time with
me and other lawyers on a demanding case, and our regard for her
is such that we have extended her period in the litigation department,
when in the normal course she would have moved on to another part
of the firm. She is mature, sensible and reliable. I do not
believe she would lie in order to support her former employer's
contentions".
451. I have also noted the
observation[198]
of Mr Webb in relation to Ms Bozek and Ms Bond that "in a
decade of dealing with these ladies on an almost daily basis,
I cannot recall a single instance when I had cause to question
their veracity".
452. As previously indicated,[199]
Mr Hamilton had sought to cast doubt on the means by which
the three corroborative written statements were obtained, the
process by which they were drawn up, and the lateness of their
emergence - very shortly before the libel trial was due to start.
453. In a statement dated
22 January 1997[200],
Mr Douglas Marvin, a practising lawyer from Washington DC, said
that in September 1996 he had been working in London on a commercial
transaction for Harrods. He learned about the impending libel
action in which Mr Al Fayed was scheduled to appear as a witness
and subsequently took part in a meeting with The Guardian's
lawyers during the course of which he was told about certain diary
and message book entries that had been produced to them by Mr
Al Fayed.
454. One of the entries
related to "a woman named Iris" (Ms Bond), and Mr Marvin,
assuming that this referred to one of the secretaries in Mr Al
Fayed's office, undertook to ask her what she knew about it.
It immediately became clear that Ms Bond was aware of facts of
direct relevance to the libel case and during the course of questioning
the names of Ms Bozek and Mr Bromfield also emerged.
455. Statements were then
taken by Mr Marvin from all these witnesses separately over the
course of the next week (Ms Bozek had been on holiday and was
not available immediately). They were not shown Mr Al Fayed's
witness statement, nor any other document, except that Ms Bond
did have sight of the diary and message book entries. Mr Marvin
did not discuss with any witness the answers given by the other
witnesses. Mr Al Fayed did not attend any of the meetings at
which witnesses were questioned, nor did he give Mr Marvin any
instructions about the form or content of their statements.
456. Mr Marvin's statement
concluded: "Mr Hamilton's claim that the statements
from the three witnesses were fabricated is absolutely false.
Each of the witnesses simply responded to questions put to them
and were very careful in ensuring that their statements were entirely
honest and truthful. For my part, I certainly considered each
of the individuals to be honest and truthful".
457. Commenting on Mr Marvin's
statement, Mr Hamilton[201]
stated that he found his role in the process puzzling and that
as far as he (Mr Hamilton) was concerned it remained unexplained
why it had taken so long to connect the documentary evidence with
the three witnesses and why The Guardian's own lawyers
had not been able to discover them by their own efforts.
458. Mr Hamilton
also claimed that Mr Marvin had been closely involved in the preparation
of the Al Fayeds' evidence to the DTI inquiry and was therefore
equally tainted by the criticisms of Mr Al Fayed expressed in
the Inspectors' report.
The Guardian
459. Responding to Mr
Hamilton's charge that they were giving credence to allegations
made by Mr Al Fayed, about whose conduct and business practices
they had been highly critical at the time of the Inspectors' report,
The Guardian put forward two main counter-arguments:
- that
they did not resile from their previous criticism of Mr Al Fayed
and accordingly did not seek to substantiate the allegations against
Mr Hamilton and the other Members on the basis of Mr Al
Fayed's uncorroborated word alone;
- that
it did not lie in the mouth of Mr Hamilton to accuse others
of inconsistency when he himself had once been one of the fiercest
champions of Mr Al Fayed's cause and, indeed, had continued to
promote his interests for some time after the Inspectors' report
had been published.
460. To Mr Hamilton's
questions about the role of The Guardian's lawyers in obtaining
the three corroborative witness statements for the libel case,
the newspaper replied:
- that
their legal team had asked "with increasing fervour"
for evidence from "the two secretaries" (Ms Bond and
Ms Bozek) but that Mr Al Fayed had seemed "genuinely protective
and reluctant to involve them in what he perceived as his own
battle"; and
- that
they had been quite prepared, contrary to Mr Hamilton's
assertion, to put Mr Al Fayed in the witness box.
461. As to the delay in
the production of the witness statements, The Guardian
explained in a supplementary submission that the case had "gone
to sleep" for about a year between the newspaper's successful
application for a stay of the action (because of the crippling
effect of the Bill of Rights on their defence) and Mr Hamilton's
return to the court following the passage of the Defamation Act
1996.
462. My own analysis of
the documents provided to the inquiry has produced further evidence
about the sequence of events leading to the production of the
witness statements which suggests that Mr Hamilton's position
is mistaken. In particular:
- in
asserting that the telephone messages miraculously appeared at
the last minute in order to provide a spurious cover for the three
witness statements Mr Hamilton has assumed that they only
became available shortly before the trial was due to begin;
- in
fact, although the plaintiffs' solicitors may not have had sight
of them until a fairly late stage in 1996, they had been sent
to The Guardian's solicitors in June 1995, as a
letter from D J Freeman to Ms Geraldine Proudler (then of Lovell
White Durrant) shows;[202]
- this
was about the time at which the libel action was stayed, on The
Guardian's application;
- the
letter from D J Freeman was sent before they had seen the
plaintiffs' witness statements.
Mr O'Sullivan
463. Mr Hamilton
had cited the evidence of Mr O'Sullivan[203]
as discrediting Mr Al Fayed's account of the pattern of cash payments
- specifically in relation to one date, 20 February 1989, but,
by implication, more generally with regard to the allegations
as a whole. Mr Al Fayed disputed Mr O'Sullivan's evidence, claiming
that he had never met him with Mr Hamilton. He thought
it possible that Mr O'Sullivan might have remained in the waiting
room while Mr Al Fayed and Mr Hamilton met alone and that
as Mr Hamilton was being ushered out he had said "hello"
to Mr O'Sullivan.
464. In any case, as has
been indicated[204],
it is Mr Al Fayed's contention that a payment would only have
been made if he and Mr Hamilton were actually alone.
The Documentary
Evidence
465. As in the case of the
message books and diary entries relating to Mr Greer, those which
referred to Mr Hamilton seemed likely to be important in
assisting me to reach conclusions on these allegations. I therefore
decided to subject those documents also to forensic analysis,
not least because of Mr Hamilton's suggestion, albeit somewhat
equivocal, that they might have been fabricated.
466. The main conclusions[205]
from the forensic examination of the three message books containing
the three entries relating to Mr Hamilton were that:
- there
was nothing to suggest that they were in any way unusual or different
from the other messages in the relevant book;
- all
the observations made by the examiner were those which might be
expected if the messages formed part of a contemporaneous record.
467. The handwriting of
the messages dated 28 September 1988 was similar to that of other
messages attributable to Ms Bozek. The other two messages relating
to Mr Hamilton were each in different styles of writing,
but in both cases there were other examples of messages in similar
handwriting elsewhere in the same book, and, in one case, in the
other books also.
191 
