Summary: The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ aren’t being tackled; the criminals await punishment, knowing that the British government (former client) might be incentivised not to get involved
N SPITE of turbulent conditions, our site has managed to stay online the entire weekend. We’ll have more to say about it some other day.
We’re meanwhile learning about high-level corruption in EU authorities, connected to the EPO. “On Monday they will meet to decide to relocate London in an illegal manner,” the FFII’s president told me the other day. “This is theft of democracy, as national parliaments did not decide this.” That’s tomorrow. High-level corruption seems to have been “normalised” somewhat. They seem to be getting away with it. The same is true here in the UK, even after Brexit.
Today we’re going to close this series, after 11 parts in total. We’ll tell a month-long story about my Member of Parliament (MP) in Central Manchester failing to communicate with the police, or rather, the police not bothering to even reply. Yes, here in the UK, not the EU and EC. In my personal view, a united Europe is good idea. I’ve always supported the EU. But now they become a hub of corruption and this month they’re greenlighting an ILLEGAL and UNCONSTITUTIONAL kangaroo court for patents, knowingly violating conventions too. How can I still support such a thing? How can anybody support such a thing? In places such as Russia, people have come to expect some arrogance in lawbreaking (“we’re above the law! What are you gonna do, eh?”), but I’m seeing the same in the EU and in the UK this year. We’ve gradually becoming more and more like the Kremlin, wherein the dictator always has the last word and doesn’t bother with laws, constitutions etc. (except when these suit him or her)
This post will lay bare the communications I’ve had with the MP or her case handler. They speak for themselves, but I will add some commentary to join the pertinent bits.
My initial message, the reaching out, was quoted verbatim in the last part. I quickly wrote a short description of the crime and emphasised that the crime also had victims other than myself. To her credit, my MP was always quick to reply and was professional*.
Here is the response that I received a month ago (23/5/2023):
Dear Dr Roy
Thanks for getting in contact with [MP]]. So that [MP] can look into this further could you provide a copy of your response from Action Fraud and any crime reference you have.
I did as asked on the same day:
Hi, the response dated 20/5/2023:
[redacted]
On 26/5/2023:
Dear Roy
[MP] has contacted Action Fraud on your behalf requesting that they review their decision and investigate the fraud ,you have suffered. We will be in contact as soon as we have a response.
Best Wishes – Caseworker
I responded shortly afterwards:
[MP] wrote on 26/05/2023 11:37:
>
> Dear Roy
>
> [MP] has contacted Action Fraud on your behalf requesting that they review their decision and investigate the fraud ,you have suffered. We will be in contact as soon as we have a response.
Thank you, that is encouraging news.
I followed up weeks later (5/6/2023):
[MP] wrote on 26/05/2023 11:37:
>
> Dear Roy
>
> [MP] has contacted Action Fraud on your behalf requesting that they review their decision and investigate the fraud ,you have suffered. We will be in contact as soon as we have a response.
> Best Wishes Lee – Caseworker
>
> [MP] MP
> Member of Parliament for Manchester Central
Hi,
Has the police gotten back to you? My colleagues, who are also victims of the crime, wonder as well. We’ve meanwhile reported this as a tax fraud as well (because technically it is) to HMRC. 15 days later HMRC did not even bother replying. Mind you, Sirius had many government clients including Home Office and the Parliamentary Ombudsman. Some of us suspect there’s a lack of incentive to convict here, not even to investigate the matter. They hardly need to investigate because we spent months getting written statements that prove it all. Can you bring this subject up in Parliament, please?
Kind regards,
Sent by them 5/6/2023:
Dear Roy
I am sorry to report that [MP] has not yet received a response .It can regrettably take a number of weeks but we will contact you immediately.
Best Wishes – caseworker
I then followed up as follows:
[MP] wrote on 05/06/2023 09:15:
> Dear Roy
>
> I am sorry to report that [MP] has not yet received a response .It can regrettably take a number of weeks but we will contact you immediately
Thanks, I very much appreciate her looking into it. She is the first person in government to actually touch this. To reiterate why it’s sensitive:
1. UK government departments outsourced to (contracted) Sirius
2. Sirius quietly defrauded its staff (which worked on the above computer systems) within months of them joining
3. The workers found out they had been defrauded since 2011 (it took months to verify as firms were stonewalling and obstructing inquiries). It took 12 years to uncover.
4. The workers contacted Action Fraud, HMRC, the IFA, the accountant of Sirius, and the pension firms
5. To date, only the pension firms responded, but only after a lot of prodding — months of escalating to management there. Some managers initially gave contradictory stories; yes, managers at Standard Life lied to us.
It may seem or may turn out to be a potential embarrassment to those who gave the contract to Sirius. We were grossly underpaid and on top of this we were defrauded (embezzlement). There are many other scandals, but this one involves an actual crime.
Kind regards,
3 more days passed and I asked for progress and deadline (08/06/2023):
Roy Schestowitz wrote on 05/06/2023 12:32:
> [MP] wrote on 05/06/2023 09:15:
>> Dear Roy
>>
>> I am sorry to report that [MP] has not yet received a response .It can regrettably take a number of weeks but we will contact you immediately
Hi,
If my MP receives no reply within 4 weeks, are you OK with me escalating to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/independent-police-complaint-commission ? It’s now known as the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/ and except in Northern Ireland there seems to be no ombudsman for the police, so this seems to be the last resort at this level.
Regards,
Then sent by [MP]‘s office 8/6/2023 (same day):
Dear Roy
I would advise that you contact us again after 4 weeks so that we can confirm if we have received any response. You can contact them but we cannot advise if they would class this as an acceptable period to wait.
12 more days passed. It had been 4 weeks since she initiated contact. I wrote:
Hi [MP],
It has now been 4+ weeks since the E-mail that I relayed you.
As per the advice from your case worker, may I kindly suggest you escalate the matter to Parliament, stating that Action Fraud not only ignores fraud complaints from victims (the response below is quite obviously a template for several reasons; they didn’t bother even responding to it, except by bot) but also ignores my MP?
I did not know I lived in a Third-World Country where police exists only in principle. After contacting Greater Manchester Police and speaking to them for 40 minutes they strongly insisted that I contact Action Fraud and assured me action would be taken. It turns out to be even worse as Action Fraud isn’t even responding to my MP and my colleagues had a lot of money stolen from them too.
Based on inside sources, the company is quickly vanishing with all that stolen money. Action Fraud has failed to deal with this for 2 months already.
Kind regards,
As one person put it, “what other courses of action are there? why are the police unaccountable for white-collar crime and fraud?”
Stay tuned, there’s a lot more to come. There are other victims of this crimes. It cannot be brushed away or swept aside.
__________
* My original thinking was, it’s better to be pessimistic. I assumed that my MP might do nothing. If so, that too is noteworthy. But she actually did respond and she did take action. Unlike Action Fraud. My approach at the start was, if she does not respond, I will move on to the next MP, as I did with EPO and MEPs, but never bother people, i.e. not resort to mass mailing, 2 or 3 maximum (if the first does nothing).