The Guardian newspaper investigation into suspected fraud against the Compass Group by employees of its Kazakh subsidiary has claimed prosecutors were slow to respond to an FBI tip-off, as the policy director of Corruption Watch and chief executive of whistleblower charity, Public Concern at Work, call for an urgent review by the home secretary.
An investigation by the Guardian newspaper into allegations of historic corruption at the Compass Group's joint-venture company in Kazakhstan, has taken a new direction following claims in a letter sent to the home secretary by Susan Hawley, policy director of Corruption Watch and the chief executive of whistleblower charity Public Concern at Work, Cathy James, that the City of London Police's Overseas Anti-corruption Unit (OACU) took more than a year to interview a key witness.
The authors of the letter compare the sluggish response of the British authorities to that of the FBI's Internal Corruption Unit, which they state interviewed and shared information that a "key witness" (believed to be Karim Pabani, former finance director at ESS Support Services in Kazakhstan) within a fortnight of receiving allegations that a Kazakh board member at the subsidiary was "removing money from the business through the use of their suppliers" in April 2014.
Allegations of corruption have been made public at an employment tribunal brought by Pabani against his former employers. The former finance director argues he was dismissed unfairly for whistleblowing.
The newspaper reports a spokesman for Compass as saying the group is "vigorously defending" the allegations, and that documents produced as a result of an internal investigation in 2011 suggest the company itself was a victim of fraud.
Hawley and James have called on the home secretary to carry out an urgent review, and are questioning whether the investigation ought to have been assigned to the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) instead of OACU.
