161:. The list given to the committee by SOCA has been marked as confidential, SOCA have demanded the list be âkept in a safe in a locked room, within a secure building and that the document should not be left unattended on a desk at any time'. SOCA has refused to allow the MPs to release the list. Trevor Pearce, the director-general of SOCA, met Keith Vaz, the chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, in Parliament and asked him not to publish the information as the material would be handed to the Information Commissioner to pursue in civil actions. A decision on whether to release the names will be taken when the committee publishes its report into private investigators. Vaz said that "the list has been around for a number of years and nobody has done anything about it...It is in the public interest for the information to be available at the appropriate time, not for this saga to drag on.â
177:, to ask him for names of the companies and individuals who had hired corrupt private investigators. Clappison wrote there was â...a public interest in knowing as much about the circumstances of these operations as can be properly disclosedâ. A Metropolitan Police investigation from 2007, Operation Barbatus, was later included in the suppressed SOCA report. Barbatus had found that private investigators were hacking computers and corrupting police officers, two detectives had been jailed after they tried to access the
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249:(IPCC) after he was accused of misleading Parliament. Andrews had been confronted by a former British Army intelligence officer, Ian Hurst, who was "enraged" after Andrews told MPs on the Home Affairs Select Committee that he was âabsolutely satisfiedâ that SOCA had not previously provided false testimony to the committee. Hurst was hacked by private investigators identified by SOCA in 2006 but was only informed in 2011.
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The individual companies have not been told by SOCA that they have been identified. The largest sector identified are law firms, twenty two appear on the list. SOCA and the
Metropolitan Police are not alleging that the individuals or companies on the list have or may have committed criminal offences.
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102 companies in 22 different sectors were named on the list given by SOCA to the Home
Affairs Select Committee. Many of the names on the list were uncovered as a result of Operation Millipede, a SOCA investigation into blagging and hacking. SOCA is preventing the committee from naming the individual
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The chairman of SOCA, Ian
Andrews, resigned in August 2013, following his failure to declare his ownership of Abis Partnership Ltd, a management consultancy company that he owned with his wife, Moira. His wife is additionally the head lawyer of a consultancy firm, Good Governance Group (G3). Andrews
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issued a joint statement to the Home
Affairs Select Committee on 12 July 2013 that claimed SOCA had provided the Metropolitan police with âfull accessâ to computers seized years earlier from the corrupt private investigators. Vaz later said that it was "not the case" that the Metropolitan Police had
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The select committee has been given a breakdown of companies by sector on the list. The companies include 21 law firms, nine companies in the insurance sector, four food service companies, an oil firm and a pharmaceutical company. Vaz later wrote to the heads of various
British regulatory bodies to
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Following the resignation of Ian
Andrews, the head of SOCA, Vaz said that he would write to Andrews's successor to ask if they would review the decision not to release the list. Four other historic police inquiries included in the SOCA file have not been passed to the MPs on the committee. A fellow
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Hurst's computer had been unlawfully accessed by corrupt private investigators and he emailed
Andrews to tell him that he was âfrankly astonishedâ at his evidence. SOCA did not respond to Hurst but the IPCC later contacted him to tell him that SOCA had referred the case to them. IPCC later had to
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at the end of Tuleta. Five companies on the list are being investigated by detectives working on
Operation Tuleta. SOCA said that there was no proof the clients acted illegally. None of the clients of the company, Active Investigation Services, were successfully prosecuted.
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ask for clarification over their guidelines on the usage of private investigators. Vaz said that âThe context in which the companies implicated by Socaâs information have acted is crucial for us to understand their motives.â The bodies contacted included the
137:. Graham Freeman, a hacker who was jailed as a result of SOCA's Operation Milipede said that 80 per cent of his clients were blue-chip companies and high-profile individuals, with the rest connected to the media. Freeman said that SOCA's list was a "
64:' companies in 2008. In one of five investigations reviewed by SOCA, 102 organisations and individuals involved were identified. The investigators specialised in illegally obtaining private data from banks, utility companies and
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been given full access to all material held by SOCA. Basu wrote to Vaz to tell him that his officers had only recently been given the list 102 blue-chip companies, on 30 July.
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In addition, the
Metropolitan Police is checking the list against its own current investigation, they will inform the select committee when their investigation is complete.
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that is investigating private investigators. SOCA is refusing to allow the select committee to publish the names on the list, and together with the
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216:. Tuleta will conclude at the end of 2015 and SOCA asked the committee to suppress the names until they have been addressed by the
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291:"Exclusive: Met dragged into blue-chip hacking saga as MPs demand Hogan-Howe releases details on rogue investigators"
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SOCA refuses to name the clients involved in
Operation Millipede as it believes it could disrupt the ongoing
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companies, but has allowed the naming of some of the sectors that the companies are in. These include:
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242:, but said that his decision not to disclose his own interest in his own company was "inexcusable".
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364:"Revealed: Over 100 blue-chip companies avoid prosecution for using rogue private investigators"
141:", which could lead to the imprisonment of dozens of bankers, lawyers and boardroom executives.
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send Hurst's complaint back to SOCA as they had âno jurisdictionâ over Andrews's actions.
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Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.
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427:"Soca chief and senior Met police officer 'misled' MPs over blue-chip hacking saga"
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157:, are examining claims that the companies used private investigators to engage in
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The director general of SOCA, Trevor Pearce, and Metropolitan Police Commander
519:"Soca chief Sir Ian Andrews quits over undeclared interest in private company"
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did not believe that failing to declare his wife's job at G3 was a
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393:"Firms linked to new hacking scandal could exceed 300"
327:"Law firms linked to convicted private investigators"
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There is an additional list of 200 names held by the
187:Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry
488:"Serious Organised Crime Agency chairman resigns"
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555:Home Office (United Kingdom)
517:Tom Harper (1 August 2013).
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104:Financial services companies
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116:Management consultancies
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101:Construction companies
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66:HM Revenue and Customs
58:private investigators
52:The United Kingdom's
240:conflict of interest
159:industrial espionage
110:Insurance businesses
456:The Daily Telegraph
397:The Daily Telegraph
214:Metropolitan Police
135:Metropolitan Police
125:Venture capitalists
107:Insurance companies
98:Car rental agencies
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175:Bernard Hogan-Howe
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233:Ian Andrews
191:Law Society
544:Categories
257:References
122:Rail firms
226:Neil Basu
155:Keith Vaz
113:Law firms
62:blue chip
41:June 2020
528:1 August
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462:6 August
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