Dear Director of the IOPC,

I am writing to you a public letter to inform you about my terrible experience of dealing with the IOPC as a “customer” (as the IOPC calls those contacting it). This letter is also available in a PDF format.

I have a very negative ‘customer feedback’ for you but my letter is not aimed to troll you or your well respected organization in your work, or bring negative emotions just ‘out of revenge’. I do not have time for such things, and the only reason I address you publicly is that it appears to me that is the only way how I can realistically penetrate the impenetrable barriers of incompetence and ignorance that are existing in the IOPC for those trapped by serious injustice and malice from the police forces.

Admittedly, I did not file a complaint against those staff of the IOPC who have brought to me my terrible “customer experience” – albeit I was very seriously considering it in relation to my “case owner” (another term of the IOPC) who was assessing staff of all my complaints, whom, for the purposes of my current letter I will call Mrs A (and “A” is not the first letter of her name). I concluded that, albeit she deserves a complaint against her incompetence, the only outcome of such complaint would be an internal conclusion that she is an incompetent person that had not enough training, has limited desire and capabilities to perform her job and who is supplied by the very strange internal instructions. Taking into account to which levels of addressing I have escalated my challenges on the other side of the front (PSD and the police force itself), I feel it proportionate to consider my “case owner” as a circumstance resulting from the IOPC’s practices as a whole and address the work of the IOPC as a whole. The reason I am addressing you / the IOPC publicly is I believe this will benefit the public by adjusting the trajectory of the IOPC’s future development, as also will allow me to finally be heard.

As usual, I will start from an important disclaimer that I did not (yet) conclude detailed research of the IOPC’s work by analysing experience of many people – the IOPC’s “customers”, if you will allow me to use the terminology of the IOPC. That said, I base my analysis exclusively on my own experience, which, however, was not limited by a ‘one touch’ interaction but was a continuous attempt from me to reach some signs of adequacy in the actions of the IOPC.

Secondly, whilst I use word “lamentable” which I have borrowed from the eloquent epithets given to the IOPC by Sir Richard Henriques in October 2019 in another case which involved the IOPC, I use it as fully matching my own terrifying experience of being “served” by the IOPC. I use it as my own word.

Basing my letter on my own experience, I do accept that, with what I believe to be a small probability, it could be an just ‘accidental 7-months long slip’ of the IOPC, repeated with me on multiple occasions and under always aggravating circumstances, such as receipt of new and new information from me that could not allow the IOPC to keep reaching the same ludicrous conclusions about my complaints being of the lowest seriousness.

Two types of decisions the IOPC was making on my complaints

My experience includes (1) several my complaints, starting from the first one dated 17 April 2019, being received and assessed / categorized by the IOPC after referral from PSD of Merseyside Police and (2) several my appeals of PSD’s decision to suspend investigation of those complaints, which appeals were made to the IOPC and unreasonably rejected by it. All of these rejections are de-facto now admitted by the IOPC to be unreasonable in the High Court proceedings initiated by me, albeit it did not concede to that by direct words, effectively upholding those after my initiation of the judicial review proceedings by saying that it now considers my appeals viable (wrongfully suggesting that this was not the case before). That is a very clever approach, I need to say: make an unreasonable decision, cause the complainant to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on a judicial review, then say in the middle of proceedings “We have decided that now our decision is to be reconsidered, but we do not suggest it was unreasonable before”. The “lucky” outcome is, of course, available only for those complainants who have “free monies” and “free time” to spend on judicial review proceedings, having nothing else to do; the rest victims of incompetence would need to accept incompetent, reckless and unreasonable decisions of the IOPC.

Supporting the decision of PSD to suspend investigation of my complaints

The unreasonable decision made initially (and now revoked amidst the High Court proceedings) by the IOPC, and which I am speaking about above, is the decision to support the decision of PSD of Merseyside Police to suspend investigation of my complaints until outcome of Operation Kobus (investigation against me, performed by the officers I alleged to be corrupt), made by PSD on the unlawful (invented by PSD as an excuse to not undertake any steps to investigate the corrupt officers) basis that the merits of my complaints are closely connected with the merits of Operation Kobus, while it is plainly not so and was never so: my initial complaint of 17 April 2019 was that the officers of Merseyside Police have come to the court in April 2018 and rampantly lied under oath and in written application that I am a person without any business footprints and websites and that I have sold fake airline ticket to Nigeria for £750, while they knew I am an international businessman with wide business footprints and who sponsors Liverpool Football Club for 4th year in a row. The frauds they referred to were, in fact, merely payments processed by my payment company in its capacity as a payment processor, but they have withheld that circumstance from the court, portraying me myself as a perpetrator of those laughable (in context of my business footprints) frauds.

No competent assessor or case worker who ever had read my complaint of 17 April 2019 (and subsequent letter of me to the IOPC, dated 31 July 2019) could conclude that this has anything to do with whatever merits of a “large international investigation” which Operation Kobus was portrayed to be by those very same corrupt police officers against whom my complaint was made and who now use Operation Kobus as a ‘smoke screen’ to disguise their initial misconduct for third party observers. But the keywords are “competent” and “read”. Regretfully, after interacting with the IOPC throughout 7 months I have to explicitly state that I believe neither of those two words is applied to the IOPC’s handling my complaints, letters and appeals: those appear to be not only never handled by a competent staff, they (in large part) were likely even never read. I can, of course, only guess, but if ever there would be any competent person inside the IOPC who would check all what I have sent to Mrs A and caseworkers, after reading all that information that competent person could have only one conclusion: something needs to be seriously changed in how the IOPC deals with incoming correspondence because deeming that every single complainant is a ‘madman from the street’ and does not deserve his letters to be read seriously and with due competence, is simply wrong. Not only was I providing extensive argumentation and explanations, I was showing my business profile, to explain that I am not a ‘madman from the street’ who simply ‘foams at his mouth’ from anger and sending nonsense letters. Those letters were drafted by me, the person managing hundreds of staffs in my own businesses and having more than 14 years in the financial industry, based on the scrupulous research of the complaints system and legal advice from a Queens Counsel and a leading legal firm, having good understanding of logic, which would be obvious for anyone who would invest time to read those letters (but there was none). If there was not enough competence for understanding the issues I was rising , the letters were ought to be escalated to someone who is capable to read and understand. But that would mean these people can’t do anything except for the copying and pasting of template letters, working as “human robots”, because I was rising issues of assessment of the complaint and appeal – the tasks assigned to those people.

As a cherry on top, the documentation which I have in my possession suggests that PSD has never even referred the text of my complaint of 17 April 2019 to the IOPC (tricky PSD has instead referred the cover letter saying to the IOPC “this is the complaint”, supplying also a misleading ‘summary’ of it) which effectively means that the IOPC first assessed my complaint of 17 April 2019 without having received from PSD its text and then considered appeal on its suspension without having actually ability to read it due to simply not having it, relying blindly on PSD’s input, whose decision it was asked to quash.

Inadequate assessments of my complaints

The IOPC, upon obligatory (for serious complaints) referral by PSD has the duty to assess the complaints, giving one of four categories of seriousness . Each and every my complaint was categorized by the IOPC being of the lowest seriousness. Even the complaint of 13 August 2019 in which it was directly stated that I am addressing by my complaint a network of serious corruption which includes at least 9 police officers, with two in ranks of Detective Chief Inspector, one of whom is a decision maker in PSD, the anti-corruption body of the Force. As a result of categorization to be of the lowest seriousness, that complaint was automatically recorded as suitable for local investigation by PSD itself, one of the highest ranks of which was reported by that complaint for participating in corruption with prima facie evidence of deliberate covering up of the alleged to be corrupt officers. To say that categorizing that complaint being of the lowest seriousness was unreasonable, is to make a compliment to the IOPC. Because I am writing my letter to benefit the public interest, instead of making such compliments to the IOPC I will say what I think: it was insane. I do not know if the complaint of 13 August 2019 was read or, like is suspected by me to be the case with the complaint dated 17 April 2019 (and all the rest complaints of me), it was not even read, but what I know is that whatever was the process applied by the IOPC, the result was insane.

One can’t read the complaint providing prima facie evidence of serious corruption of 9 officers of a police force, related to multi-million damages, destroying of the business, involvement of multi-million financial accounts, addressing corruption of high operational ranks and anti-corruption body – PSD – itself, and, however unproved yet are the allegations, conclude that the alleged to be corrupt body – PSD – can be trusted to investigate it as suitable for local investigation, as opposed to the need of furious investigation by the IOPC, or at least the oversight by the IOPC.

Even before the IOPC received the complaint of 13 August 2019, in my letter to the IOPC dated 8 July 2019 I was explaining in a very unambiguous language all exceptional and outstanding characteristics of my case, justifying the requirement of “higher than the lowest” categorization for it, doing so in normal human language and hoping that the IOPC staff will read those and try to understand, because the wording which I used was aimed to be clear even for a person without any special education and training. I was indicating that the case relates to multi-million amounts affected, international background, high-ranked officers, poses reputational risks for the UK’s policing. In my later letters I was indicating that my case involves allegations of involvement into corruption of the anti-corruption body of the force. I was virtually begging to just dedicate to my case minuscule competence. But what I have received in response made me feeling that I am speaking with ‘dummies’ who are simply imitating the process and replying using copy and paste templates.

“Let PSD investigate the management of PSD”

To make it worse, the IOPC has categorized even my complaint of 7 August 2019 made exclusively against the high-ranked decision maker in PSD, Detective Chief Constable Vaughan, for being mixed up in serious corruption by turning a blind eye on irresistible evidence of serious corruption, being suitable for investigation by PSD itself.

Observing all this, I was asking myself only one question: my UK business was destroyed, I am providing irresistible evidence of the whole squad of a police force (up to 10 officers) being corrupt, allege existence of serious corruption’s network within the force, involvement of PSD’s officers into that corruption, those corrupt officers have affected – further to multi-million damages – my other multi-million accounts, and all this is assessed by the IOPC to be of “the lowest seriousness”; what was then ought to happen to me in order for my complaints to be categorized as not of the lowest seriousness by the IOPC? Was I needed to be beheaded by the police officers, with my body then put on fire? Or was the number of the officers whose participation serious corruption too small, was it ought to be 90 officers instead of 9? What is the threshold to get the IOPC’s involvement into investigation of serious corruption which – it was always plain from behaviour of PSD – was never planned by PSD to be investigated?

The answer was so easy: it appears the IOPC uses only one criterion for categorising complaints by seriousness.

The only criterion of the IOPC in categorization of complaints: publicity of the acts of misconduct

Based on the available to me documentation, at all times the IOPC was applying to categorisation of my complaints only one criterion: criterion of non-existence of any information on the complaint-related issues in public.

To put it simply, if a woman is raped by the management of PSD of a police force, for her to avoid PSD investigating its management, she would need to go to forums and publicly announce that she was raped, moreover, do so in a way which would spark wide discussions of that topic. That – and only that – would cause the IOPC to categorize her complaint’s investigation requiring an oversight by the IOPC.

Likewise, if a financial firm or financier becomes a target of malicious attack by a group of corrupt police officers, he or she needs to go to internet / media and publicly announce himself having issues with the police. This – and only this, based on documentation of decision making process of the IOPC, which I have seen so far – is a pre-requisite for the IOPC to pay attention to the case.

There is a saying in Russia: “It would be very funny if it was not so sad“.

I could even put a joke here, something like “IOPC, you wanted publicity, here I go”, but, in reality, it is not funny at all. It is very lamentable (and painful for me) to see that a very serious body aimed to address very serious situations, tragedies and / or major disruptions in people’s lives, charged with the positive duty to intervene the most serious cases on the basis of consideration of a complex of criteria, allowed itself to primitivize its work to such a laughable formula “Let’s react only where there is so late, that the case went public”.

I can’t imagine saying my staff “From now on, to save resources, let’s do our job properly only for those who post something publicly”. It is, again, insane, is not it?

Albeit the purpose of the approach – to maintain the public image of policing and, thus, the climate in which new misconduct would not be advertised, appears to be adequate, to say – and, even worse, seriously apply the policy – that this criterion is the only criterion taken into consideration, is simply inconceivable.

The conclusion is that the assessment of complaints and appeals is being done by the IOPC a) through inadequately trained, incompetent staff b) who do not even bother to read the complaint and c) have the only criterion of assessment – existence of the information about the events in public domain.

May be there are other criteria in the instruction used by assessors and caseworkers but this raises the question: why can’t I see those in the described to me decision making process in relation to my complaints, and if there were such other criteria, why had none of those triggered action as a result of my letters and appeals? I can believe my letters were not read (however regretful it is for a public body having such a serious duty), but I cannot imagine decisions on my appeals being done with proper considering those. As long as those were read, no competent decision maker could consider the criterion of existence or non-existence of the information in public domain to be the only applicable criterion.

The IOPC is rejecting to read critical complaints

In August 2019, when I sent the IOPC the complaint addressing cover up of PSD of the obvious and irresistible evidence of police officers committing imprisonable criminal offences, the IOPC simply rejected to accept complaint stating that the complaint must be first referred to it by the very same PSD which I reported to be corrupt.

I was referred to the fact that the regulation which would allow the IOPC to accept the complaints directly from the members of public, is not yet enacted, so, on surface, formally, that was correct.

I understand that the IOPC is a large organization and for large organisations following the process and procedure is very important because those form the basis of increasing the efficiency. But every business principle is good only up to some point, after which it becomes absurd. Inability to see absurdity in some cases where blind implementations of the procedures leads to it, is an indication of illness of the system.

In my complaint and subsequent letter to the IOPC I have clearly indicated that I complain about the high-ranked decision maker of PSD. No competent and sane assessor / caseworker of oversight body could sanely request from me to send the complaint against PSD to PSD itself, when the IOPC already was presented with it. There were many ways to formally consider that complaint – for example, to consider it as the information relevant to my previous complaint. The reality is the IOPC does not have understanding of how critical is the issue of corruption of PSD’s themselves and is simply unprepared to handle such situations, considering those as its direct partners even where PSD itself is reported for being mixed up in covering up serious corruption. And the outcome of that reality is that the IOPC would make assessment of the complaint against PSD based on a ‘summary’ of the complaint prepared by… PSD itself. Of course, after reading that ‘summary’, it has categorized complaint against PSD being suitable for local investigation by PSD itself. The ring has closed into itself again.

‘Worse than nothing’ effect

I remember how in the beginning of my interaction with believed by me to be corrupt PSD of Merseyside Police I have observed it being panicky afraid of referring my complaints to the IOPC. For example, my first complaint of 17 April 2019 was referred to the IOPC with 50 days delay while the misconduct regulations require referral within one day. The reasons of fear were obvious: once referred to the IOPC, the complaint might become an ‘uncontrollable matter’ if the IOPC decided to take the control over its investigation – something that PSD who only acted always as a cloak / trap for my complaints, certainly wanted to avoid, having desire to keep my complaint’s investigation at their hands, so as to ensure it would be ‘marinated’ for ages (as it successfully does so far for soon to be a whole year). In addition to the expectation to have correct categorization of my complaint by the IOPC (as the one requiring involvement of the IOPC), I remember myself feeling confidence in ability to reach justice in a comparably simple way, thanks to ability to appeal any decisions of PSD to the IOPC. It has really enormously confidence-rising effect to know that there is someone independent, competent and caring, whom you can rely on when facing injustice of the level where the power of the state is applied against you maliciously.

However difficult can be the way, the traveller knowing there is a sensible destination point on which he can rely at the end of his travel, will always be supported by simply knowing such a destination point, the safeguard, exists.

I remember how all that turned to be a mirage, an imitation: out of the three above listed expected by me characteristics of being “independent, competent and caring” the IOPC so far managed not to fail only in being independent, and even that is not its achievement but a nature of how it is created. Albeit, even that independence turned to be a fake one in the practical decisions making – see the next paragraph. Imagine how it is felt like when you oppose to powerful malice of the police offices that want to destroy you and you keep in mind some safeguard which is expected to intervene at a certain moment and stop injustice, and then at that certain moment you find out that there is no actual safeguard and all what you were relying on was just a non-existent dummy. It is a terrible feeling when you understand that you actually are alone and there is no one to help you. That is betraying, betraying not only of those who are trapped by malice of corrupt police officers, but also of the public interest.

Likewise, every ‘rubber stamp’-like, appeared to be automatic, approval of every step of PSD (suspensions of investigations of all my complaints) and categorizing every my complaint, even the complaint against PSD itself, being suitable for local investigation by PSD, was only emboldening the malice and corruption on the other side: these officers and those covering them up were getting the feeling they are untouachable and that their corruption actually pays back, that creating a ringed system inside their own police force which, at first, included just PSD and later incorporated into itself the management of the Force, is safe and beneficial because the public interest is guarded by an incompetent and lamentable Mrs A of the IOPC who thinks it is a smart way of doing her job – to automatically accept on face value whatever PSD tells her. Why think if PSD does her work instead of her? How inventive is that for a member of a public office called “Independent Office of Police Conduct”, to make assessment of the complaints and decision on appeals without even reading the complaint (see above, it appears it was never sent to Mrs A) and relying on what PSD tells, even where PSD itself is reported for corruption. Mrs A’s approach worked for her very well: instead of spending her efforts on a real assessment work, she saved time and efforts and created an imitation of the real analysis. What is the difference if no one ever will check anyway? Most importantly, she copied and pasted to each her decision the text “your complaint is very important for us”.

As productive was the approach for Mrs A in her personal efforts-saving invention, as beneficial and confidence-rising was it for PSD and the corrupt network in Merseyside Police to which I oppose: they had realized there is no adequate safeguards against their malice and cover up on the side of the IOPC, because all they needed to continue upholding each and every their decision is to impress Mrs A and equal to her in terms of competence other staff of the IOPC. And, unlike Mrs A, these people are professional, they include the management of the force, the PIP-4 level investigator who know how to ‘cook the book’ of the investigation to either make it blossom out of nothing (like in case of Operation Kobus) or “live uselessly and die fast” (like in case of investigation of my complaints). Do I feel my interests well protected when dealing with these dangerous (due to being corrupt) people, by having ability to turn to Mrs A and her alike’s in the IOPC? No, I do not. Moreover, I would feel it better if the IOPC, in its current state in which I had to deal with it, would never exist in the UK system, because it only emboldened the confidence of the corrupt network to which I oppose to. After deliberately turning a blind eye on irresistible evidence of serious corruption supplied to Merseyside Police’ decisions makers, they can blatantly say “it is what public expects from us, that is in line of our highest standards” and then proudly remind me “the IOPC has supported us”. Such ‘safeguard’ is worse than nothing because it, in fact, only supports the corruption and horrifying injustice where the power of the state is maliciously applied under the label “the IOPC has supported us”.

My hard advice to the IOPC under this chapter is to overturn its practice of hiring absolutely incompetent, low paid basic staff to deal with critical enquiries of incoming flows of information requiring processing of big volumes of data. Here – and, in fact, in any workflow, public or commercial – the cheapest always means the most expensive one. Handling incoming enquiries and complaints is not a cashier’s work. One cannot hire a person who barely connects the dots to process tons of incoming information and say “this serves the public interest”. Because it does not, it buries the public interest alive, as long as the process of analyzing information is transformed into a dummy imitation.

I do recognize that there is such a procedure as appeal to the outcome of the investigaiton, but that is what my case about: my complaint is not going to be investigated seriously, thus, there will be no ‘outcome’, and at the core of my complaint is that I am being attacked by the malice accompanied by the state-level power and that process is ongoing. First PSD rejected to even start the investigation, now it will imitate the process after unlawfulness of the suspension of the investigation of my complaints was admitted by the IOPC and PSD in December 2019 as a result of the judicial review proceedings initiated by me. To say to a person whose business was already destroyed and who is continued to be attacked by the malicious officers alleged to be dishonest and having committed imprisonable criminal offences “we will wait until they are done with you and then you can appeal” is the same as reacting to the telephone call asking for help in a knife attack situation by only advising that after the calling person is injured by this attack he or she can call the ambulance and file a report against the attackers.

The allegations and evidence the IOPC had received was wholly incompatible with the decisions it has made. My complaints among others, alleged:

a) filing extremely misleading, wholly fabricated £1.577 account freeze application, by the officers having committed imprisonable criminal offence of perjury and perverting the course of justice, and that fabrication being signed off by an officer in rank of Detective Chief Inspector which mush have been one of the highest operational ranks in the department;  

 b)  the same police officers applying to me unlawful pressure to withdraw from my intention to file a complaint and to leave them monies for civil forfeiture, threatening me with their police powers;  

c)   existence of the culture of routine misleading of the courts observed in 10 other ex parte applications;  

d)   involvement in cover up of all the above of high ranked officer of PSD who, when being provided with prima facie evidence of perjury by the officer (one court application was plainly contradicting to another, that is, full checkmate!) had turned a blind eye.  

The very first thing the IOPC was ought to do upon receipt of the above complaints – even just the first one – was to recuse those officers from the ‘investigation’ against the complainant, where the prima facie evidence of serious corruption was available. Despite of what (continuously (she made the same ‘slip’ on the matter of suspension of my complaints’ investigation concluding it is not the IOPC’s competence to consider such appeals while it plainly is, as the IOPC itself has later conceded. The level of the IOPC’s ‘assessors’ who do not know the basics of their work is simply inconceivable) illiterate in her own work matters Mrs A of the IOPC stated in her letters about inability of the IOPC to impact the issue of recusal, police forces are obliged to ask advice of the IOPC in such matters as per regulation 10(12) of The Police Conduct Regulations 2012. It is applicable only for three out of four categories of complaints and the category “of the lowest seriousness” (local investigation) is not one of them but, as demonstrated above, categorizing my complaints being of lowest seriousness was simply insane.

The inevitable questions for the IOPC

There are several questions which a reasonable observer will get after observing the work of the IOPC in my case. Those are:

1) Why do incompetent people such as Mrs A sit in the IOPC on critical positions – those dealing with the assessing of the complaints, which impacts the way how the complaints are investigated?  

2)  Why do the assessors of the IOPC apply only one criterion when assessing importance of the complaints, criterion of publicity?  

3)  Do financial companies of the UK know that, if ever they would become victims of the malice / corruption of police officers and PSD of the police force would deliberately cover it up, the only way for them to get the IOPC involved is to publicly announce a ‘mess with the police’?  

4)  Do other businesses and people not interested in such kind of publicity know that?  

5)  Does the IOPC consider that because there is a procedure of appeal, it can simply apply a blind automated process to the assessment of the complaints, even if those address the real time events / ongoing misconduct and cover up of it by the police force, which can and must be intervened by the IOPC?  

6)  Does the IOPC consider it appropriate to blindly trust everything what is sent by PSD even where complainant explicitly (and with evidence) states the management of PSD itself is corrupt?  

 7)  Does the IOPC consider it reasonable to categorise a complaint alleging existence of the network of serious corruption within force, which includes 9 officers, anti-corruption body, affects multi-million financial accounts, destroying of the financial business, being of the lowest seriousness?  

I list those questions not to cause for the IOPC embarrassment, but to help it to improve it works because any improvement starts from locating the problems which require addressing.

Actions required in relation to my complaints

There are several ways which the IOPC can undertake in relation to my complaints against the network of serious corruption in Merseyside Police:

   1.   Pretend that everything is good as it is, ignore my public letter.  

   2.   Consider seriously my letter and take steps to address the situation appropriately, as a reasonable observer would expect the oversight body which has faced one of the most serious complaints in the history of the UK (at the very least  – when the allegations are taken on highest).