The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has released information regarding an ongoing betting and bribery case involving a former Ladbrokes Chief Executive Officer.
The individuals who worked for GVC, the parent company of Ladbrokes, were mentioned in a statement by Hannah von Dadelszen, Chief Crown Prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service.
They include Kenny Alexander, the former chief executive of GVC, and Lee Feldman, the former non-executive chairman of GVC.
Former Ladbrokes executive members charged in bribery case
The CPS announced that the case involved ten individuals, who have been charged with offences allegedly committed between 2011 and 2018.
A further individual has been arrested in relation to an offence committed as part of the HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) investigation.
Von Dadelszen said as part of the announcement of the charges that the CPS “has authorised the prosecution of eleven individuals for seven offences relating to bribery, conspiracy to defraud, fraudulent trading, cheating the public revenue, evasion of income tax, acting as a director of a company when undischarged bankrupt and perverting the course of justice.”
Both former members of GVC, now known as Entain, Alexander and Feldman, have been charged by the CPS.
Alexander is facing charges of conspiracy to defraud and conspiracy to bribe between 2011 and 2018 relating to the provision of gambling services in Turkey. Feldman is facing charges of conspiracy to commit fraud and conspiracy to commit bribery.
Richard Las, Director of HMRC’s Fraud Investigation Service, said: “These are serious charges that relate to conspiracy to defraud, bribery, cheating the public revenue, evasion of income tax and perverting the course of justice among others.”
All eleven individuals involved in the case will appear at London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court on October 6.
How does the CPS conduct a case and issue charges?
The CPS bases its charges on the information gathered by HMRC, which is equivalent to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the United States. This financial fact-finding is not similar to a criminal case, but rather the gathering of information that could be used to prove a case at court proceedings.
Officially, the CPS states their assessment and the charges brought to bear are not a “finding of, or implication of, any guilt or criminal conduct. It is not a finding of fact, which can only be made by a court, but rather an assessment of what it might be possible to prove to a court, in accordance with the Code for Crown Prosecutors.”
Featured image: Ideogram
