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BY PETROS MAVROS
Work-based larceny seems to be the order of the day in Britain, and its not just the odd theft of stationery or an office laptop that’s concerning companies, its the increasing levels of expenses fraud, many of which put the UK politicians expenses scandal to shame.
The latest in what has become a veritable string of City scandals is the case of Christopher Grierson, the 60 year old partner of top London law firm Hogan Lovell. This once senior litigator succumbed to the moral malaise when he fiddled his expense claims to amass a total of 1,274,114 pounds. Grierson obviously considered his annual salary of 830.000 pounds somewhat inadequate as, on a weekly basis over four years he fraudulently boosted his salary by an average 5,000 pounds through booking flights on his credit card then claiming the amount back from the firm even though the travel arrangements had been cancelled.
It’s interesting to note that Grierson acted for and on behalf of some of the wealthiest individuals in the world including the Sultan of Brunei’s brother, Prince Jefri. From a Cyprus perspective, he represented the Monaco-based mathematician Dr Martin Coward in his separation from super-rich wife Elena Ambrosiadou, boss of the Limassol based hedge fund Ikos.
Last year, the Limassol court saw Vincent Pfister, one of Coward’s protégées also defending charges of ‘dirty dealings’ against Ikos. This financial whizz kid was found guilty and later this year Coward himself will once again stand in a London court on charges concerning the theft of vital computer programmes from Ikos.
Grierson was sacked from his post with Hogan Lovell albeit he managed within only a few weeks to refund the stolen money. In February he will be in court again to face several counts of fraud; if found guilty he will not only lose his standing in the legal community, he could also lose his right to practise law and a prison sentence has been meted out for lesser levels of blatant fraud.
These examples show that it’s not just your average employee committing company fraud, its top level staff, and according to research carried out by Global Expense, managers are 30% more likely to fiddle their expenses than lower levels of employees. This is mainly due to the fact that bosses don’t require others to sign off their expenses, so, in effect they can easily get away with it.
Grierson, a once highly respected litigator whose career is now in ruins, is said to be acting in a managerial position for a company in Monaco, a country which lives off its image as the epicentre of luxury, fast cars, and betting tables, a place where the super rich are protected and is a haven for scores of nouveaux riche Russians, including organised crime bosses.
The legal profession vigorously imposes rules and restraints on others while often disregarding these restraints for its own, and here in Cyprus we see more and more examples of ‘rogue’ individuals keen to exploit the powerless, confident in the knowledge that the Law Association will at worst give them a rap over the knuckles. Its time the Cypriot legal profession stopped protecting these individuals and started to practice equity within their own profession, then we, the powerless, can relish the unique experience of seeing justice being meted out to lawyers, by lawyers. I hope I live that long.
