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Exclusive: 'Police corruption cannot be eliminated' admits head of special Met unit following Independent stori
Corruption inside law enforcement agencies is impossible to eliminate, according to the man charged with tackling malpractice inside Scotland Yard.
Chief Superintendent Alaric Bonthron, head of the Metropolitan Police's Professional Standards Unit, told The Independent the threat from organised crime groups infiltrating the force is "very challenging". However, he denied the Yard still suffered from the "endemic police corruption" outlined in the leaked report from Operation Tiberius in 2002, extracts of which have been revealed by this newspaper.
The document disclosed that some of Britain's most notorious crime syndicates were able to infiltrate the Met "at will", leading to compromised murder investigations, leaks of intelligence and covert informants being identified.
In an interview to address the concerns raised by Operation Tiberius, Det Ch Supt Bonthron admitted there will "always be vulnerabilities when you have people in systems", but claimed that Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Met Commissioner, took corruption "very seriously".
He said: "We work very closely with other agencies to help their operations, whether it's a big HMRC job or whether it's the CPS feeling they are vulnerable."
Asked if there were a threat to those agencies, Mr Bonthron replied: "There is a threat to any law enforcement agency. You will never eliminate corruption. You can make it very difficult and put systems in place.
"I think the organisation has taken corruption seriously. Organised crime by its very nature is very challenging. Has corruption gone away entirely? I don't think it has; you have always got vulnerabilities. Part of our role is to make sure the organisation is absolutely doing the best it can to be corruption-proof."