A Merseyside Police Chief Inspector joked about "secretive" meetings with a criminal suspect and once quipped he would wear "a floral dress and a blonde wig" as a disguise, a misconduct panel heard.
Chief Insp. Stephen Rice, a 24-year veteran of the force and former firearms commander, gave at times impassioned evidence about his experiences of being accused of misconduct over his years-long business relationship with an allegedly crooked property developer, referred to as "Mr A" for legal reasons.
The senior officer, who ran a landlord business on the side, bought several large rental properties from Mr A worth in excess of £2m between 2012 and 2016, partly funded by interest free, unsecured loans from Mr A.
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The misconduct allegations mainly span around a criminal investigation called Operation Benadir, conducted by Merseyside Police's Economic Crime Team into large-scale property fraud in which Mr A, a financial advisor referred to as "Mr B" and a solicitor referred to as "Mr C" were charged.
Merseyside Police accuse Chief Insp. Rice of failing to disclose thousands of pounds of debt to Mr A, which he disputes, and lying about continuing to contact the developer even after he learned of his arrest, although he was never charged with any criminal offences.
Yesterday the married dad-of-three, supported at Merseyside Police HQ during the public hearing by his wife, denied ever being deliberately dishonest and claimed he had been "singled out", "targeted" and "ostracised" by the force. He described the period between 2017 and the present as "hellish" and spoke of his anger at being accused of criminal offences (which were later dropped) and then gross misconduct.
James Berry, representing Merseyside Police at the hearing, said "serendipitously" Mr A's phone had ended up in the possession of the police in August, 2019, after he was stabbed and seriously wounded.
Messages on the phone revealed a number of meetings with Chief Inspector Rice including one in Calderstones Park, the day before he was interviewed under criminal caution on March 28 that year. In that interview he falsely said he "no longer had any contact" with Mr A, although the officer claimed he had simply forgotten about the meeting.
The panel heard how in February 2018, Chief Insp. Rice and Mr A made jokes which Mr Berry suggested showed they knew it was "inappropriate" for them to meet. In one text, Mr A asked if he should wear a "moustache, hat and gloves" to which the officer replied: "no I'm wearing the floral dress and blonde wig".
Chief Insp. Rice dismissed the messages as "banter" and told the panel it was a reference to him being investigated at work. He claimed he had simply forgotten to mention the meetings with Mr A because they were "totally irrelevant to me".
Earlier the panel heard how in 2016, Chief Insp. Rice bought an annexe at the back of a large Victorian property, on Linnet Lane in Aigburth, for £570,000, from Mr A. However in early 2017, Chief Inspector Rice received a phone call from a woman based in the Middle East, who said her name was Bella.
Mr Berry said: "She said she was representing a Saudi property developer who had bought the whole of Linnet Lane including the annexe, she thinks there has been fraud that you are involved in and she is going to contact the City of London Police."
The panel heard that Chief Insp. Rice checked the Land Registry and realised the property was not in his name, despite the fact he had obtained a mortgage from Lloyds Bank and agreed to borrow £180,000 from Mr A to cover the deposit.
Mr Berry said: "This must have been shocking to you, it is not every day that you, a senior police officer, are accused of a criminal offence. But you reported none of this to Merseyside Police?"
Chief Insp. Rice said he contacted Mr A and spoke to his bank manager at Lloyds, who both reassured him that it was likely a delay in splitting the deeds for the two sides of the property which had not yet shown up on the Land Registry website.
Mr Berry pointed out that he had also been messaging a woman referred to as Ms D, who was connected to Mr A, and who told him the businessman had been doing "dodgy deals with the Saudis" in relation to a number of properties.
Chief Insp. Rice said he felt that he could trust Mr A, having been introduced to him in 2012 by his own cousin and having completed successful property deals with him before. However he did become suspicious of a law firm, referred to in the hearing as "Firm 1", which employed Mr C and had handled the property deals. Chief Insp. Rice told the panel that shortly after the call from Bella, he instructed a separate firm of solicitors to get to the bottom of the issue, but they "got nowhere" trying to get information from Firm 1.
That dispute dragged into a years long lawsuit against Firm 1. Chief Insp. Rice told the panel he lost any ownership of Linnet Lane and the civil case drained much of his time and energy, although it recently ended with a ruling in his favour and a "substantial pay-out".
As the issue with Linnet Lane was dragging on, Chief Insp. Rice received an email from an Economic Crime Team detective asking to speak with him. He met the team on December 19, 2017, where they discussed Linnet Lane and his relationship with Mr A, and they told him they were conducting Operation Benadir.
Chief Insp. Rice denied he had been specifically informed during that meeting that Mr A and Mr C were under investigation for fraud, telling the panel: "They didn't make it clear to me". However the detectives who met with him that day all gave statements claiming he was directly told who was being investigated.
The fraud investigation continued, but Chief Insp. Rice and Mr A continued to meet and even discussed further business opportunities, including purchasing two apart-hotels and a carpark in the city centre, although those deals never came off.
The pressure increased on March, 2019, when Chief Insp. Rice was given a notice that he was under criminal investigation. He was interviewed under criminal caution on March 28, and told detectives that he was no longer in contact with Mr A and was aware he was a suspect in Operation Benadir. One of the key disputed issues in the case is whether in October, 2020, when being interviewed over misconduct allegations, Chief Insp. Rice "accepted he had lied" in his criminal interview the previous year when confronted with evidence of regular meetings with Mr A.
Chief Insp. Rice claimed he did not express himself clearly in that misconduct interview and did not have a transcript of the previous interview in front of him. Under questioning from his barrister, Sarah Barlow, he told the panel: "I didn’t remember what I had for dinner yesterday. I had been treated as a criminal and interviewed criminally with no evidence whatsoever. I had been accused of fraud and money laundering, accused of numerous different allegations by [professional standards] that I wasn’t even interviewed over and they were dropped.
"I was taken out of my role, I was ostracised and put into a role in an office that was a total waste of time to me. I was prevented from doing my work, what I had done for 20 odd years. I was stopped from doing my projects and operations, I was being questioned and questioned talking about the same stuff over and over again. If I didn’t remember what was said in an interview 20 months ago then I apologise."
Elsewhere in the hearing:
- Chief Insp. Rice denied he had searched police intelligence databases for a convicted drug dealer called Desmond Bayliss in 2016 due to concerns over his relationship with Mr A, although he said he could not remember the policing purpose of the search
- He denied paying a company called UK Essays £3,300 for a dissertation when doing a Master's degree at Liverpool Hope University in 2015, claiming he "did not get on" with his tutor and was paying for guidance and tutorship due to lack of support
- He denied attempting to mislead detectives about a text suggesting Mr A or Mr C were "running with the Ungis", a reference to a "prominent organised crime group".
The hearing continues.
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