Ex Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini took a golden goodbye payment on top of a slew of jobs since leaving Crown Office. THE latest annual accounts of Scotland’s institutionally inept Crown Office & Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) have revealed that the controversial figure of former Lord Advocate Dame Elish Angiolini DBE QC (born McPhilomy) received a whopping TWENTY EIGHT THOUSAND POUNDS of public money in a ‘golden goodbye’ deal after leaving her Crown Office post, even though the ex Law Chief has scooped up a number of lucrative jobs such as babysitting Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond as his personally appointed Ministerial complaints adviser. More recently, Dame Elish Angiolini was also appointed to the post of Principal of St Hugh’s College, Oxford.
The staggering amount of public money thrown at the former Lord Advocate, despite her numerous high profile roles, which also include jobs in the legal world, has staggered many at a time of public austerity, coming at a time where intense scrutiny of Scotland’s failed prosecution service has revealed a number of high profile blunders in failed criminal prosecutions and dropped investigations involving members of the legal profession and relatives of Crown Office staff caught up in allegations of multi million pound legal aid frauds.
The Crown Office have not issued any public comment on the payoff to Dame Angiolini, who is currently involved in a bitter legal fight against the anti abuse campaigner & journalist Robert Green, reported earlier by Scottish Law Reporter, HERE. Significant questions remain over who is actually paying for the former Lord Advocate’s legal action against Mr Green, which stems from his reporting & campaigning for an inquiry into abuse allegations made by Hollie Greig, a downs syndrome victim who has alleged she was abused by several individuals in the Aberdeen area.
The pursuit of Mr Green by Scotland’s Crown Office, on the orders of the former Lord Advocate resulted in Scotland’s most expensive ever Breach of the Peace trial which saw a record HALF A MILLION POUNDS spent on the investigation & trial of Mr Green, a case which tunnelled through the Scottish Courts system for over two years at huge cost to taxpayers.
The Mail on Sunday reports :
FURY AS TOP LAWYER ELISH GETS £28,000 GOODBYE POT
By Andrew Picken
SCOTTISH POLITICAL EDITOR
SCOTLAND'S most senior law officer was handed a taxpayer-funded 'golden goodbye' worth £28,000 after quitting her top role.
Dame Elish Angiolini stood down as Lord Advocate last year - but we can reveal she walked away with a tax-free 'resettlement grant'.
The generous grants-- unheard of in the private sector - are traditionally given to MPs, MSPs and Government ministers to help ease them back into the 'real world' after leaving office.
Cash-strapped Crown Office bosses yesterday said Dame Elish, who earned £114,000 a year, was entitled to the payout under Holyrood rules - but the news was met with fury elsewhere.
Since leaving her post the former solicitor has worked in a number of lucrative posts as a member of the top firm of advocates Terra Firma, a visiting professor at Strathclyde University and chairing a Government commission on female offenders.
The Glaswegian, the first woman to become Lord Advocate, will also start a new full-time post as principal of St Hugh's College at Oxford University later this month.
The payout is revealed in the Crown Office's latest annual accounts, which warn the organisation is operating within 'significantly reduced funding'.
The accounts also show that deputy chief executive Dr Peter Collings was allowed to 'partially retire' but now earns the same for working a three-day week because of his lucrative pension payments.
Last night, critics hit out at Dame Elish's five-figure 'golden goodbye'.
Eben Wilson, head of campaign group Taxpayer Scotland, said: 'There should be serious questions about why this was paid and why it was so much.'Our legal profession is always complaining about the lack of money in the court system so why was it necessary to make this payment to a person who was leaving of their own accord to pursue other opportunities. 'It's always worrying when we have to find these things buried in reports. Why do we not have where taxpayers' money is being spent out in the open.'
Recent reforms of the resettlement grant process have made the controversial 'golden parachute' payments for Scotland's MSPs more generous.
MSPs who have served three terms at Holyrood but do not return after an election will receive £57,520 - twice as much as many would have got under previous rules.
The first £30,000 of the publically-funded grant is tax free.
The same provisions allow Government 'office holders' a payment representing 25 per cent of their salary - £28,499 in the case of Dame Elish.
Dr Collings, who had been earning between £105,000 and £110,000, saw his salary drop to around £65,000 but his £1 million pension pot means his income is now topped up with an annual pension of between £40,000 and £45,000.
The 2011-12 Crown Office accounts show that a total of 43 staff shared an early retirement payout pot of £2.4million last year.
12 comments:
Ease them back into the 'real world.' Christ millions unemployed, benefits being cut, hospitals struggling to provide care. What planet do these scumbags live on?
They abuse the system because it is designed that way, those at the top can engineer any outcome they want.
She must have needed the money, it must be difficult living on £114K.
A nice cartel of criminals lining their pockets at out expense.
THIS IS AN OUTRAGE
It looks like the People of Scotland have been deceived yet again by this MOB?
It is clear from recent photographs printed in The Firm Magazine that the current Lord Advocate is a member of the Scottish Cabinet. Yet we were told that Elish Angiolini WAS NOT a member of the previous Scottish Cabinet BUT maybe this payment tells us that she was a member of the previous Scottish Cabinet after all?
It would not be the first lie?
OR, could it be that this £28,000 is the 1st Installment by the Scottish Government for the vindictive and criminal attack by Elish Angiolini on her victim (People's Champion) Robert Green?
There is clearly something VERY WRONG going on here.
The generous grants-- unheard of in the private sector - are traditionally given to MPs, MSPs and Government ministers to help ease them back into the 'real world' after leaving office.
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Beggars belief, they share power to their mutual benefit. There is no one above them to press charges for all the corruption and many below them are ignorant of what is happening. Some world we live in.
Bureaucratic administration means fundamentally domination through knowledge.
Max Weber.
They dominate {The Law Society} by keeping the knowledge of their crooked membership secret. If ruined clients were linked the way lawyers are the Law Society would be in greater trouble.
Self regulation is the mechanism used to dominate individuals. If all clients knew each other and worked together the domination would be reversed.
Direct lawful action against Law Firms must be the way forward. Law Society and SLCC do you want the public naming and shaming your lawyers where the lawyers are based? In my opinion this is the way to go. In an office they can engineer any outcome they want, they have been doing it for years.
How many other chunks of money has Alex Salmond handed out to his pals for doing him a favour?
Does Alex Salmond not know that this is not his money to hand out as perquisites?
He is not the KING of Scotland, even if he thinks he is?
Cash-strapped Crown Office bosses yesterday said Dame Elish, who earned £114,000 a year, was entitled to the payout under Holyrood rules.
The rules, no doubt designed by self interest. A little reward from Salmond, but not from his own bank account, but from ours.
Amid loud shrieks of laughter & disbelief from clients caught up in the Law Society’s infamously corrupt regulatory process, Ms Lorna Jack went onto claim in the press release that the Law Society is still interested in ‘delivering benefits for the public, Ms Jack continued : “Every element of our business has been re-examined in the planning process with a view to delivering benefits for the profession and the public in a cost effective way. We must retain the skills we need to do the job while reducing employment costs.”
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Well Miss Jack all clients who have complained to the Law Society over the decades should print their own leaflets outlining they way they were treated. You said the Law Society is still interested in "delivering benefits for the public". Lorna, Clients must now use their own leaflets to name and shame their lawyers near the lawyers offices and name the Law Society for protecting the lawyer.
You know Lorna the Law Society is not interested in "delivering benefits for the public". You are all Douglas Mill's and we need to destroy your greatest asset, [Secrecy]. If 50 clients name their lawyers in public with leaflets and the courts award damages to the 50 lawyers, the courts are the same as the Law Society.
In an office you can engineer any outcome you want, but the down side is the destruction of the Law Society and you have thousands of victims out there now. If they get their leaflets rattling out of their printers, the corrupt Law Society of Scotland and Corrupt Lawyers will be extinct.
The solution is easy clients, print your own leaflets and distribute them about corrupt lawyers. Never report a lawyer to the SLCC or Law Society. But do not lie about your lawyer. This is the reason lawyers reputations are in the gutter today, because liars psyche stops them debating effectively. Your greatest asset against a lawyer is honesty. Never deviate from that, because you will destroy your own credibility if you do.
Backtrack to the death of Willie McCrae, the connections are there if you look hard enough.
Can we please use the correct terms here. This individual was paid £114K a year. To say she “earned” such implies she deserved every penny. As for the £28K let’s call it what it is embezzlement.
High time these criminals were put behind bars where they belong and release some unfortunate single mum who perhaps forgot to disclose changing circumstances while expected to live on less than £5K a year or simply had no choise but to forget to disclose some relevant fact like she was up to her eyes in debt, not that the DWP give a toss about such.
And how do these high fliers reach such heights anyway? Easy, they are safe hands who will protect the other criminals in high places and focus public service efforts on well intended folk like Robert Green.
leech
This could have paid for someone in need of medication
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