Met Police accused of ‘institutional corruption’ over unsolved axe murder of Welsh private detective

A report into the axe murder of a Welsh private detective has accused the Metropolitan Police of a “form of institutional corruption” in the way it handled multiple failed investigations.

An independent panel examining the unsolved killing of father-of-two Daniel Morganin a pub car park in 1987 found “multiple very significant failings” during the initial Met Police investigation.

Daniel Morgan, a private investigator who grew up in Monmouthshire, was murdered in the rear car park of a pub (above) southeast London on 10 March 1987. Despite five criminal investigations focusing on the murder nobody has yet been successfully prosecuted.

This led to calls for an inquiry from Daniel Morgan’s family, who had waged a long campaign for those responsible for his murder to be brought to justice.

At a press conference today, Baroness O’Loan, the chair of the panel who put together the report, said there were “serious failings in investigation” from the moment Daniel Morgan was killed.

‘Failings’

In a statement, the family of Daniel Morgan said: “We welcome the recognition that we – and the public at large – have been failed over the decades by a culture of corruption and cover up in the Metropolitan Police, an institutionalised corruption that has permeated successive regimes in the Metropolitan Police and beyond to this day.”

The panel added that Daniel Morgan’s family had “suffered grievously” because his killers have never been brought to justice, and the Met Police had failed “to acknowledge its many failings over the 34 years since the murder”.

Priti Patel responded to say that she “cannot ignore the recommendations of this report” and said that today she had written to Met Commissioner Cressida Dick to ask for a detailed response from her to the report.

Labour’s shadow home secretary, Torfaen MP Nick-Thomas Symonds, says the panel’s report is “damning,” adding the Morgan family have endured a “three-decade nightmare”.