Commission accused of ignoring court plea from Lloyd’s bankrupt

Date: 04/07/02

By Peter Chapman

THE European Commission stands accused of failing to throw a legal lifeline to help the man who prompted its investigation into the Lloyd's of London affair.

John Pascoe - who was declared bankrupt by a UK court on 22 May - said the Commission had ignored a formal legal request from the court for a statement clarifying the current state of its own probe.

'The help they gave me was zero,' Pascoe told European Voice.

Following his complaint to Brussels, the Commission is investigating whether the UK government failed to ensure the insurance market was properly audited in line with EU law.

Pascoe said that, had the government done its job, he and hundreds of other investors would not have faced ruinous claims for asbestos-related illnesses because they would never have invested in the market.

He refused to pay his share of the losses, so Lloyd's pursued him through the UK bankruptcy courts.

Pascoe's lawyer advised him that an official statement from the Commission may well have persuaded the judge to put off the bankruptcy ruling.

This would have been pending the completion of the EU investigation.

Indeed, Pascoe's solicitor, James Barnett, had successfully argued for a formal consent order, seeking a statement from the Commission to confirm it was carrying out a serious inquiry into the issues raised by his client.

The order, which was agreed by lawyers acting for Lloyd's of London, was approved by the High Court of Justice in Bankruptcy on 24 October 2001.

In a letter to Pascoe's MEP, Rupert Perry, last month, Single Market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein confirmed that the executive was always ready to 'fully cooperate when it receives requests from national courts'.

But he insisted the Commission 'has not received any such request'.

European Voice has learned, however, that the Commission's secretariat, headed by David O'Sullivan, had decided the consent order was not admissible.

Its experts decreed that the order for further directions did not amount to a formal court order requiring the Commission to act.

Bolkestein's spokesman, Jonathan Todd, said the document did not meet the terms laid down by a 1990 ruling of the European Court of Justice covering such requests from national judges.

However, Pascoe says under the UK legal system the consent order was the only route available to him.

'There is no other document that exists,' he said.

Pascoe has been a thorn in the Commission's side since he tabled a complaint over Lloyd's in 1999.

He has badgered Bolkestein's department to speed up its investigations and claimed the slow pace of the probe highlighted the need for reform of the EU's infringements process.

But officials deny this is a factor in their apparent lack of willingness to help.

'However much sympathy we have with Mr Pascoe, all the Commission can do is take up the matter with the UK government,' said Todd.

'It is a matter of public record that we have taken up the case with the UK government - we have issued a press release,' he said.

The European Commission has been accused of failing to throw a legal lifeline to help the man who prompted its investigation into the Lloyd's of London affair, John Pascoe.