No apology from the Telegraph

The Telegraph reports the jailing of the Natwest three with no mention of its own involvement in the campaign against their extradition. The problem for the paper is that when white collar criminal assert that what they have done is normal business practice, it tends to agree with them. When 'normal business practice' tends to be criminal, it has some explaining to do.
Of course the Telegraph itself was a victim of wholesale plunder from Conrad Black, who asserted that his criminality was normal business practice.

Sorry for the Spin?

The Guardian tells us that the Natwest Three, sentenced to 37 months in a US jail, have expressed remorse for their part in an Enron-related fraud. They don't appear to have apologised for the outrageous PR campaign they ran against their extradition.

At the time of their extradition to face trial, the Natwest Three were portrayed by a well-orchestrated publicity campaign as victims of judicial over-reach by the US. A new treaty lowering the hurdles for extradition to the US caused unrest among British business and political leaders.

Critics of their treatment included the CBI's then director-general Sir Digby Jones, who said the trio posed "no threat to society" yet faced being "banged up in a US prison with rapists and drug addicts". When they were flown to the US two years ago, Liberty's Shami Chakrabarti described it as a case of "first they came for the white-collar worker, then they came for me".

But some legal experts now argue that the three bankers were poor examples of this extradition controversy. Luke Tolaini of Clifford Chance, who chairs the CBI's working group on extradition, said: "In the UK, we have relatively low barriers to extradition to the US and a relatively unequal relationship with the US. That remains a concern.

"But that was not an issue that really applied in this case because it seems that the evidence provided in the Natwest Three's case was significant and would have complied with the old extradition regime."

NatWest 3 guily after all?

The Guardian is reporting that the Natwest Three are on the brink of a plea agreement which could involve an admission of wrongdoing in return for a lighter charges from the US government.

As the Guardian reminds us:

In the run-up to their extradition in July last year, the trio orchestrated a high-profile political campaign alleging that they were the innocent victims of an unjust treaty which allowed America to seize British citizens on the basis of scant evidence.

Among their supporters were senior Conservative politicians and business figures such as British Airways' chairman Martin Broughton, the retail tycoon Philip Green, Glaxo SmithKline's chairman Sir Christopher Gent and the London Stock Exchange chairman, Chris Gibson-Smith.

The trio staunchly maintained that they had done nothing wrong. Critics, however, pointed to correspondence seized by prosecutors in which the bankers discussed keeping their controversial dealings with Enron under wraps and, at one point, referred to their actions as "robbery" of an Enron off-balance sheet venture. Enron's disgraced former chief financial officer, Andrew Fastow, was scheduled to be the prosecution's star witness against them.

Perhaps there was some evidence after all.