Judge quits amid new allegations

A judge who escaped a retrial for mortgage fraud by claiming to be suicidal is being investigated by police on suspicion of legal aid fraud, it emerged last night after his resignation was announced by the lord chancellor.

Richard Gee, 57, has been paid more than £300,000 by the taxpayer while suspended for four years. He was tried in 1998 at the Old Bailey for a £1m mortgage scam allegedly committed while he was a solicitor. After a 76-day trial, the jury failed to reach a verdict and he escaped a second trial by producing medical evidence from psychiatrists that he was a suicide risk.

Since November 1995, when he was arrested, he has been suspended on full pay, rising this year to £92,810.

His defence cost £806,000, of which he is thought to have paid about £100,000, with the rest coming from legal aid.

A Metropolitan police spokesman said last night: "Officers from the fraud squad are carrying out an investigation into the falsifying of claims to get legal aid." Under the legal aid act 1988, it is an offence not to disclose full details of financial affairs which could have a bearing on the award of funds.

Police are thought to be looking into the ownership of properties in England, Portugal and America. They are also investigating allegations that he had a number of offshore accounts.

The lord chancellor's department said Lord Irvine had been considering whether evidence disclosed in Judge Gee's trial would have justified sacking him under statutory powers to dismiss a judge for misbehaviour, when he resigned on November 22.

It added that the lord chancellor had no power to prevent the former judge from collecting his pension at 65.

Judge Gee, who was a circuit judge at Middlesex crown court, pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to defraud banks and building societies by falsified mortgage deals, and obtaining services by deception.

The prosecution claimed he played a vital role in a string of "utterly bogus transactions" between 1980 and 1989.

Prosecutors alleged that he was involved in a plot to obtain mortgages on properties at residential interest rates and then let the properties to businesses at a profit. The law firm at which he was head of conveyancing acted for a group, led by a woman using a variety of names, which obtained large numbers of mortgages under false pretences, the prosecution claimed.

In October 1998, after the jury failed to agree on a verdict, the attorney general, John Morris, caused an outcry when he placed a permanent stay on any further prosecution.

The last judge dismissed for misbehaviour in modern times was Bruce Campbell in 1983 after being caught smuggling 125 litres of whisky and 9,000 cigarettes into Britain in his yacht. He kept his pension.