PCC Anthony Stansfeld used work email to warn man over computer hard drives

Police and Crime Commissioner Anthony Stansfeld sent a warning email on behalf of Michelle Young to a man who is refusing to give her computer hard drives relating to her former husband’s business.

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The case has nothing to do with the Thames Valley and no one involved lives in the area.

Mr Stansfeld has told the Oxford Mail he has no personal relationship with Ms Young and the reason he got involved was because ‘police do not investigate fraud well’.

Michelle Young has previously made national newspaper headlines because of her ex-husband Scot Young, who is now dead.

Mr Young was a Scottish property developer who made his fortune in the 1980s and at the height of his success was reportedly worth £2 billion.

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Mr and Mrs Young were married for 11 years, from 1995 until 2006, when they began to get divorced.

However the divorce then dragged on for another eight years. During this time Ms Young tried to get millions of pounds out of her husband in a divorce settlement, but Mr Young claimed consistently he had lost the bulk of his fortune and was actually in debt.

He had declared bankruptcy, even spending time in prison for refusing to disclose his finances to the court.

The court finally ordered Mr Young to pay his wife £26m, but it is understood no money was ever handed over.

In 2014, Mr Young died. The 52-year-old was found impaled on the railings outside a London flat where he was staying, after apparently falling from the fourth floor.

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Ms Young and the couple’s two daughters have said in other newspapers that they are convinced he was murdered and the coroner at the time ruled there was insufficient evidence to conclude that it had been suicide.

Ms Young has now spent nearly 12 years trying to uncover what she claims are his missing millions.

In October this year, a man called Michael Murrin emailed the Oxford Mail saying that he had been hired by Michelle Young to retrieve two computer hard drives which contained information about her husband’s assets.

However, Mr Murrin said that, having retrieved the drives, there was then a disagreement over payment, so he had refused to hand them over.

Then, on October 7, to his complete surprise, Mr Murrin received an email about the disagreement from Thames Valley Police and Crime Commissioner Anthony Stansfeld.

In the email, seen by the Oxford Mail, Mr Stansfeld told Mr Murrin: “I have taken an interest in the case of Michelle Young. Unless you have a signed contract with Ms Young which shows a clear contract with her, I suggest you hand back the hard drives to her before this becomes a police matter.

“As far as I can see, you may be able to show otherwise, this appears to me to be extortion.”

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Mr Murrin replied to Mr Stansfeld the following day, asking why he had got involved in the case and accusing him of ‘abusing his office by issuing threats of criminal investigation’.

Mr Murrin then contacted the Oxford Mail in order to make the public aware of what Mr Stansfeld had done, and the Oxford Mail has now spoken to the commissioner.

Mr Stansfeld, whose job is to control police budgets which allocate funding to areas such as fraud, told the Oxford Mail he sent the email to Mr Murrin because Ms Young asked him to help, but he claimed to not know her well.

Speaking on the phone, he said: “The trouble is, police do not investigate fraud well.

“I run a victim group and I do my best to support victims.

“I do not have a personal relationship with Ms Young – I have met hundreds of people.

“I have never met her [Michelle Young], she is a member of the consortium I go to their meetings in London.

“I have no financial interest in Ms Young – Ms, Mr, I have no idea.”

Mr Stansfeld also added: “I have hundreds of emails, but I don’t always pass them on to police.”

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Despite claiming never to have met Ms Young, photos and videos on the internet show Mr Stansfeld sat next to Ms Young on a panel of an organisation called the International Tribunal for Natural Justice (ITNJ) – which describes itself as ‘a court for the people and by the people’.

The subject being discussed by the panel on that occasion was fraud.

Talking to this paper, Ms Young described Anthony Stansfeld as ‘a hero’, and added: “Anthony is helping as many people as he can.

“He is a very good man.”

She refused to discuss the case further.

Despite Ms Young’s endorsement of the PCC, when the Oxford Mail spoke to Mr Stansfeld for this article, he also threatened that if the paper ran this article he would refuse to co-operate with any future articles, saying: “I am not going to be open with you in the future if you run this story.”

Mr Murrin has since made a complaint to the Home Office and Home Secretary Priti Patel about Mr Stansfeld’s actions.

On November 7, the Home Office replied to Mr Murrin, saying it was ‘unable to respond’ to the allegations about Mr Stansfeld, and said if he wanted to make a complaint about the Police and Crime Commissioner, he should write to Mr Stansfeld’s office directly.

The Oxford Mail also contacted the Thames Valley Police and Crime Panel, which is supposed to hold the commissioner accountable for his decisions, to ask if anyone had made a complaint to it about this case, or if it was interested in the information the Oxford Mail had.

The panel responded saying it had not received any complaints about the incident, and said if the Oxford Mail wanted to make an official complaint it should write to Mr Stansfeld’s office.

Police and crime commissioners are voted in by members of the public and stand as candidates for political parties.

Mr Stansfeld was the first PCC to be elected for the Thames Valley in 2012, standing as a Conservative candidate.

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He and his deputy, Matthew Barber, have to follow a code of conduct – which they both agree to when signing up.

There are seven main rules which they have to follow: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership.

As part of the code, both the PCC and the deputy had to agree to: “Not to use the resources of the elected local policing body improperly for my personal benefit or for the benefit of myself, my friends, or any other person in relation to any business interest of mine.”

The PCC is held accountable by the Police and Crime panel for the Thames Valley, which is made up of 18 local councillors from across Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire.

At time of going to print, the panel is not thought to be investigating Mr Stansfeld’s using his professional email account to intervene in Michelle Young’s case.