Bhatti& Ors v R.

A single conspiracy may comprise individual agreements made at different times, even where participants do not know every conspirator or the full scope of the scheme. The evidence must, however, support a shared unlawful design and knowledge that the scheme extends beyond the participant’s own illegal act. Similar but separate unlawful designs are insufficient.

Facilitating deceptive entry and facilitating deceptive residence may form one conspiracy where both further the same criminal purpose. A charge need not be divided merely because the substantive immigration offence may be committed by those alternative means. Credit-reference data voluntarily disclosed for crime detection or prosecution under Data Protection Act 1998 provisions was not unlawfully obtained simply because special-procedure production powers under Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 existed.

At the Crown Court at Harrow, the three appellants were convicted of conspiracy to facilitate breaches of immigration law by non-EU citizens, contrary to section 1(1) of the Criminal Law Act 1977. The prosecution alleged that they ran Middlesex College as a sham institution which supplied dishonest documents enabling foreign nationals to enter or remain in the United Kingdom as students. Two money-laundering counts were withdrawn from the jury.

The appellants appealed against conviction. The first ground challenged the single, rolled-up conspiracy count, contending that arrangements concerning entry and arrangements concerning leave to remain were separate conspiracies. The proposed second ground relied on newly disclosed evidence that police had obtained credit-reference information before searches later declared unlawful by the Divisional Court in R (Bhatti) v Croydon Magistrates Court [2011] 1 WLR 948, [2010] EWHC 522 (Admin). It raised the lawfulness of that disclosure and possible exclusion under section 78(1) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.

1. Appeal dismissed. The court granted permission to advance the second ground, but rejected both grounds.

2. The governing inquiry for a single conspiracy is whether the evidence establishes a common unlawful purpose or design. It must be a shared design, rather than a series of similar but separate arrangements. A participant need not know every other conspirator or every method of execution, but must know of a scheme extending beyond that participant’s own illegal act. The court applied R v Griffiths [1966] 1 QB 589, R v Mehta [2012] EWCA Crim 282, and SFO v Papachristos and others [2014] EWCA Crim 1863.

3. It was open to the jury to infer that Middlesex College was known as a provider of misleading documents for persons seeking either initial entry or continued residence, and that participating students knew their own arrangements formed part of that wider enterprise. The individual substantive acts might be similar, but the purpose was the same: to use the college’s documents to circumvent immigration control. The trial judge therefore correctly held that the evidence supported one conspiracy.

4. The availability of entry and residence as alternative ways of committing the substantive offence under section 25 of the Immigration Act 1971 did not require two conspiracy counts. Nor was the prosecution confined to charging separate substantive offences for named individuals. R v Dhall [2013] EWCA Crim 1610 showed that course was permissible, not mandatory. The proposed summing-up complaint was artificial on these facts and disclosed no arguable ground.

5. The Experian disclosure was not unlawful. The evidence showed that credit applicants had agreed to data-sharing for crime detection, prevention and prosecution, and that the accredited police investigator sought the information for those purposes. The court rejected the contention that the prosecution had circumvented Schedule 1 to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. Having reached that conclusion, it was unnecessary to decide exclusion under section 78(1). The court added that exclusion would not have followed, since the most damaging evidence of fees had been obtained independently.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) — dismissed the appellants’ appeals against conviction: [2015] EWCA Crim 1305.
• Crown Court at Harrow — on 22 March 2013, a majority jury convicted the appellants of conspiracy to facilitate breaches of immigration law by non-EU citizens. On 26 March 2013, Bhatti and Akhtar were each sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment and Muhammad to four years’ imprisonment.