Neil Wilby Media

A central figure in the cause of an alleged miscarriage of justice dubbed ‘The biggest failed fraud prosecution in the history of the British police service’ has been very recently caught out attempting to mislead a court and circuit judge for a second time.

Some eight years or so after the first occasion at Bradford Crown Court in 2015, when Leeds-born Ralph Christie was sent to prison for seven years after a jury found him guilty of five of the nineteen charges on the indictment. The charges upon which he was acquitted were the most serious: Perverting the course of justice, money laundering on a huge scale and theft.

Susan Watt, had, on her own admission, been one of the two star witnesses since the investigation that led to the trial began in July, 2009 (read more here).

The jury didn’t believe Mrs Watt, a bitter former employee in Christie’s property empire on the Greek island of Crete, where she also founded and edited a local newspaper for expatriates. The trial judge, His Honour Judge (HHJ) Jonathan Durham Hall QC, was also less than impressed with her witness box testimony and directed the same jury to treat her evidence with caution.

Seventeen months earlier, in October, 2013, Susan Watt failed to turn up at a criminal trial in Chania, Crete, where, after a two day trial before three senior criminal appeal judges, in which she was a principal prosecution witness, Ralph Christie was cleared on much the same charges he later faced at Bradford. She has always falsely maintained that no trial took place and the defendant was cleared by default. The court’s comprehensive written judgment puts that myth firmly to bed (read in full here).

Mrs Watt has never returned to the island since: Her absence most notable in civil proceedings which have followed the Christie acquittal. The latest hearing of which takes place later this month in Chania.

Thousands of miles away, in Exeter County Court on 1st September, 2023, HHJ Timothy Walsh handed down his judgment at the end of data breach proceedings that had dragged on for well over two years – and, essentially, found that Berry Pomeroy Parish Council (BPPC), where Mrs Watt acts in her capacity as Clerk, had caused a false allegation to be widely circulated against a local magistrate, Mrs Lucinda Ellicott, saying she had received ‘a harassment warning’ over email contact between the two.

The court also heard in written and oral submissions that Mrs Watt, apart from reading out the offending email to parishioners at a council meeting, had ‘maliciously’ added four addresses to an email that she had caused, in the names of two of her councillors, to be circulated to over seventy other recipients. The intention, it was further submitted, being to harm Mrs Ellicott’s reputation by adding the National Crime Agency, three newspaper editors in the area and the latter’s employer, a firm of solicitors in Torquay, where her husband is a Director.

In mitigation, Mrs Watt, the only Parish Council witness at an earlier hearing of the civil claim, said she had ‘allowed personal feelings had run away with her’. Her evidence in court, and in her witness statement, as at Bradford Crown Court, could most kindly be described as ‘unimpressive’.

Cllrs John Mills (BPCC Chair) and Gordon Page (Chair of neighbouring Marldon Parish Council, where Mrs Watt was also Clerk at the material time), in whose names the disputed email was nominally sent, did not appear or give written evidence.

Those ‘personal feelings’ have cost BPPC almost £2,000 in costs and damages, paid to Mrs Ellicott, and legal costs of their own believed to be in the region of £20,000. The Claimant has, however, yet to receive an apology over the data breach and the smear; an issue Lucinda is determined to pursue.

Viewed neutrally, through the lens of this journalist at least, local democracy appears to have been subverted to allow both Chairmen, and the Clerk, to settle scores with one, or more, critics of the Parish Council. Berry Pomeroy denied any wrongdoing right to the very end of the legal proceedings, backed by their £250,000 insurance cover.

An article published by Neil Wilby Media in October, 2018, which name-checked Susan Watt, had been located, via a Google search by Lucinda Ellicott, as concerns grew, locally, over the way that, firstly, the appointment of Mrs Watt to the positions of Clerk at Marldon and Berry Pomeroy had been handled and, more crucially, the autocratic and apparently unscrutinised ways in which those Parish Councils were being run by her. Particularly related to contracts and financial matters.

Basic due diligence by the appointing body responsible for filling the Clerk to the Parish Council vacancies should have taken them to the same place.

Mrs Ellicott was put in touch with Ralph Christie soon afterwards and he was able to provide her with documents and evidence that served to show that Susan Watt is demonstrably unfit to hold any public office. Much of that was reported in another Neil Wilby Media article headlined ‘Watt A Carry On’ published in June, 2021. It is a highly forensic piece of investigative journalism that sets out, carefully, seventeen lies or misrepresentations made by Mrs Watt about the Ralph Christie case.

It is, on any independent view, a most appalling catalogue of deceit. It stands unchallenged even after she, along with a number of parish, district and county councillors, was offered right of reply. Susan Watt, unsurprisingly, lost her job at troubled Marldon Parish Council soon afterwards, albeit with a pay-off after bullying allegations, but the outfall is felt still as there is recent history of up to four vacancies for elected Members on the same council.

But, remarkably, she is still in post at Berry Pomery, over two years after the publication of the ‘Watt A Carry On’ article, which can be read in full at this weblink. Every single person associated with the maintenance of that grotesque situation should look inward and question themselves, very seriously, as to whether they are fit to hold public office. None less than Cllr John Mills, who still sits as Chair at Berry Pomeroy.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), in a series of damning findings against the Clerk, in the course of identifying two data breaches, also observed that there was no acceptable policy or training in place at the parish councils. By their own admission, BPPC, in their pleaded Defence, did not complete a Data Protection Impact Assessment, have a designated data protection officer, report the breach to the ICO within 72 hours, remedy the breach, or take steps to retract or remove the data information in a timely manner, or at all.

By a quirk of fate, Ralph Christie has family who live in South Hams, the parent district of Berry Pomeroy, and he is emphatic about the role Mrs Watt played in the investigation that led to his conviction and a jail sentence:

“It is a fact that the British Consulate in Greece, West Yorkshire Police and the Crown Prosecution Service had all been informed, before the Greek criminal trial in 2013, at which I was acquitted, and at Bradford Crown Court in 2015 where I was convicted, that Sue Watt is a practiced liar and her so-called evidence of very large scale money laundering was, within my own knowledge, a money-making scheme for herself after she left my employment.

“It is my strongly held belief that she has never returned to Crete because she fears arrest by the Greek police over the lies she has told and the contempt she has shown to the court here. I sincerely hope that one day she will face that court from the dock”.

“I am pleased that Lucinda Ellicott, a very decent, genuine person in my experience, has got some justice in the civil courts, but not enough in my opinion, over her dealings with Watt and the Parish Councils. She has absolutely no right to still be drawing a single penny of public funds. Berry Pomeroy councillors should be absolutely ashamed themselves, each and every one of them”.

Susan Watt and Cllr Mills have both been offered right of reply. Bizarrely, and in yet another affront to local democracy, all emails to parish councillors have to be channelled through her.

UPDATE: Robert Watt, Susan’s husband and a former police officer, has made his views known on the matter, publicly. In a post on the Neil Wilby Media Facebook page he has commented: ‘You idiot’. As highlighted in the ‘Watt A Carry On’ article, Bob Watt has history as an internet troll. At least, on this occasion, he hasn’t hidden his views behind a fake, anonymous, female account.

Follow Neil Wilby on Twitter (here) and Neil Wilby Media on Facebook (here) for signposts to any updates.

Page last updated: Monday 18th September, 2023 at 13h15

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