Foundation of Criminal Law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Foundation of Criminal Law - Essay Example It is interesting to note that in this case, the Fraud Act of 2006 was not the statute used. The prosecutors used the Theft Act of 1968 instead. The crime in this case arose from dishonestly appropriating â€Å"property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.†1 Lord Hanningfield tried to defend himself on the grounds that the appropriation or his claims of expenditures were within the law, clearly trying to dispute the â€Å"dishonestly† element of theft as a crime. In Section 2 (1)(a), it was stated that a person’s appropriation is not regarded as dishonest â€Å"if he appropriates the property in the belief that he has in law the right to deprive the other of it, on behalf of himself or of a third person.†2 The defense also fall within Section 2 (1)(c), wherein there was consent to appropriate the property as the peer spends the money thinking that county would have consented him to appropriate it in the way that he has done, especially that many of his peers also do the same. However, the conditions or elements required by the law were deemed sufficient for the offense and this is not surprising. Lord Hanningfield dishonestly appropriated the â€Å"property†, which is, in this case, the money belonging to the Essex County Council, which he represents. There was dishonesty involved according to the standards set by the law because there was a clear and willful misappropriation for personal gain. The averaging out of expenditure was a weak argument in light of several evidences that showed false accounting. The dishonest appropriation occurred when he knowingly and repeatedly deprived his county of its property, which according to Section 4, property includes money. Article 2: Overvaluation Fraud Mary-Jane Rathie, a senior surveyor was accused of five cases of fraud for allegedly overvaluing properties for a certain Joanne Pier, who, for her part, used the dishonestly inflated valuati ons to secure mortgages from the Bank of Scotland. Five properties were involved, with most of them allegedly valued twice as much as their actual worth. The prosecution cited that out of the ?10 million of loans that Ms. Pier was able to secure, ?9.5 million relied on Rathie’s valuations. The claim was that Mrs. Rathie overvalued Pier’s properties in exchange for gifts such as cars and money. The prosecutors cited the cars Bentley-Continental and Range Rover as well as a total of ?900,000 in cheques and money transfers as evidences for the fraud. The report did not cite the specific type of fraud that Rathie was accused of. It is clear, however, that the case being heard was that of fraud by representation as stated in Section 2 of the Fraud Act of 2006. In Section 2 of the statute, the main element of fraud by false representation is dishonesty committed by false representation in order to gain something for oneself. The perpetrator provides false representation by p roviding untrue or misleading information in order to make a gain. The testimonies of independent surveyor in regard to the severely inflated amount of properties valued were central to the prosecution’s case for dishonesty. This is further supported by the string of gifts made to Mrs. Rathie within the period by which the valuations and Ms. Pier’s loan were made. Based on the summary of the case, as reported in the article, the elements of fraud under the false representat