East End boy whose family fled Bangladesh conflict wins £76k scholarship to Eton

Pic:Motivated: Maheraj Ahmed with his mother Rani, sister Sanzida and brother Tanzir, says he hopes to one day become a heart surgeon.
Educational reporter(wp/es):

A teenager born in Bangladesh who lives in an East End council flat will follow in the footsteps of Princes William and Harry after winning a place at Eton.

Maheraj Ahmed, 15, will take his place in the hallowed halls of Britain’s most famous school on a £76,000 scholarship next September.

Maheraj, who goes to Cumberland School in Plaistow, will join the sixth form at Eton to study for A-levels in history, chemistry, biology and physics next September, after coming through a three-day assessment at the Berkshire school which included three entrance exams, seven interviews and a public debate.

He shares a three-bedroom flat in Barkingside with his father Sharif Uddin, mother Rani Begum, and a younger sister and brother. He said: “People would not think that I would have much in common with the boys at Eton but I did not find them stuck up at all, they just want to do well in life, that is all I want. 

“The only difference is my motivation is maybe stronger than theirs. My family and I have had a hard life. Going to Eton will give me a chance to make our lives better.”

The family left Bangladesh in 2007 to escape civil unrest. Maheraj said: “East London is a tough place to grow up. There are lots of problems here. My mum will not let me go out after dark because of the social problems we have here. We have had to move around a lot, to different parts of London, sometimes a long way from my school, which means a lot of ­travelling.

He added: “I do feel very grateful to this country for allowing my family and I to come here. I want to repay that by becoming a hard-working member of society who can contribute in a positive way. I want to study medicine, hopefully at Oxford or Cambridge, and become a heart surgeon. I want to give something back.”

Maheraj, whose parents do not have jobs, was mentored throughout the application process by his head­teacher, Simon Elliott. Maheraj said: “The second I knew I had been accepted by Eton I knew my life had changed beyond all recognition. What Mr Elliott and my school have done can never really be repaid.

“I can’t imagine any school in the East End or any state school where you have your own mentor, who works with you every day, who pushes you and is willing you to succeed. Every time I feel tired, I think of how much Mr Elliott has helped me. I did not want to let him down.”

Mr Elliott said: “Maheraj has set the bar for others to follow. He teaches them that these kinds of opportunities are not out of their reach.”

End wall of silence that helps gangs thrive, says top prosecutor

Crime reporter(wp/es):

London's top murder prosecutor today appealed for an end to the “wall of silence” that is protecting gang killers from justice.

Julius Capon warned that a lack of  co-operation within some communities was hindering efforts to put murderers behind bars. He said cases affected by the refusal of witnesses to provide evidence included shootings at venues where hundreds of people had been present. 

Others included fatal stabbings in which friends of the victim — as well as those linked to the perpetrator —had refused to testify despite being at the scene. Mr Capon, who leads a 14-strong CPS team of homicide prosecutors, said they were striving to overcome the problem by using CCTV, phone tracking and other evidence to prove offenders’ guilt and had managed to increase the number of convictions and their success rate in recent months. 

But he said even more guilty verdicts could be obtained with greater public support and it was time for those in communities affected by gang crime to “stand up and be counted” to stop killers staying free.

Mr Capon’s comments follow the publication of Met figures showing that only about one in 10 violent knife crimes in the capital between the start of 2016 and the end of June this year had so far led to a charge. 

‘Everyone looked the other way’

The refusal of witnesses to testify allowed the killer of a 24-year-old student to go unpunished, a prosecutor said.

Victim Chleve Massi, pictured, whose distraught sister later killed herself by jumping off a ferry, was shot moments after walking into a party at the Sark Tower block in Thamesmead in February 2015. 

Scion Fogah-Brown, 26, was jailed for eight years in January for possessing a firearm but was found not guilty of murder at the Old Bailey after claiming that someone else opened fire. 

One of Julius Capon’s colleagues, lawyer Sarah Dale, who has dealt with 50 cases since joining the London homicide team, said: “Nobody saw it apparently. Everybody was looking the other way. We couldn’t get a single person to say who it was.”

In more than 2,500 of the unsolved offences, a key factor in the failure of the inquiry had been the refusal of the victim to testify against an attacker. Many further cases have similarly run into the sand because of the failure of other witnesses to give evidence.

Mr Capon said the lack of assistance was “a big problem” and added: “The wall of silence that we often get in gang cases is difficult to break a way through. We’ve had shootings in crowded nightclubs but hundreds of people there say they haven’t seen anything. 

“Particularly in gang crime, you often find that the victim’s group don’t want to give evidence, just as much as the defendants don’t want to give an account. The message is if you as a community are worried about what is happening, someone needs to stand up and be counted for us to be able to bring people to justice.”

Mr Capon said that prosecutors and police used CCTV footage, mobile phone “cell site” tracking, automatic number plate recognition cameras, social media posts and other evidence to bring charges. They also sometimes use a “reluctant witness” procedure to compel them to testify, although this could fail if the person chose to lie.

But he added: “We’d rather have an eye-witness who says ‘he did it’ but we don’t often get that in murder cases. We also have to bear in mind that in a lot of those gang cases people were wearing scarves or masks so identification is always going to be difficult at the point of the murder.” 

To help witnesses give evidence, prosecutors can apply to the courts for “special measures” which allow people to testify anonymously. They can also be taken to and from court by police and given further protection to ensure they are kept safe and their identities remain secret. The homicide team also meets every bereaved family to explain any charging decisions and what will happen in court. 

The conviction rate for homicide cases in London fluctuates monthly and fell as low as 54.3 per cent in May. But it has risen since to above 80 per cent. Mr Capon said that another reason why convictions were sometimes not possible was that knife homicide victims in gang cases had often been carrying a knife themselves. This allowed the perpetrator to plead self-defence and either escape charges or potentially be cleared by a jury. 

He added: “There are cases where we have been unable to rebut self-defence. That can be quite difficult to have to explain to a bereaved family.”

Britain's 'Big Four' accounting firms face major overhaul

Business correspondent(wp/Reuters):
Britain’s “Big Four” accounting firms face a radical shake-up from proposals to reduce their hold on the market for auditing companies’ books, which would also force them to separate their audit and advisory businesses.

The plans, published on Tuesday in two government-requested reports, mark the most ambitious attempt yet to reform the accounting industry, dominated by EY, Deloitte, KPMG and PwC, which check the accounts of 341 of the top 350 listed companies in Britain.

Politicians have criticized a “cosy” audit sector and its “timid” regulator of failing to foresee the collapse of retailer BHS and construction company Carillion.

In a report commissioned by the business ministry, John Kingman, chairman of insurer Legal & General (LGEN.L), said the current regulator - the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) - should be replaced by a new watchdog with new management, stronger powers and a competition remit. It would be funded by a mandatory levy on accounting firms.

“We need to build a new house,” Kingman told reporters.

The new watchdog - the Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority - would directly regulate auditors, be forward looking and draw a line under a creaky, leaky, ramshackle and “excessively consensual” FRC perceived to be too close to the Big Four, Kingman said.

The new watchdog would also have powers to pursue any company director if it found wrongdoing.

Business minister Greg Clark said the government would implement Kingman’s recommendations to replace the FRC.

FRC Chief Executive Stephen Haddrill has already said he would step down next year. The board of the new regulator would decide whether to keep on current FRC staff.

FRC Chairman Win Bischoff said Kingman had set a course for a stronger, new regulator to emerge.

AUDIT MARKET REVIEW

The other report by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) revealed the interim findings of its audit market review, which it began a few months ago.

The CMA’s report stopped short of calling for a break-up of the Big Four but proposed putting their audit and advisory services into separate operating entities.

It also proposed that companies should use two accounting firms to audit their books.

“We propose that FTSE350 audit should be carried out jointly by two firms, at least one of which should be from outside the Big Four,” the CMA said.

The subsidiaries of a company would be divided up among the two auditors, with both approving the consolidated accounts.

New laws would be needed to implement the CMA proposals.

“We are supportive of change that enhances audit quality and maintains the competitive position of the UK as we prepare to leave the EU,” said Deloitte senior partner David Sproul.

EY said it would support workable measures that genuinely improved audit quality to rebuild society’s trust in business.

“INTRACTABLE PROBLEMS”

European Union and British reforms over the past two years to increase competition in the audit market have ended up with companies switching between the Big Four rather than hiring smaller rivals like Grant Thornton or BDO.

“These intractable problems may take some years to sort out,” said CMA Chairman Andrew Tyrie. “If it turns out that the proposals are not far-reaching enough, the CMA will persist until the problems are addressed.”

Kingman said a new regulator would bring an end to current industry self-regulation through professional bodies like the ICAEW. FRC oversight of actuaries should be moved to the Bank of England, he said.

Joint audits are estimated to cost about 20 percent more than having a single auditor.

The CMA said if joint audits did not work, a possible alternative would to be ensure that some major audit contracts were only available to non-Big Four accountants - a step the industry proposed in the summer.

Under the CMA’s proposals for a separation of the accounting firms audit and advisory services, the audit business would have its own board, staff and profit pool for bonuses so it could focus on quality book-keeping.

Other recommendations include a “duty of alert” that requires auditors to tell the regulator if they have serious concerns about a company’s viability. The CMA recommendations are open for public consultation until mid-January.

UK to implement plans for no-deal Brexit in full - May's spokesman

Political reporter,London(wp/Reuters):

Britain will begin to put into place plans for an exit from the European Union without any deal in place, with the public and businesses told to prepare now for the eventuality, Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokesman said on Tuesday.

A meeting of May’s senior ministerial team agreed that the time had come to ramp up plans for a no-deal Brexit, the spokesman said, although he added that leaving the bloc in March next year with an agreement remained the most likely scenario.

“Cabinet agreed that, with just over three months until our exit from the European Union, we have now reached the point where we need to ramp up these preparations. This means we will now set in motion the remaining elements of our no-deal plans,” he said.