Burden of Proof?

Okay, let me state from the off that I won't be naming names here, that's not because I don't want to but because stuff on the net has a nasty habit of turning up later and biting your arse (and worse). I mean how can I ever forget my comment on Nigella Lawson on the BBC Television Board turning up in the Daily Mail television pages?

Anyway yesterday afternoon a female colleague of mine and I were discussing a well known businessman in our area and it turned out that we had both acted for him and different times some thirty years ago - I was a very junior audit clerk at the time working on his audit whilst my colleague was working in another practice that had financial dealings with him. In the course of our conversation the name of a very well known third party came up and she told me a story about this man and our mutual client being the subject of rumours about money laundering - although at the time it wasn't called that. It then transpired that we both knew other people who knew the same stories and that rather than being a closed secret it appears to be a very open secret. Not only that but other parties are involved as well.

Anyway fast forward some twenty five years and now we both know somebody else who is involved with the administration of the company concerned and guess what, the allegations are still being talked about. It now transpires that the police are also aware of the rumours but can't find anybody who can come forward and provide enough evidence for the CPS to make a case out of it, one of the original parties is now dead, the other is a media favourite and everything else would be considered rumour.

So far from not talking about it, for fear of being ridiculed, everybody who knows about it has been talking about it but very quietly.