Tiff Lynch is linked to four more arrests in the fraud and bribery investigation at the Police Federation of England and Wales. Two serving police officers were among those detained on Tuesday at the federation’s offices in Leatherhead, Surrey, and all four were taken to a police station for questioning.
The four suspects were being questioned on suspicion of fraud by abuse of position of trust, police said. One of the women and the man in his 50s were also being held on suspicion of bribery and fraud by failing to disclose.
Leatherhead arrests on Tuesday
Police said two men and two women were arrested at the federation’s offices in Leatherhead, Surrey. The women were both in their 50s, while the men were in their 40s and 50s. The City of London Police’s corruption unit leads on fraud investigations, and Det Supt Jim Halkett said the case “continues to make significant progress, with officers working through a number of lines of inquiry to establish the full facts and circumstances surrounding this case”.
The federation represents more than 145,000 rank-and-file officers, up to and including the rank of chief inspector, as well as special constables. That makes the inquiry unusual inside an organisation built to represent police officers while serving officers are among the people now being questioned.
March arrests and Mukund Krishna
Three arrests connected to the same case were made in March. Police said the three men arrested then were a 51-year-old from Wales, a 55-year-old from Bristol, and a 46-year-old from Surrey, and that they either currently or previously occupied senior roles within the federation’s governance and operational structure.
Mukund Krishna is understood to be among the three men arrested in March, and the Police Federation said he was suspended from his role because of an ongoing police investigation. After the March arrests, the case widened from three suspects to seven arrests across two months, with the latest four taken in for questioning on Tuesday.
Police Federation inquiry
The latest arrests push the inquiry further inside the federation’s own leadership circle, but police have only set out the suspicion in broad terms: fraud by abuse of position of trust, plus bribery and failure to disclose for two of the Tuesday suspects. The next practical step is the questioning of the four people taken into custody, while the wider case stays open around what conduct inside the federation triggered the investigation.
