Convicted private investigator clients to be named by Monday

Insurance companies that hired private investigators convicted of unlawfully accessing personal data will be named by Monday.

MPs gave the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) the deadline to publish a list of the 102 law firms, insurance companies and celebrities that hired rogue investigators. If Soca fails to publish the list by then, parliament will publish it instead, MPs warned.

The Home Affairs Select Committee chairman Keith Vaz yesterday accused Soca officials of doing nothing to disrupt the illegal trade in personal information on business rivals and members of the public.

A Soca inquiry into four private investigators, who were sentenced to jail last year, had revealed 102 blue-chip clients who were never censured for commissioning the investigations.

Vaz said: “I am still puzzled, and the committee is baffled, how you could have been sitting on this evidence for four years.”

Soca gave the list of clients to the committee in July, but blocked its publication to protect the companies’ reputations as they may not have known about the illegal methods used by their contractors.

But Vaz said naming the companies would be in the public interest.

A Soca spokesman said it would seek legal advice and decide whether to publish the list by Friday