The making of an investigation
How headlines get made
Tonight, a story of mine about apparent corruption in the prison service has been published by the Times. It’s taken me almost a year. I’m bloody proud of it, and of shining a light on what happens (and what doesn’t) when senior people, like prison Governors, break the rules. I’m also very grateful to Matt Dathan of the Times, who’s worked on it with me. Without Matt this piece wouldn’t have got over the line.
Anyway, go read it, and then come back here.
Right. Back? Great. So now you know - Bobby Cunningham, Michael Nascimento, the mystery of the police investigation which never was.
I thought it might be interesting to share some ‘behind the scenes’, of how an investigation like this works. I’m not going to identify my sources. They’re brave people who’ve taken risks to act in the public interest. But I will try to show you ‘how the sausage is made’.
I first heard the rumours about Bobby Cunningham last spring. Staff and prisoners at Wandsworth knew that the Security Governor was suddenly suspended in the summer of 2023. All sorts of reasons were suggested for this, but the consensus was that he’d been allowed to retire on medical grounds after some kind of misconduct.
Interesting, of course. But I hear rumours all the time. At that point it wasn’t even close to being a story I could write. So I noted down the name in my big database of interesting rumours, and thought no more of it until a former officer at Wandsworth contacted me. They’d worked in the prison in 2023, and provided a lot of interesting colour about Bobby, his reputation amongst staff and the state of Security under his leadership. That was particularly interesting. The source explained to me that Cunningham’s Security Department had ceased to function. Not entirely his fault, but because of short-staffing, on most days every Security Officer was seconded to cover shortages on the wings. This meant that Security weren’t responding to any intelligence they received from officers across the prison and weren’t searching cells known to be linked to contraband. Predictably, according to my source, staff across the prison soon stopped bothering to file intelligence.
As an aside: can this be linked to Daniel Khalife’s escape from Wandsworth in September 2023? I don’t know. We need to see the Bristow Report, commissioned in the aftermath. Now Khalife has been sentenced there’s no need to hold back on publication (other than sparing the blushes of senior people within HMPPS).
My source knew their stuff. They also had a theory about the reason Cunningham had been dismissed - they believed he’d improperly sent someone to an open prison. They also talked about his overly friendly relationships with a particular group of prisoners on ‘H Wing’. This was very interesting to me - I’d been a prisoner on H Wing for most of my time at Wandsworth. I knew the group. They’d had a lot of privileges, and often seemed especially friendly with the most senior prison staff. The source believed that Cunningham had arranged for one of those men to be moved to open conditions. They also provided a new name. Apparently Sally Hill, a head office anti-corruption head, had personally been involved in suspending Cunningham. That wouldn’t happen for everyday incompetence.
It still wasn’t enough though. So I asked around in my network of current and former prison staff. Sure enough, one had a friend who knew about the case. ‘It’s one rule for us, and another rule for the governors’ they told me. ‘If one of us frontline officers is caught bringing contraband in they throw the book at us. We lose our job and probably go to jail. But when it’s a governor they keep it quiet’. We talked about Cunningham, and finally they showed me screenshots from Prison Service’s National Offender Management Information System (NOMIS). In the records I saw a name I recognised. Michael Nascimento. He and I had been inmates on Wandsworth’s H Wing together in 2020. Everyone knew Nascimento. He had a nice single cell down on the ground floor. He was allowed out of his cell whenever he wanted. He ran the deep cleaning team, who went everywhere in the prison. He always seemed to be particularly friendly with staff, especially governors.
Nascimento had run a ‘boiler room’, defrauding 170 investors of £2.8 million. The conspirators specifically targeted elderly and vulnerable people. As the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) says, he ‘was the controlling mind, instigator and the main beneficiary’ of a fraud in which ‘a series of boiler room companies which led to the loss of more than £2.8 million of investors’ money’. To bring him and his collaborators to justice the FCA conducted its ‘second-biggest criminal prosecution, involving four million documents, 142 witnesses, analysis of 65 UK bank accounts and five years of investigators’ time’. The result, in 2018, was multiple prison sentences, including 11 years for Michael Nascimento. He also received a Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) order in June 2021. This required him to repay almost £1 million of his victims’ money before 21st December that year. Nascimento only repaid half that money, and so on the 16th December 2022 he was given a ‘default sentence’ of almost another four years.
At that time Wandsworth prison had a rule that anyone who owed more than £200,000 on a confiscation order would not be moved to open conditions. Despite this, on 24th July 2023 Michael Nascimento was moved to an open prison, HMP Kirkham. How did this happen? The answer is in a NOMIS entry from June 2023. The officer completing the entry had been asked to assess Michael Nascimento for open conditions. The system asked them to comment on whether he was ‘likely to abscond or abuse open conditions?’. The entry states that he ‘has an outstanding balance of £541,098.71. This was confirmed by the (LCCC) Confiscation Unit and the (FCA) Financial Conduct Authority.’ The entry goes on to say that on 6th April 2023, the FCA advised that ‘Mr Nascimento has not made any further payments towards the confiscation order, so the balance remains unsatisfied’ and that ‘a number of overseas assets are yet to be realised to satisfy the confiscation order and there are concerns that Mr Nascimento would likely interfere with those assets if released/re-categorised.’
Despite this entry making it clear that Michael Nascimento should not be sent to an open prison, it concludes with the statement that ‘HMP Wandsworth deputy governor Robert Cunningham stated that Mr Nascimento should be granted category D status’. The officer who completed that review knew the decision was wrong, but found themselves overruled by Bobby Cunningham. Why did a deputy governor, the Security Governor do this? It breached prison policy and went against the FCA’s advice.
I should make it clear that there’s no evidence Cunningham received a payment or any favour for this recategorisation.
I spoke with John Podmore, who ran a Prison Service anti-corruption unit in the 2000s. He said ‘I have been dealing with prison corruption for 40 years and cash for transfers is nothing new. We used to call it ‘accelerated promotion’. Given that the prison service has ceded control in many establishments to organised crime I would expect the practice to be on the increase.’
In any event, shortly after arriving at HMP Kirkham, an officer there realised the error and Nascimento was sent back to closed conditions. Shortly afterwards Cunningham was suspended from HMP Wandsworth before being dismissed on grounds of ‘medical inefficiency’. This would have entitled him to compensation. The Prison Service then investigated and found at least six suspicious recategorisations which Bobby Cunningham had directed. A disciplinary hearing was held which he did not attend, after which Cunningham was dismissed for gross misconduct. That was in the summer of 2023. When I had put all these pieces together, it was January 2025. Cunningham had never been charged.
I went to the MOJ for comment. On the 9th of January this year they confirmed to me that they investigated recategorisations linked to Bobby Cunningham, and insisted that ‘there were no concerns found with the legitimacy of the…categorisations that were reviewed and none were reversed’. When I asked them if this meant they believed that Michael Nascimento’s recategorisation was legitimate the press officer told me that he was outside the scope of the investigation.
The MOJ also told me they’d referred the matter to the police, who ‘undertook a criminal investigation and their enquiries led to no further criminal action being taken’. I almost published this story at that point. But something felt wrong. Why hadn’t Cunningham been prosecuted? The words of that Wandsworth officer rang in my ears - ‘it’s one rule for them, and another rule for us’. There were other details which felt off. The MOJ couldn’t tell me which police force they’d reported Cunningham to, nor whether they’d briefed ministers at the time.
I spoke to the National Crime Agency, the Metropolitan Police and another police force covering the area where Cunningham lives. It took a while, but all three forces confirmed to me that they had not investigated this case. I spoke with the Crown Prosecution Service, to establish if any police officers had formally or informally discussed Bobby Cunningham with them. The press officer checked with the relevant teams and told me that they’d never heard of the case and ‘we’d remember that one’.
So that was the position on 9th January 2025. The MOJ claimed they’d reported Cunningham to the police. But no police force which could reasonably have had jurisdiction over this case had heard of him. Nor had the Crown Prosecution Service. This was particularly odd as even on the basis of the evidence I had, John Podmore believed there was a ‘prima facie case for prosecution’. The MOJ and the police would have access to far more evidence.
I wasn’t sure how to proceed. Thankfully Matt Dathan of the Times was incredibly helpful, using his contacts to firm up the story as well. I wouldn’t have finished this investigation without him.
Then on Monday 3rd February the MOJ told me that ‘Bobby Cunningham was dismissed and is no longer an employee of HMPPS. Any matters that relate to a police investigation are for the police’. The MOJ also informed me that it was the Metropolitan Police they passed this matter to.
I understand the MOJ believes that the Metropolitan Police has indicated their investigation into matters within HMPPS has closed and that the Prison Service is satisfied that it has supported the police with their enquiries. However the Metropolitan police have told me they did not handle this case.
And that was that. I had my piece. I gave Cunningham the opportunity to reply to the accusations, but he didn’t before the piece was published. And here we are.
I’ll be continuing to look at corruption in the prison service, and hope to keep hearing from brave whistleblowers.