6 August 2014
Absolute farce!
£60-an-hour translator for English-speaking crooks
Three Romanian cash machine crooks
insisted on £60-an-hour translator for their five-day trial, claiming they
could not follow the proceedings without her.
Then
when their interpreter failed to show up this week after the trial in May, they
confessed: “We speak better English than she does.”
The
translator had already cost the over-stretched courts at least £1,400.
Details
emerged at Gloucester Crown Court when Flavius Novac, 23, Costel Procopkiuc,
23, and Gheorghe Bechian 35, appeared for sentencing.
Judge
Jamie Tabor was about to delay the hearing when the men sent him a note. Judge
Tabor revealed: “I’ve had a message from them to say ‘We don’t want an
interpreter because we speak better English than she does’.”
Novac
was jailed for 14 months, Procopkiuc received two years and nine months and
Bechian, said to be the ringleader, was sentenced to three years.
Justice
Minister Lord Faulks said: “The Government has taken steps to ensure the system
provides value for taxpayers. Since we introduced a new interpreting contract
in 2012 we have reduced costs by £27million.”
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