Guinness Share-trading Fraud - Principal Defendants and Sentences

Principal Defendants and Sentences

Ernest Saunders

Former Guinness chief executive. Jailed for 5 years, halved on appeal, for false accounting, conspiracy, and theft.

Jack Lyons

Financier. Fined £4m for theft and false accounting. Stripped of his knighthood.

Anthony Parnes

City Trader. Jailed for 30 months, reduced on appeal to 21 months, for false accounting and theft.

Gerald Ronson

Businessman and best known as a visible donor to charities. Jailed for a year, and fined £5m, for false accounting and theft.

"Guinness One" ended in Sept 1990 with guilty verdicts against all four men and jail sentences for Saunders (five years), Ronson (one year) and Parnes (two and a half years). Ronson was fined £5 million and Lyons £4 million. Ronson, Parnes and Lyons were all ordered to pay £440,000 in costs.

The common factor in this case was that the alleged crimes were committed by businessmen outside the banking world, though with extensive financial connections to the City of London. Parnes was their link man to the transactions. The nub of the case was whether the overall arrangements and inducements went too far in distorting the market.

Comments were passed by Peregrine Worsthorne, among others, in relation to the fact that three of the men were members of the Jewish-British community, while Saunders had a Jewish father and Boesky was Jewish. Some commentators have alleged a greater or lesser antisemitic component in the pursuit of the fraudsters. The Observer noted: "Many in the Anglo-Jewish community were made wary by aspects of the Guinness share-rigging scandal in the late Eighties. The fact that other, non-Jewish, businessmen were not called upon to justify their actions was widely noted and criticised at the time." However, the defendants in the second case also suffered loss, though they were acquitted.