Editorial: Professor Bill Tupman – a scholar and gentleman!

Citation

Rider OBE, B. (2023), "Editorial: Professor Bill Tupman – a scholar and gentleman!", Journal of Financial Crime, Vol. 30 No. 4, pp. 857-858. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFC-07-2023-308

In the UK and I dare say many other places, there remains little interest within the established academy for the serious and informed study of financial crime. A number of years ago I had a meeting with senior officials in the UK’s Cabinet Office and they bemoaned the fact that there were so few senior academicians in the UK able and willing to offer independent and credible advice to government in regard to the control and interdiction of financial crime. Indeed, this in part spurred us to publish recently A Research Agenda for Financial Crime (2022) Elgar. Criminologists who have any understanding of the legal and regulatory aspects of misconduct in business and finance are few, indeed, in the UK, you can count them on the fingers of one hand! Sadly with the death of Professor William Tupman on Sunday 12th March 2023, we are so much poorer! While Bill never claimed to be a criminologist, but rather a sociologist – and a political one at that, he contributed a tremendous amount to our understanding of the threats posed to business by, in particular, criminal organisations whether motivated by greed or a more sinister motive.

Bill was the director of what was the first and for many years only Centre for Police and Criminal Justice Studies in 1985. The Centre, based in the University of Exeter, was concerned with issues decades before their time. For example, it recognised the vital importance that compliance would assume in the financial services industry and incorporated compliance “experts” into its activities both as students, alongside personnel from the police and security services, and as instructors. Bill while always supportive of in particular traditional policing was a powerful advocate for specialisation and the role of intelligence. Indeed, his academic background in politics and Russian (in which he was fluent) gave him a perspective which few at the time understood let alone appreciated. Bill was commissioned by the Commonwealth Secretariat to consider the pre-emptive use of intelligence in disrupting and curtailing the threat to business, particularly in developing and transition economies, presented by fraudsters and organised crime. Indeed, his views imparted a much needed intellectual respectability to the operations of the Commonwealth’s own Commercial Crime Unit (see B. Rider (ed), A Research Agenda, Economic Crime and Development (forthcoming 2023) Elgar, Chapter 1) and Commonwealth Law Ministers’ initiative against organised crime.

While Bill was an intellectual giant, he was also concerned with practicality. So when a specialist team was put together to train the Scorpions (an elite investigative unit) in the new South Africa, he was a key member. Alongside his very real professionalism, there was also a tendency not to take hierarchies and perhaps even authority overly seriously. The Scorpions were then housed in the former premises of the Bureau for State Security and everything was run on the highest state of security. All learnt a lesson when Bill passed through all external and internal security checks – using his Exeter bus pass! Bill not only assisted the ill-fated Scorpions, but also many others around the world ranging from the Public Security Bureau of the People’s Republic of China to the Devon and Cornwall Police.

While most of Bill’s published academic work related to policing, he was an acknowledged expert on organised crime in many of its manifestations and served on the Executive Committee of the Standing Group on Organised Crime of the European Consortium for Political Research. Indeed, his most recent contribution to the study of organised crime was published, but a week after his death (see, Ch 3, Organised Crime and Society, in B. Rider (ed), A Research Agenda for Organised Crime, (2023) Elgar). He played since its inception, 40 years ago, a key role in the Cambridge International Symposium on Economic Crime held annually at Jesus College, Cambridge, and in many ways he was the inspiration behind this year’s programme which will be held in September (see www.crimesymposium.org)

He was a founding editor of the Journal of Financial Crime and a loyal member of the editorial boards of both this and the Journal of Money Laundering Control. Along with one of his former students, the redoubtable and exceptionally well-informed Rowan Bosworth Davis, they contributed a great deal to the debate as to why we are so inept in protecting our businesses and in particular the City of London from fraud and abuse. Indeed, as there are signs even in the present UK government that at least some ministers are starting to listen, his departure is particularly unfortunate. Bill, a lifelong member of the Labour Party, lived in hope – and more recently expectation of things being taken more seriously. Let’s hope, wherever he is, he is not disappointed!

Bill always had a healthy caution about what lawyers could bring to any table. However, he did believe that properly instructed they might have some utility and with this in mind he established a unique LLM course at BPP University on the law and practice of investigation. Bill as a Visiting Professor in Criminal Justice oversaw a dazzling array of hands on investigators he recruited to assist him in running this programme. While his course will continue as will his sage and perceptive advice in his many and diverse writings, his personal wit, sensitivity and friendship is left in our memories. Bill in every sense of the word was a scholar and gentleman – a profound loss to those who value integrity!

Professor Barry Rider OBE