…Mr Adams, the court has been presented over the course of these proceedings with a stupefyingly lengthy and diverse catalogue of wrongdoing. I restrict myself now to only a handful of the most appalling examples.

We have heard from one of your clients, Mr Barry “Knuckles” Law, that, on the 7th of May 1998, he hired you to burn down the premises of a Mr Steven Wintermain, namely the popular exotic dancing venue “Tassels”. For this service you received £5 000 in cash—£3 000 which appeared nowhere in your formal accounts or your declared income, £5 000 for which Mr Law received no receipt.

Later that same year, your senior operatives, Mr Joe “The Murderer” Moutray and Mr William “Bill The Bull” Wilkins, attached electrodes to the testicles of your former associate Mr Kevin “Hatstand” Hatton while he was tied to an office chair: Exhibit 5B. At no time since the purchase of that chair had you or any of your employees made even the most superficial Health & Safety risk assessment of that item of furniture or examined its suitability for use with the desks and computer equipment elsewhere in your offices, thereby putting Mr Hatton at a hugely increased risk of repetitive strain injury or long-term spinal damage.

During that same interview, Mr Wilkins burned Mr Hatton’s nipples with the lit tips of three cigarettes. In between applications, he partook of those cigarettes in a designated no-smoking area—knowing full well that, as of July of this year smoking will be illegal in all workplaces, and likely reducing by days the life expectancy of Mr Moutray and, of course, Mr Hatton.

It is also well-known amongst the criminal fraternity of your area, or as you insist on referring to it: “your manor”, that you exclusively employ middle-aged, white, Protestant, ex-military men—some immediate relatives of yours—as your personal security operatives. Neither you nor any of your lieutentants made any attempt to explore a formal diversity policy or consult with local community leaders over questions of hiring, even in the wake of the notorious Blood Lane Massacre in which three of your so-called “muscle men” were killed by individuals working for your competitors Network Integrated Gangsta Assurance Solutions plc, leaving three positions vacant on your conspicuously poorly documented payroll.

In passing I should point out here that, had you learned from that incident and adopted some of the employment practices rolled out by NIGAS—practices that almost certainly contributed to their receiving two Queen’s Awards for Enterprise, Investors In People certification, a MOBO, and a Net magazine prize for their weblog: “The Four-One-One 2.0”—Adams Family Import and Export might still be trading profitably today.

I now move on to remind you and the court of your thoroughly slapdash conduct of exit interviews, and the absence of any paperwork connected with the swift termination of your long-time “Enforcer”, “Concrete” Conor McGinty, on or around the 17th September 2000, in the vicinity of the Dean Street Canal Lock…