#10 Discipline charges
In July 2003, some of his embassy staff were sacked while he was away on holiday. They were reinstated after he expressed his outrage to his bosses in the FCO. Later during his holiday, he was recalled to London for disciplinary reasons. On 21 August 2003, he was confronted with 18 charges including "hiring dolly birds (pretty young women) for above the usual rate" for the visa department (though he claims that it had an all-male staff) and granting UK visas in exchange for sex. He was told that discussing the charges would be a violation of the Official Secrets Act punishable by imprisonment. He claims that he was encouraged to resign.
He collapsed during a medical check in Tashkent on 2 September 2003 and was flown to St Thomas' Hospital. After an investigation by Tony Crombie, Head of the FCO's Overseas Territories Department, all but two of the charges (being drunk at work and misusing the embassy's Range Rover) were dropped. The charges were leaked to the press in October 2003. [2] When he returned to work in November 2003, he suffered a near fatal pulmonary embolism. In January 2004, the Foreign Office exonerated him of the 18 charges, but reprimanded him for speaking about the charges.
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Removal from post
Murray was removed from his post in October 2004, shortly after a leaked report in the Financial Times [3] quoted him as claiming that MI6 used intelligence gained by the Uzbek authorities by torture. The Foreign Office denied there was any direct connection and stated that Murray had been removed for "operational" reasons. It claimed that he had lost the confidence of senior officials and colleagues. The following day, in an interview on the Today programme, the BBC's flagship political radio show, Murray countered that he was a "victim of conscience", and in this and other interviews criticised the Foreign Office.[4] A few days later he was charged with "gross misconduct" by the Foreign Office for criticising it in public.[5] Murray resigned from the Foreign Office in February 2005. |