Downing Street said that of 59 cases which Ihat has looked at so far, only one was referred to the director of service prosecutions, who decided not to take a prosecution forward.
While it was clear from the pictures that the 32-year-old supermodel was taking an illegal drug, a prosecution would most likely fail as it could not be definitively proved what drug was being used, a CPS official said.
Several lawyers said that the prosecution was taking a risk in letting its case take so long.
"This exercise does not mean the N.P.A. is taking a direction of discontinuing the prosecution," he said.
Louise Christian, a solicitor representing eight of the bereaved families, accused the government of taking a political decision to block prosecutions.
If this kind of bribery has really taken place, a prosecution of both the company and the individual is necessary.
He heard the first blasphemous libel trial for more than 50 years when, in 1977, the crown took over a prosecution initiated by Mary Whitehouse.
The Gangmasters Licensing Authority last month took out a prosecution against 15 dairy farmers who had used a gangmaster employing illegal migrants, but all were given unconditional discharges and fined just £300 – less than they saved by employing one illegal migrant for a month.
"The allegations were both serious and credible; the prosecutor should have recognised this and sought to build a prosecution … had police and prosecutors taken a different approach a prosecution might have been possible".
'For 13 years, I've been in love with this man, he's everything to me,' she said, 'and I'm not about to see him take a risk of prosecution.' The fact that there have been no prosecutions to date of the many British family members who must have, one way or another, committed this offence (100 Britons have now died at Dignitas) does not guarantee Puente's immunity.
