R v Christopher Marsh & Others (Patisserie Valerie)
Garden Court Counsel representing the first/ main defendant in the ‘Patisserie Valerie’ trial. An extremely high profile allegation of a 100M fraud/false accounting [‘reported overstating almost £100m’] being prosecuted by the Serious Fraud Office. This case has attracted a huge amount of media interest and collateral investigations creating more questions than answers. The prosecution has stated that the case involves over 3 million documents and the trial is listed for 13 weeks.
Crytpo Fraud; R v Hamza Kambi & Others
Garden Court counsel represented HK, who was unanimously found not guilty after a six-week trial at Preston Crown Court. Following a fraud carried out in Blackpool in which a programming ‘glitch’ was exploited to steal 2,390 Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies totalling over £20 million pounds from a digital currency website, the prosecution alleged that HK had helped to arrange the liquidation of those assets. HK was a trader based in Dubai who had converted the Bitcoin received into cash, gold bars and property.
R v Kasim & Others
For the first defendant, Garden Counsel secured a significant acquittal in a multi-handed £40 million money laundering and complex mandate fraud conspiracy. This was prosecuted by the National Crime Agency (NCA), and the case had international dimensions, the majority of the money being transferred to Hong Kong. After legal argument, despite the Crown assertion that there was a realistic prospect of conviction, the defendant was acquitted.
R v JZ
Local councillor and former general election candidate accused of fraud. Allegations relate to misuse of local authority funds by local councillor. High profile and significant press reporting. Background of political disputes, underlying complex financial evidence.
R v Josh Audsley & Others
Defending Josh Audsley in this 13 defendant £268 million money laundering case. Nat West Bank recently pleaded guilty to breach of money laundering Regs in relation to receiving the cash from this fraud. First example of a clearing bank being prosecuted for money laundering. The case has well over 100,000 pages of evidence, and it requires specialist knowledge of the gold trade as Josh Audsley was a trading manager at Fowler Oldfield, the main recipients of the 268,000,000 cash payments.
R v Oerta Korfuzi
Garden Court Counsel defending one of four defendants charged by the FCA with insider trading, involving trades worth multi millions. She has 1.8 million in her trading account Perkor Capital. Allegedly provided with confidential information by her brother and co-defendant who worked as an analyst at Janus Henderson, an asset management firm. Contracts for difference were placed using the confidential information to make large profits by taking short positions on various stocks.
R v Gold
Garden Court counsel represented a defendant in what has been described as the most complex case ever investigated by the SFO in which £268m worth of tax was said to be at risk. The underlying business related to green projects for Research and Development across the globe and environmental carbon trading with investments by hundreds of high net-worth individuals. Our junior counsel are instructed in this very high cost case to deal with the confiscation proceedings.
R v NR and others
Leading junior representing wife of a businessmen alleged to have conducted a timeshare-based fraud in which the Crown allege that around 5,000 victims lost in the region of £30m – £40m over a five year period. Highly complicated, international fraud with evidence and disclosure running to hundreds of thousands of pages.
Our past notable cases include:
- LIBOR-fixing fraud
- Pakistani cricket spot-fixing corruption
- Operation Emersed – largest ever VAT ‘carousel’ fraud
- Operation Hornet – corruption and fraud at HBOS
- R v Omar and others – bribery of Ghanaian, Kenyan and Somalian officials
- R v Karim – Bollywood international film fraud
- R v Van Badlo – large scale Ponzi fraud
- R v Wilmot and others – biggest ever ‘boiler room’ fraud
- R v Childs – fraud against Libyan Investment Authority
