Bribery and Corruption

Members of chambers have wide experience in this area.

Chambers’ experience includes:
(a) conducting international criminal investigations into corruption related money laundering;
(b) prosecuting and defending domestic corruption proceedings;
(c) dealing with domestic aspects of United States Department of Justice proceedings against assets obtained through corruption;
(d) representing, through our alliance partners Baker and Partners, investigatory authorities in the developing world  who are investigating corruption and seeking to recover monies;
(e) advising, again through Baker and Partners, on the recovery of assets through civil proceedings;
(f) education.

Members of chambers have worked with overseas authorities including Hong Kong, the United States, Switzerland, Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Nigeria, Kenya, Brazil and Pakistan.

The recent international cases in which members have been involved include:
Abacha (former Nigerian Head of State),
Maluf (former Mayor of Sao Paolo),
Yaheeb (involving the foreign Minister of Qatar),
Lazarenko (former prime minister of Ukraine),
Bhutto and several other cases for the Kenyan Anti Corruption Commission and the National Accountability Bureau of Pakistan (these last through Baker and Partners).

We defended in the "Hong Kong Stock Exchange Trial" (R v Li & Ors) which involved allegations of bribery. We have also advised the Department of Justice of Hong Kong on the merits of a number of potential prosecutions including that of the then Financial Secretary of the Hong Kong Government for misconduct in a public office (The "Lexusgate" scandal).

The recent domestic cases in which members of chambers have been involved include:

A number of corruption cases involving multi-jurisdictions and parallel proceedings including the US, Nigeria, Kenya, Indonesia and Iraq, and proceedings against two company directors accused of breaches of UK export sanctions to Iran.

The series of trials which arose from a lengthy investigation into local government corruption in Doncaster (The "Donnygate" scandal) and the prosecution of the former leader of Lincolnshire County Council for misconduct in a public office (R v Speechly).

Our experience of cases involving allegations of police corruption includes that concerning the relationship between a fraudster-cum-police informant and members of the Metropolitan Police Service (R v Brennan) and a recent case in which confidential information held by the police was found to have been illegally disclosed (R v Dennis & Ors).

In the commercial arena, members of the team both prosecuted and defended in the Mars Confectionery corruption case, which concerned the bribing of a manager at Mars by directors of an engineering firm in order to obtain service contracts (R v Harper & Ors). We also acted in the Millennium Dome corruption case, which arose from the abuse of his position by the Dome's then Head of Lighting in ensuring that contracts were awarded to one of his own companies (R v Barron & Ors). Other cases concerned the payment of a £1 million secret fee to a senior manager at the Bank of Boston to facilitate the buy-out of a company during a liquidity crisis (R v Harvey & Williams), corrupt payments to the Head of Corporate Loans at Hill Samuels in return for his providing favourable loan facilities to a client firm (R v Skingley & Burrett), and the successful defence of two property developers accused of making cash payments to a Lloyds Bank manager in order to obtain an unrealistic overdraft facility (R v Etchells & Etchells).