Fraud and Financial Crime

Our criminal law team has a superb reputation in all aspects of financial crime, with extensive experience of acting for individuals, in addition to corporates. Members are in demand for both heavyweight trial and appellate work as well as during critical investigatory stages.

The team has a wealth of jury trial experience in key financial crime areas: including  insider dealing and market manipulation, cross-border corruption, cartels, money laundering and criminal fraud of all types. The team is instructed by a wide range of bodies and persons: multinational corporations, private equity groups, sovereign wealth funds, banks, traders, directors, senior business executives, City firms, regulators, prosecuting authorities, professional bodies, government departments and foreign governments.

The team has extensive experience of major cross-border work with frequent involvement in multi-jurisdictional investigations, extradition, sanctions and Interpol Notices.  The team has experience of criminal cases originating from many diverse jurisdictions: including the USA, Hong Kong, Russia, the Middle East and the Caribbean.  From challenging search warrants and production orders, through to asset restraint and managing investigation co-operation strategies, the team’s multi-faceted specialisms make it uniquely placed to provide comprehensive pre-charge advice to minimise potential criminal exposure.

Members of the team enjoy an unparalleled range of supplementary skills to support their criminal expertise, including: reputation management; civil fraud actions in tandem with criminal investigations; financial services, regulatory and other disciplinary sanctions; extradition and mutual legal assistance.

The team has particular expertise in pre-charge public law challenges to financial criminal investigations and investigatory measures.

Members contribute to leading textbooks on criminal fraud, extradition and proceeds of crime. Members of the team also appear regularly in the media to comment upon and shape the development of the law.

Notable cases

• Representing individuals as well as corporates in many of the major recent SFO investigations including: Alstom, Barclays, ENRC, Euribor, LIBOR, Petrofac, Rolls Royce and Tesco.
• Acting in ground-breaking fraud-related extradition cases including: Vijay Mallya; Credit Suisse Mozambique; HSBC-Cairn plc.
• Representing Robert and Vincent Tchenguiz in their judicial review and damages claims against the Serious Fraud Office in the fraud investigation arising from the collapse of the Icelandic bank Kaupthing.
• Advising and representing Yukos Oil shareholders, and business magnates Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Leonid Nevzlin, in relation to Russian Federation action against Yukos and in the damages claim to the ECtHR.
• Representing a number of prominent business executives and politicians in Hong Kong.