Business Crime & Investigations
Protecting you against investigation and prosecution risks.
Our multidisciplinary team, led by a former Serious Fraud Office lawyer, helps our clients when they’re under investigation or conducting their own internal investigations. We assemble experts from across our firm for each investigation, who understand where the criminality and regulatory issues lie in their specific field, and who can call on their international network to conduct global investigations.
Clients come to us so we can advise them, under legal privilege, on the risks, threats, and pitfalls that they face. If you need to defend yourself from criminal prosecutions, to carry out an internal investigation, or simply help with managing risk, we’ve got your back. Whether you’re operating in the UK or abroad, we can handle your problem privately – protecting your reputation throughout.
Unparalleled public spending, V-shaped downturns and recoveries, constantly changing rules – and other hallmarks of the Covid and Brexit eras – have combined to create a perfect storm. This, coupled with the pace of technological and social change, means regulators are scrambling to keep up. Unsettled, regulators and criminal prosecutors across the globe are strengthening in earnest – meaning organisations have never been under greater scrutiny. We understand this.
- Bribery and corruption
- Compliance and due diligence
- Criminal prosecution defence
- Crisis management
- Cyber security
- FCA investigations
- Fraud
- Individual representation
- Sanctions
- Tax compliance
- Handling all of Cardiff City Football Club’s investigations.
- Leading complex investigations into corporates and individuals suspected of fraud, bribery and corruption, and money laundering in the UK and overseas.
- Defending a case concerning the sale of counterfeit batteries from China including reaching an agreeable settlement of the Proceeds of Crime application.
- Extracting a UK university from a toxic joint venture with a private business partner for introducing international students, obtaining that the Home Office reinstates the university’s Tier 4 licence.
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Advising panels/director hearings convened by the Gambling Commission to explore whether applicants or licensees’ previous criminal convictions render them unsuitable to hold a personal licence for gambling activities.
- Representing a finance brokerage in a complex FCA investigation, concerning its alleged role in multinational dividend arbitrage trading.
- Representing a suspect at the police station interviewed as part of Operation Elveden, an investigation into payments to public officials by journalists.
- Representing a company accused of health and safety failings at their plant, which resulted in advice of an early guilty plea which kept the company within the lower fine and costs bracket.
- Royal Naval prosecution of serving civilian accused of creating false instruments, theft and fraud. Our client was acquitted after examination of accounts via instruction of forensic accountant. The Crown discontinued the case and defence costs were paid from central funds ordered by the court.
- Defending a client accused of false accounting and theft. Prosecution was stayed by the court as no fault was associated with client.
- Representing clients at every stage of criminal proceedings from the investigation stage to the Court of Appeal.
- Helping clients at fraud interviews with the police, HSE, NHS Counter Fraud and SFO.
