Practice Overview
Neil specialises in commercial fraud and associated financial work. Highly experienced in defending large scale prosecutions brought by the SFO, FCA, CPS and CMA, he remains down-to-earth and well known for his team approach. Neil has a reputation for the extensive preparation and strategic foresight that is necessary for large and complex cases. He is consistently sought after and instructed by large corporations and national firms of solicitors. He has represented a wide range of individuals from Board Directors to employees alleged to have been involved in numerous offences including fraud, cartel activity, bribery, corruption, money laundering, cheating the Inland Revenue, company offences, insider dealing and related FCA offences and regulatory breaches.
Part of Neil’s work involves advising on ‘live’ money laundering issues. He has extensive experience in restraint and confiscation, including associated appellant work.
Neil appears in publications as a Leader of the Bar. He has been consistently recommended in Chambers & Partners for criminal fraud since 2012 to present. He is also listed in The Legal 500.
Neil has been a contributor author to the Practical Law Company Practice Notes in the area of commercial fraud.
He was the keynote speaker at the London City Solicitors Association Annual Conference in Amsterdam in 2012, lecturing on ‘The Internationalisation of the Criminal Law’, looking at Corruption, Bribery and Cartel investigations and offences.
He has lectured on a number of subjects including cartels, immunity applications, corruption & bribery, deferred prosecution agreements (DPA’s) and financial crime.
Neil accepts direct public access instructions on certain work.
Criminal Cases
COMMERCIAL CRIME & ADVISORY WORK
Presently instructed in:
An SFO case against a former Director charge with alleged international bribery and corruption
Advising a Tata Steel executive
A large scale alleged network of money launderers (in excess of £200m)
Company Director charged with conspiracy to cheat arising from LPP arrangements and claimed tax losses in excess of £100m
Company Director charged with mortgage fraud (in excess of £50 million)
Company Sales Director charged with alleged international corrpution and bribery offences
He is advising a client on a criminal cartel inquiry
He is advising a client being investigated for overseas corruption in the petro-chemical industry
He is advising on matters arising from the Kaputhing Bank composition process.
He is advising on two internal corporate investigations.
Previous Recent Cases:
Tom Hayes, the first and main Libor trial and confiscation
An alleged insider in Operation Tabernula (The largest FCA investigation and prosecution of alleged Insider Dealing)
British Airways Director in the BA / Virgin price fixing criminal prosecution – the first and only contested cartel prosecution to date – OFT)
A Director of a national pharmaceutical company in Op Holbein (the NHS Pharmaceutical price fixing case – SFO)
An individual in an advanced fee fraud (the ‘Lord’ Davenport case – SFO)
A Director accused of corruption for MOD contracts
A Director in the IKEA fraud (SFO)
A Director in the Landfill tax fraud (SFO)
A Director of Chesterfield FC and associated proceedings (SFO)
A Director in fraud on the Department of Education (CPS National Casework)
Directors in MTIC frauds, recently Op Vaulter (HMRC/CPS),
A Solicitor fraud on the client account (excess of £1m)
A Director in the bribery and corruption of London Underground officials
Serious Organised & Grave Crime
Neil represents individuals in murder and serious organised crime. He has represented an appellant on a CCRC fresh evidence reference to the Court of Appeal in a bid to overturn his 20 year old murder conviction. His experience in these areas is set out in some examples of his casework:
R v C & Others: A gangland attempted murder and murder in Sheffield
R v Negrotti & Others: (The BBC Rough Justice, ‘Vow of Silence Case’) murder, appeal and reinvestigation of a murder in the North of England.
R v M & A: The ‘homemade bullets’ double murder case.
R v P: Represented a young man charged with the murder of his mother, father and one twin sister.
R v O: Represented a young graduate charged with a murder and three attempted murders.
R v K & Others: The largest scale drugs importation into the UK ever with the importation of cocaine in excess of 4 tonnes from South America to the UK. The trial lasted 14 months
R v B & Others: A large scale drugs importation case. There were significant PII issues in the case with the client being held on double murder charges in Afghanistan before he was extracted out the country by the UK government.
R v S & Others: A covert operation corrupt Police officers and their connections to crime families in Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield.
R v F: Attempted stranger murder. Accused of clubbing a 16 year old girl over the head with a hammer 16 times and leaving her for dead.
