Business Crime & Financial Services
Daniel has extensive experience defending company directors and business professionals facing the full range of financial misconduct, with an enviable record of success.
Commercially astute, tactical and with a talent for getting to the very core of even the most complex and voluminous of cases with ease, Daniel has represented clients charged with large-scale MTIC and boiler room frauds, mortgage fraud, money laundering and fraudulent trading as well as in associated confiscation proceedings. A number of his cases have had an international dimension.
Notable cases:
R v DM Ltd & Ors
Represented a car dealership and its director and its general manager in a trading standards prosecution under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008. The dealership was alleged to have sold vehicles to customers without informing them of outstanding manufacturer recalls. The defence case was that the government online recall checkers were inaccurate and unreliable. Following the service of two defence expert reports the prosecution offered no evidence against all defendants on all charges.
R v DS
HMRC investigation into the illicit importation and distribution of millions of cigarettes into the UK by an Iraqi-Kurdish organised crime group, culminating in a two-month trial at Birmingham Crown Court. The cigarettes were smuggled into the UK by lorry amongst partially legitimate loads destined for British businesses. Once in the country, the cigarettes were ‘slaughtered’ at warehouses in the Midlands before being distributed by suppliers to customers without paying UK duty. This evasion of duty made the business a highly lucrative one. Represented one of only two defendants to be acquitted.
R v JS
National llegal Money Lending Team prosecution in which the defendant and his wife (represented by Lewis MacDonald) were accused of operating a business providing hundreds of thousands of pounds of loans over several years. The defence case was that the loans were provided as part of a culture originating in the Philippines, did not constitute a business and were therefore exempt from regulation under the Consumer Credit Act 1974 and the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. Both defendants were acquitted of all charges after a trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court.
R v CP & Ors
Leading Ella Ripper, represented a senior personal banker at NatWest in a £1.2M six week fraud trial at Southwark Crown Court.
R v PS
Carbon credit fraud (Operation Toll; Operation Liquid) Instructed on behalf of a company director alleged to have masterminded the laundering of the proceeds of more than 20 ‘boiler room’ frauds.
R v MM
Acted for the main defendant accused of defrauding the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea of a six-figure sum by falsely representing herself to be a resident of the Grenfell Tower during the fire.
R v DR
International money-laundering operation involving the transfer of millions of pounds through front companies purporting to import alcoholic drinks. Acquitted following successful submission of no case to answer.
R v MB
Cheating the Revenue. Acted for the first defendant in a multi-million pound case arising from the non-payment of capital gains tax.
R v GH
Multi-million-pound confiscation proceedings stayed as an abuse of process on the ground that the prosecution had failed to act within the spirit of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.