Monday 25 June 2012

UBS 'rogue trader' granted bail by UK court

http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/world-news/ubs-rogue-trader-granted-bail-by-uk-court_715491.html


Former UBS trader Kweku Adoboli, who is accused of unauthorised deals that cost the Swiss bank $2.3 billion, was granted bail by a London court on Friday.
Adoboli, who denies charges of fraud and false accounting relating to the loss, was arrested last September. He was previously denied bail in February.
Friday's bail application was heard behind closed doors at Southwark Crown Court and the exact conditions were not disclosed to media but Tim Harris, a lawyer acting for Adoboli, said there were sureties involved, that the defendant would have to live at a friend's house in London under curfew and that he would be tagged.
The start of the trial has been set for September 3.

Cases - Bark & Co Solicitors - Specialist Fraud Firm

http://www.barkco.co.uk/Cases


These are our some of our cases of note:

R v Nadir
Description: Bark & Co have been instructed by the former CEO of Polly Peck International (PPI) in an alleged multi-million pound fraud. The client faced 66 counts of Fraud & Theft, but failed to appear in the 1993 trial. Mr Nadir has returned to the UK to fight to clear his name.
The trial date is now set for January 2012.

Significance: One of the first high profile SFO prosecutions.

R v Ravjani & Others
Bark & Co represented a client accused significant involvement in a complex contra-trading MTIC fraud. The alleged fraud was of a scale that prompted the Government to proffer the case as an explanation as to why the UK balance of payments were adrift for a particular year. Unfortunately, reporting restrictions prevent us from publishing the full outcome at this time.

R v X
Description: This matter involves an insider trading investigation at a number of banks and hedge funds and other large financial institutions conducted by the FSA and SOCA which Reuters reports has “sent shockwaves through the country's financial industry”.

 Significance: This case involves significant press interest and involves the representation of a director at a very high profile financial institution.

R v CC & PF
Description: This case involves the arrest of nine directors of an ethical investment company investing in the energy sector. The value of the alleged fraud, which related to the company’s tax structure, is in excess of £85 million. It raises questions on the differences between tax evasion and tax avoidance. The company obtained tax benefits for research and development in the energy sector and secured investment from 750 specialist private investors. 

Significance: This case will have far reaching consequences for the whole of the ethical carbon offsetting industry, as well as for all companies with similar tax structures. The company in question was advised by tax specialists and lawyers regarding the legislation involved. HMRC allege that the complex nature of the related companies and tax structures were formed for the specific reason of perpetrating a fraud while the company states that they were not only legitimate but standard industry practice.

R v F & P (Vantis Tax)
Description: We acted for former senior executives for a specialist tax division of Vantis Plc defending allegations of cheating the public revenue. They both vigorously deny the allegations made against them.

Significance: This case involves extremely complex tax, share valuation and trust issues, and raises serious questions concerning the boundaries of tax avoidance schemes and their use. It attracted significant media interest with coverage in the nationals and trade press.

R v S & Others
Description: Bark & Co is representing a client who is involved in a wide ranging FSA investigation into an alleged 11-handed insider dealing fraud. This matter revolves around a spread-betting company that was used to place derivative trades on share price movements. Trades were made close to, or before, significant and unexpected company announcements which influenced the share price in the direction of the placed trade. It is alleged that a ring of traders, some of whom had no previous experience in spread betting, were organised to perpetrate the fraud with the insider information originating from two well-known investment banks.

Significance: The value of the alleged fraud is over £3 million and involved insider information on more than 25 companies that the investment banks dealt with. This case is still at the investigation stage but charges are being brought.

R v W, W, W & D (Southwark Crown Court)
Description: Our client is charged with conspiracy to defraud and money laundering offences. This case follows a joint FSA and City of London Police operation and investigation into a boiler room fraud. It is alleged that several companies that were seeking venture capital were used as vehicles to generate appropriate share capital to sell to victims based in the UK. The boiler rooms were based overseas and unregulated by the FSA. They generated over £30 million in income which was then filtered through a complex network of companies and holding accounts and into UK and offshore accounts.

Significance: The fraud is so large that the FSA has determined that it is limiting the case to six primary front companies. Not only is this case a good example of the scale and increasing prevalence of this type of fraud, it also demonstrates how international operations are being used to bypass the UK financial regulators and authorities.

R v S, R, D, S, S & T (Southwark Crown Court)
Description: This was a six-handed prosecution of the founders and associates of the “Confidential Access” website. Our client is alleged to have used his business to facilitate the sale of false identity documents that were used to commit fraud and crime. The identity documents, which included passports, P45s, bank statements and other financial and identity documents, were marketed and sold as legal “novelty items”, but their accuracy means they were used by clients who were being investigated by the Metropolitan Police anti-terrorism unit. In a joint operation with the Hong Kong Organised Crime Team, the Confidential Access website was temporarily shut down and the servers and business records seized. The website subsequently reopened in another county and the authorities entered into an ongoing battle across several jurisdictions to force the website to close down.

Significance: This case provides a unique insight into the type of identity-based frauds that will become more commonplace in the future. It also shows the difficulties involved in dealing with international and cross-jurisdictional issues surrounding internet free trade and international payment systems. Not surprisingly, the case attracted media attention, although the details remain confidential.

R v L (Southwark Crown Court)
Description: Our client in this case is being re-tried after a trial held in 2008 failed to reach a verdict. The client is charged with cheating the public revenue of £250 million in a large-scale and complex MTIC VAT fraud in the mobile phone handset market.

Significance: The scale of the operation and subsequent investigation was impressive, with 42 arrests in 2003, 96 sets of premises searched and 260 computers and 500,000 documents seized, as well as substantial amounts of electronic data. This fraud is serious and involves highly complex forensic accountancy and international funds tracing aspects. Again, it has attracted considerable media attention.
R v L (Southwark Crown Court)
Description: iSoft was awarded a multi-million pound contract to implement an All Ireland software system. Bark & Co is representing a former director in connection with alleged accounting irregularities in relation to this contract. This case is in the FSA's own words the largest case they have ever investigated.

Significance: iSoft were involved in the implementation of the new NHS IT system, a large and politically sensitive project and the case has received extensive press coverage. It has therefore required extremely sensitive handling. The issues involved are also particularly complex and involve forensic legal and accountancy analysis.

iSoft related cases (representing X)
Description: iSoft was awarded a multi-million pound contract to implement an All Ireland software system. Bark & Co is representing a former director in connection with alleged accounting irregularities in relation to this contract. This case is in the FSA's own words the largest case they have ever investigated.

Significance: iSoft were involved in the implementation of the new NHS IT system, a large and politically sensitive project and the case has received extensive press coverage. It has therefore required extremely sensitive handling. The issues involved are also particularly complex and involve forensic legal and accountancy analysis.

R v R
Description: This is said to be among the biggest MTIC carousel frauds ever prosecuted. It involves a particularly complex form of MTIC fraud called ‘contra-trading’. Here, the perpetrator mixes a ‘clean’ chain of transactions and a ‘dirty’ chain. The key is that they act as importer in the clean chain and exporter in the dirty one, therefore offsetting legal imports against illegal exports, making the VAT claim relatively balanced and the fraud far harder to detect.

Significance: This case is said to be one of the biggest MTIC frauds ever prosecuted and involves billions of pounds worth of trade. It will give rise to national publicity and widespread public concern because MTIC fraud has become so widespread that it is responsible for the UK trade figures being completely miscalculated. In this instance there has been £170 million of fraud identified within the telecoms sector involving the international trading of mobile phones. Contra-trading is an increasing growth area of specialist defence where Bark & Co is among the leaders. This case has at present over 60,000 pages of exhibited prosecution materials with over 100,000 expected, making the estimated cost of prosecuting the case substantial (more than £1million).

R v L, R & H
Description: This was a high-profile SFO prosecution concerning fraudulent trading. The prosecution alleges that there was fraudulent trading over a 3-4 year period at Alfred McAlpine Slate Limited. This took the form of false invoicing and the concealment of the false information from the parent company, Alfred McAlpine plc, and their auditors, by way of forged loans, invoices and manipulation of management packs.

Significance: This case was the subject of a three-month internal investigation by PMCE Coopers Waterhouse and the City law firm, Ashurst. Press interest is high and the case has appeared on Sky News, in The Times, and The Guardian, as well as local papers, financial journals and Reuters. It is alleged that the discovery of the fraud led to a drop in the McAlpine Slate share price and contributed to the acquisition of McAlpine by Carillion plc. With over 50,000 pages of served evidence, this case was both complex and high profile.  We were successful in achieving a lenient sentence for our client.

R v Lord Rodley, Coyne & Others
Description: This case involved a conspiracy to defraud the SMBC Bank in London of £227 million and money laundering the proceeds of the fraud. A security guard at SMBC bank, who had access to its computer system, allowed two Belgium computer experts entry into the bank and access to the computer systems outside working hours. They hacked into the bank’s systems to obtain passwords and to transfer funds to accounts set up to launder the proceeds of this fraud.
Significance:Three defendants stood a fully contended cut-throat trial. Our client (David Coyne aka Nash) is alleged to have been involved both in the main plan to defraud the bank and the money laundering as he was the owner of several offshore bank accounts that were allegedly set up to receive the funds

R v F, D & Others
Description: The case results from an investigation into a successful multi-million pound international lottery scam, which began with a complaint concerning unsolicited e-mails from the Philippines. The scam involved claims that the victim would be the beneficiary of a percentage of an estate worth $10.2 million.

Significance: The alarm was raised by Barclays Bank in New York. A joint investigation by the FBI and Metropolitan Police then uncovered a number of victims of the fraud, who were resident in various places, ranging from the USA, to Malaysia, Japan and the Middle East. The joint investigation resulted in six arrests. This case demonstrates our ability to handle complex international fraud cases, requiring the gathering of evidence and information in a number of jurisdictions.

Friday 22 June 2012

Scotland Yard in spotlight as axe murder case collapses




Our client was acquitted by the Jury at Ipswitch Crown Court of his involvement in an alleged international boiler room fraud.

Two other defendants were sentenced at Ipswich Crown Court for running an illegal high pressure, share-pushing operation from call centres in Spain. Around 1,250 investors in the UK were persuaded to buy over £7 million worth of shares. Using their "Gordon Gekko" contract notes to complete the transactions, the team were alledged to have siphoned off around 80% of the invested funds. Craig Clark who was represented by Bark & Co. was acquitted by the jury of any wrongdoing.

David Arthur Vidgeon(DOB 02/01/1980), a UK national resident in Spain was sentenced to seven years imprisonment.
Rahul Natwar Patel(DOB 09/09/1975), a UK national resident in Spain was sentenced to seven years imprisonment.
They were found guilty of conspiracy to defraud, contrary to Common Law, on 15 July. Three other defendants, Baldur Sigurdsson, Roland Pibworth (tried in absentia) and Craig John Clark were acquitted.

SFO Director Richard Alderman said: "A boiler room is a predatory and orchestrated 'attack' on private investors so it's very satisfying to see justice delivered for such callous dishonesty. I hope that publicity of today's outcome will serve as a warning for people to think twice when hard-sell investment offers, usually unsolicited, appear tempting. 'No' is the right answer".

Outline

David Vidgeon and Rahul Patel conspired to defraud investors, many of whom were retired and elderly, by high pressure selling of shares in small/obscure companies, with false claims as to their future worth.  This fraudulent sales practice was carried out by unlicensed offshore brokerages known as "boiler rooms" under the control and direction of Vidgeon and Patel. The period covered is April 2003 to November 2006.

The lynchpin in the fraud was Vidgeon. He arranged and controlled the deals between the boiler rooms in Spain and the UK companies whose shares they were to sell to unsuspecting investors. Vidgeon obtained these companies through the sourcing activities of an intermediary. Together they supplied several sales operations with companies' shares to sell. These were based in Spain, one of which was in Barcelona and operated by Rahul Patel. Two other persons suspected of criminal involvement in Patel's enterprise fled the jurisdiction.

The companies whose shares were sold were worthless. Their function in this conspiracy was as vehicles used by Vidgeon, Patel and the boiler rooms to take not less than 80% of the investors' money.

One company was Toppurinn UK Ltd, a timber buildings business in the leisure market. It was supposedly planning to enter the steel frame market; at one stage exploring the possibility of becoming involved in supplying to Iraq as part of the US-led reconstruction. This did not materialise.

COL Systems Ltd was another company whose shares were being pushed.  Its product "Crime-on-Line", a concept developed in Iceland, was described as a theft prevention/recovery system for registering property ID references on a central online database. The claim was that it would enable the police to return recovered stolen property to the owners. The system was said to have been initially piloted in partnership with the Icelandic police and insurance sector but in reality did not achieve commercial viability.

Another company, the Osborn Group, trading as "The Crowd Went Wild", purported to market sporting memorabilia on the internet. It had no real substance and like "Crime-on-Line" it was simply part of the deception. A template contract note obtained during the investigation was file-named "Gordon Gekko"; an indicator of the business philosophy of the operators.  Similar templates were used across all the boiler rooms.

A further four companies were sold by the boiler rooms. None of these companies had any trading activity.

The 'boiler room' is a recognised engine of fraud. Boiler rooms are essentially call centres, concerned in the selling of shares on behalf of companies. The selling of shares is an activity regulated by the FSA. Boiler rooms are not authorised and operate illegally, often from abroad.

The 'boiler rooms' sell by cold-calling and use hard-sell tactics. The success of their deception is measured not only by the sums of money extracted but also by the nature of the people who were persuaded to part with their money. Even people who believed they were experienced investors were victims of the fraud.

Vidgeon's own boiler rooms generated in excess of £2.3 million, nearly a half of which he retained, the rest being paid out to other conspirators. Rahul Patel earned more than £960,000 from the operation.

Bank accounts in Spain, Latvia, Cyprus and other overseas jurisdictions were established to help manage the monies received from investors.


Craig Clark acquitted of a 7 million pound boiler room fraud



http://www.barkco.com/News/Craig+Clark+acquitted+of+a+7+million+pound+boiler+room+fraud.+


A major Scotland Yard investigation has ended in failure after three men were acquitted of charges over the 1987 murder of a private investigator who was found with an axe embedded in his head in a pub car park.

The family of Daniel Morgan immediately called for a judicial inquiry, saying: "The criminal justice system is not fit for purpose."

They are bewildered by the fact that the case never reached a jury and that it collapsed after 18 months of legal argument during which the police were in effect on trial, accused by defence lawyers of failing to disclose potentially relevant material.

No one has been brought to justice despite five police inquiries and three years of legal hearings, unofficially estimated to have cost around £30m.

The first investigation into Morgan's murder, immediately after his killing, is feared to have seen the real killers shielded from justice by police corruption.

The Met has privately admitted that corruption in the late 1980s aided the killers in avoiding justice.

Senior officers vowed to right the wrongs of the past, but it is unlikely that Morgan's family will see the police, courts or judges deliver justice.

At the Old Bailey on Friday – a day after the 24th anniversary of his killing – the Crown Prosecution Service formally dropped the case against Morgan's former business partner Jonathan Rees and brothers Garry and Glenn Vian, who had all been charged with murder. A fourth man, Jimmy Cook, was cleared of murder at an earlier hearing. Sid Fillery, a former police detective from Catford, was cleared of attempting to pervert the course of justice at an earlier hearing. Fillery had moonlighted at Southern Investigations, the private detective firm in which Morgan was a partner.

The CPS is believed to have concluded that it could not provide sufficient guarantees to the court that every document held by police over the course of 24 years of investigations which the defence might want to study had been handed over. The manner in which the case collapsed is an embarrassment for Scotland Yard.

Morgan was killed outside the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham, south London, on 10 March 1987.

Police involved in five investigations believed that the motivation for his murder lay in his business dealings.

Morgan's name became a byword to symbolise how corrupt parts of the Metropolitan police had become in the late 1980s. After a campaign led by his family, Scotland Yard tried to bring the killers to justice.

In April 2008, police arrested and charged Rees, Garry and Glenn Vian, and Jimmy Cook with murder, while Fillery was charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice. The five were charged after a criminal investigation which, at the start, was kept secret by Scotland Yard.

The suspects were subjected to covert audio recording devices, or bugs, but the mainstay of the case was a series of supergrasses.

The supergrasses claimed to have knowledge of the accused's guilt, from seeing money handed over to pay for the killing, to hearing admissions from defendants. But their reliability as witnesses was questioned because they were themselves involved in crime.

The trial began in January 2009 with legal argument. Legal observers cannot recall legal argument raging for so long.

Detectives on the Morgan murder team admitted during the legal argument that they were drowned by the weight of documents they were dealing with – 750,000 of them, mostly uncomputerised, going back to 1987.

In the end, the court was told that police had found documents that had not been disclosed to the defence, undermining the credibility of the prosecution.

The death knell came on Friday last week when police again admitted that they had found four more crates of material defence lawyers had not been told about. Detectives involved in the case say they made a genuine mistake which, once realised, they informed the court about.

After intense discussions all week with senior officers, the CPS decided it would have to end the case.

Those close to the investigation, and the family, are angered by the lengthy legal argument. Defence lawyers had argued the prosecution was an abuse of process meaning the accused could not receive a fair trial.An inquest in 1988 found Morgan was unlawfully killed. An employee of Morgan's firm, Southern Investigations, said in evidence to a hearing 23 years ago that a business contact had talked of wanting Morgan killed and that his police contacts at Catford police station would help him.

The Guardian understands police believe that witness was prepared to testify again if the case had reached a jury.

Morgan's mother, Isobel Hulsmann, 83, who had travelled from her home in Hay-on-Wye, Powys, to lay flowers at her son's grave in London, was being comforted by her family.

Morgan's brother, Alastair, 62, said: "My family is devastated by this news. We put some flowers on the grave. It's just horrible."

Alastair Morgan said he believed there had been a number of police cover-ups over the years and alleged that his brother was murdered because he was about to expose police corruption.

"It was obvious my brother was going to blow the lid off the links between the police and criminals," he said.