Viviane Bablin, instructing Benjamin Waidhofer of Foundry Chambers, acted for XY in a private prosecution brought by high net worth individuals who each were said to have invested large sums into Bonds promoted by our client. At the material time, our client was the director and shareholder of companies which offered investment products and sold Bonds of a value of around £100 million to investors. The prosecution’s case was that following fraudulent representations made by our client, who had been made bankrupt, a number of those investors including the prosecutors did not receive interest payments, redemptions or repayment since January 2023, nor had the invested sums been returned upon requests being made.
The Defence were met with a series of repeated non-compliance by the prosecution, which culminated in an abuse of process application being made to the court, on the following grounds:
- Our client could not receive a fair trial due to the prosecutors’ failure to conduct any meaningful investigation as part of the criminal proceedings, relying solely on material provided to the Commercial Court in civil proceedings;
- A conflict of interest arose as the prosecution had been improperly brought by reason of an improper motive on the part of those carrying out prosecution litigation;
- The prosecution was brought by a motive so unrelated to the proceedings amounting to an abuse;
- Prosecution litigation was being undertaken by a person no longer regulated by any professional body who had no litigation rights, citing the recent High Court decision of Mazur v Charles Russell Speechlys LLP [2025] EWHC 2341.
No response was ever received from the prosecution to oppose our application. Instead, the prosecution served a purported notice of discontinuance shortly before the application was due to be heard at court.
At a hearing before HHJ sitting at Southwark Crown Court, the prosecution were unsuccessful in their request for the indictment to lie on the file. In the course of legal argument before the Judge, the prosecution were forced to concede our abuse of process application, agreeing that not all lines of enquiry had been conducted as part of their investigation. Upon the Judge equally accepting that an abuse of process was made out, the prosecution offered no evidence on all counts leading to Not Guilty verdicts being entered, concluding the proceedings against our client.
A special praise goes to counsel Benjamin Waidhofer who fought tirelessly alongside us for our client, leaving no stone unturned.