Member

Qualifications and Professional Associations

• Called to the Bar Middle Temple (1993)

Background and Areas of Specialisation

Paul graduated from Pembroke College Oxford University, in 1989 and worked in advertising in the business arm of the Saatchi group in London before coming to the Bar. He,therefore, has a very acute understanding of working within a corporate structure and business environment.

He has had an international upbringing and education, being of Sri Lankan heritage, born and raised in Nigeria, and spending his childhood in Zambia and Hong Kong. He studied at boarding school in England from the age of eleven and then completed his first undergraduate degree at University in Oxford. He has also studied at the University of Chambery in Savoie, France before further study in Germany and Spain. Paul has a good working knowledge of the first two languages and an understanding of the third.

Paul completed his pupilage at 2 Paper Buildings, which was the pre-eminent Privy Council Chambers and which retains close connections to most Commonwealth jurisdictions. He lectures on financial fraud and has a particular interest in fraud with an international dimension. His international interest has led him to undertake specialist study and he is currently, in his spare time, in the process of writing a dissertation related to war crimes and international humanitarian law as part of an LLM in International Criminal Law at Sussex University. He has worked under Professor Craig Barker and Dr. Richard Vogler, the latter of who is an expert in trans-national crime. Paul has also done academic work in the field of international corruption and international money laundering and Terrorism. Paul’s interest in the international aspects of law are demonstrated by assisting in advising the Isle of Man Government on compliance issues relating to the introduction of the Human Rights Act into local jurisdiction. He has appeared in a number of pro bono applications from Mauritius, Bermuda, and Trinidad at the Privy Council. He was instructed to brief the Oman Government on a case involving an Omani national, which required him to fly to Oman twice to meet members of the government. In addition to the above, Paul was invited to join the five-member team headed by Adrian Fulford QC (now Mr. Justice Fulford) that prepared representations from the Criminal Bar Association on the Human Rights Act for the Law Commission.

Current practice

He is currently representing the first individual in the UK charged by the SFO for breach of a UN Sanctions Order in the Oil for Food Programme in Iraq. This is a ground breaking prosecution. He is also acting pro-bono on a large CCRC murder appeal. He was also invited to sit on the Professional Practice Committee in 2008. The notable cases that Paul has appeared in as Junior Defence Counsel include:

Fraud

Paul is used to dealing with cases with huge volumes of paperwork with complex commercial aspects. Examples of work include a large scale FSA fraud relating to complex multi-jurisdictional share and bond transactions in the US, Cayman Islands and Switzerland representing an unregulated bond trader.
He has a particular expertise in disclosure with the use of informants and “super grasses” in cases involving entrapment and incitement and the use of infringements of RIPA in covert surveillance.

He has worked on the Vat London Bonded Warehouse cases (R v Brown and others) which ended in a successful appeal and the “Danati money laundering Cases".

R v Pattle and others which collapsed following defence disclosure arguments and led to a judicial inquiry by Mr. Justice Aitkins into the manner in which such cases were being investigated. In this case the Crown used a “confidential” source informant.

R v Taylor and others - Paul was Junior Counsel in a massive “missing trader fraud” involving multi-jurisdictional companies and complex public interest immunity issues. The case involved a large amount of different companies and separate high court hearings and counsel had to consider the decisions of the VAT & Duties Tribunal in Bond House Systems Limited; Optigen Limited and the case of Clodd-Broom.

R v Chouhan and others - was the largest trading standards investigation in the country in the late 1990s and involved the pharmaceutical industry.

R v Pollock and others - was (pre-Jubilee line) the largest rail fraud in the country, which involved a series of 3 trials.

R v Balanta and others (Operation Anuric) - was the largest Colombian cartel money-laundering case in the country and encompassed multi-jurisdictional issues.

Terrorism

R v Thanjaraja - alleged Tamil Tiger assassination case.

R v Patel - one of the first cases to come to trial under the 1998 statute relating to “Conspiracy to Commit Terrorist Offences Abroad”-Human smuggling.

R v Hundal and others - first case to come to trial under the 2002 Terrorism Act, involving Sikh terrorism.

R v Barot and others - “Dirty Bomb” case-alleged radioactive dispersal bomb attack on the City of London and the New York Stock Exchange. International investigation involving American and Pakistani intelligence services.

R v Ibrahim and others – London Underground July 21 bombing case

Corruption

In R v Sawhney and others, Paul was junior Counsel representing the first defendant, a customs officer who was accused of providing information to a number of criminal organizations. Amongst other charges, Mr. Sawhney was alleged to have attempted to collapse the NCIS computer system with a virus-infected disk.

In R v Kean and others, Paul was junior Counsel representing the first defendant, in a large-scale Police corruption trial, involving complex disclosure and public interest immunity arguments. The case had two preparatory hearings in the Court of Appeal prior to the start of the trial.

Reported cases include:

2009 - Girma & Ors, R. v (Rev 1), Court of Appeal - Criminal Division, May 15, 2009, [2009] EWCA Crim 912- July 21st Underground bombing case no retrial ordered, but successfully defined the approach taken in introducing a plea of a co-defendant into a trial under section 74

2007 - R v Dookran - Privy Council - successful pro bono appeal of a 70 old woman, who had remained on death row in Trinidad for 10 years.

2006 - R v Barot - terrorism - leading authority on interim orders under the contempt of court act.

2005 - R v Hundal - the Terrorism Act 2002 (Before the Lord Chief Justice)

2005 - R v Ellis - Article 8 argument relating to privacy (Before the Lord Chief Justice)

2005 - R v Weir (Somanathan) [2005] EWCA Crim 2866

2004 - R v Beckles - leading authority on silence inferences to be drawn at police station, this case changed the JSB direction. (Before the Lord Chief Justice)
R v Amechie - a test case, stopped at first instance. Dealt with the boundaries between consent and criminal assault in male circumcision.