POCA Success: Benefit figure reduced from over £8 million with corporate veil and third-party interests successfully challenged

Background

Sonn Macmillan Walker was instructed to represent a businessman in confiscation proceedings following his conviction for drug-related offences in 2023.

Confiscation proceedings

The Crown alleged a benefit figure exceeding £8 million comprising both particular and general criminal conduct. This calculation included the value of our client’s cryptoasset accounts, luxury goods, equity in various companies, and additional assets said to be available to him.

There were several interested parties, whose interests aligned with our client, that asserted rights over assets that the Crown claimed were owned by the defendant. We challenged these assertions and submitted detailed submissions with supporting evidence on behalf of the interested parties.

The Crown also submitted that companies in which our client held an interest should be included as part of his available assets. In response, we argued that the corporate veil could not be pierced in relation to these companies, and that they should not be treated as either criminal benefit or assets available to satisfy any order.

Outcome

A successful outcome was negotiated which resulted in the Crown agreeing to a confiscation order of £1.9 million – a reduction of over £6.5 million – with the available amount nearly halved to £1.1 million. The final order did not apply the statutory inflationary uplift.

All third party interests were accepted and excluded from both the benefit figure and available amount. The Crown also conceded that the corporate veil could not be pierced in relation to three companies of which the defendant was a director and which held assets totalling nearly £500,000.

This outcome was the result of specialist POCA knowledge, meticulously drafted submissions and sustained negotiations.

David Bloom, assisted by Elif Bilecan, instructed Ben Douglas-Jones KC of 5 Paper Buildings and Alex Davidson of 2BR Chambers for the defendant.