Jack Walsh - Special Counsel

Cases of note include the following:

• Advised and acted for a small business owner in a hard-fought and successful application for a judicial review of the decision of a Police force to retain and deal with an allegation of corruption in its investigation. The resultant High Court ruling set a precedent for how the Police should deal with such allegations;
• Advised and acted during the Covid pandemic for three firms in different sectors of the medicines market that were subject to MHRA regulatory investigation, including one that was featured in a national newspaper; none of the investigations led to criminal proceedings;
• Wrote a successful letter before claim on behalf of a well-known author whose agent had been induced by fraud to pay a very large sum due to the author to the fraudsters;
• Advised on issues of legal privilege, disclosure obligations and collateral use of material from civil proceedings in a potential private prosecution arising from a fraudulent multi-million pound insurance claim;
• Advised a multi-national company in respect of a prosecution of a former director and associates for corruption. The principle issue was the likelihood of a stay of concurrent civil proceedings;
• Acted for the vulnerable victim of a sexual offence in exercising her rights contained in the Victims’ Right to Review scheme and a potential judicial review of the CPS;
• Advised the victim of a complex fraud conspiracy, much of which had been carried out outside the jurisdiction, in respect of obtaining evidence from abroad.

At the independent Bar:

• Advised an MP on his alleged involvement in the Parliamentary expenses scandal and to make written submissions to Sir Thomas Legg as to the amount he was to repay. The submissions were successful and the MP was not prosecuted;
• R v. K – successful application for interim relief in judicial review proceedings where the substantive case concerned a youth charged with rape (Lloyd Jones, J);
• HMRC v. Harwich GSM Ltd [2012] UKFTT 279 – instructed by HMRC (led) in respect of an £11m MTIC fraud before the Tax Tribunal – HMRC successfully resisted the appeal;
• D v. CPS – instructed by the CPS against a silk and junior to respond to an application to enforce £13,000 costs – the judge accepted the costs order was ultra vires and unenforceable;
• R v. M – instructed by the CPS to respond to an application for permission to appeal against conviction on the grounds of jury bias – application refused;
• R v. F – Represented the ‘director’ of a sophisticated, large-scale conspiracy to steal millions of pounds of copper cable. The 6-week trial featured PII and vast amounts of material including, most notably, mobile telephone and cell-site analysis and surveillance;

Jack and two other lawyers wrote the Blackstone’s Guide to the Sentencing Act 2020, published by the Oxford University Press. This is a practitioners’ guide to this very substantial piece of new legislation, with extensive commentary analysing its likely effect.

In 2016 and 2017 Jack contributed to the England and Wales section of the Asset Tracing and Recovery Review, an international fraud practitioners’ textbook (edited by Robert Hunter).