Episode 271

10th August – 13th August 2026

Money Laundering

Landmark Court of Appeal Ruling Tightens "Tipping Off" and Forgery Rules for Solicitors

The English Court of Appeal has delivered a significant ruling on how lawyers must handle sensitive law enforcement inquiries, clarifying the legal boundaries around "tipping off" and document fabrication. In R v Osmond [2026] EWCA Crim 979, the court rejected an appeal by William Osmond, a 72-year-old solicitor convicted of revealing a Serious Fraud Office (SFO) probe to his client and backdating a letter of engagement to satisfy investigators. Significantly, the decision is the first appellate guidance on the tipping off offence under section 333A(3), Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (PoCA). The ruling is likely to have immediate, practical consequences for regulated businesses in the impacted parts of the jurisdiction.

The dispute arose from a 2018 SFO inquiry into a £8 million property purchase at 10 Hays Mews in Mayfair, which was partially financed by a £4 million loan from a British Virgin Islands entity called Barrow Management Ltd. When SFO investigator Jonathan Mack requested information from Osmond regarding his client, James Ramsay, Osmond immediately contacted Ramsay and flew to Malta to coordinate their accounts. Osmond also created and backdated a client engagement letter which he had never actually prepared. While the defence argued that Osmond’s actions did not constitute "tipping off" because the overarching investigation into mining giant ENRC was already public knowledge, the Court of Appeal was not persuaded. The judges ruled that discussing a specific, non-public branch of an investigation remains illegal even if the parent case is widely publicised. This distinction suggests that professionals must treat any active investigation as highly confidential by default.

Furthermore, the decision clarifies the limits of what constitutes forgery in English law. The defence had asserted that because the SFO only has a discretionary power to investigate rather than a statutory duty, Osmond's fabricated letter did not satisfy the requirement of deceiving an official in the performance of a "duty". However, the court rejected this narrow interpretation, holding that public officials carrying out criminal investigations are duty-bound to perform their public functions lawfully. It could be argued that this broad definition expands the scope of criminal forgery into administrative non-compliance. Nevertheless, the judgment appears to establish a clear precedent: providing false documents to any investigator carrying out a public function is highly likely to trigger criminal liability. A useful analysis from Norton Rose Fulbright is available here.

Bribery and Corruption

Veloxis Pharmaceuticals Agrees to Pay Over $46 Million to Resolve Criminal and Civil Kickback Allegations

North Carolina-based drug manufacturer Veloxis Pharmaceuticals Inc. agreed to pay over $46 million to resolve criminal and civil allegations surrounding a systemic scheme to pay kickbacks to healthcare providers and specialty pharmacies to promote its kidney transplant drug, Envarsus XR. According to the US Department of Justice, the resolution includes a deferred prosecution agreement and a $10 million criminal penalty for conspiring to violate the Anti-Kickback Statute through lavish dinners, luxury resort trips, and unperformed consulting agreements. To resolve civil False Claims Act allegations of causing the submission of fraudulent claims to Medicare, Medicaid, and TRICARE, Veloxis will pay $34.45 million. Additionally, the firm will pay a $1.55 million civil penalty for knowingly underreporting or failing to report these physician payments under the Centres for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Open Payments Programme, representing the largest Sunshine Act recovery in history. As part of the settlement, Veloxis has also entered into a five-year Corporate Integrity Agreement with the Department of Health and Human Services to implement an enhanced compliance programme. The Department of Justice press release is here, and the text of the DPA is here.

Market Abuse

SEC Charges Adit Ventures Management and CEO in Alleged Pre-IPO Investment Fraud

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged New York-based investment adviser Adit Ventures Management LLC, its CEO Eric Munson, and three affiliated general partners, with allegedly defrauding investors and client funds in connection with investments in pre-IPO shares, such as SpaceX and Klarna. The SEC's complaint alleges that from at least April 2019 through December 2024, the defendants misappropriated advisory client assets, took unauthorised unsecured loans, and overcharged client funds millions in undisclosed "acquisition fees". The defendants also allegedly violated their fiduciary duties by purchasing pre-IPO shares and reselling them to client funds at higher markups without investor consent, failing to register as an investment adviser, and improperly pledging client assets as collateral for a $10 million line of credit used in part to pay off their own obligations. Without admitting the allegations, the defendants have consented to a permanent injunction, with disgorgement and civil penalties to be determined by the court, and Munson has agreed to a forthcoming three-year associational bar.

Other Financial Crime

Systemic Legal Tactics Exposed in New Book on Post Office Scandal

A recently published open-access book by Professor Richard Moorhead of the University of Exeter suggests that the UK's legal sector is facing a profound crisis of integrity, pointing to the Post Office scandal as a prime example of systemic ethical failure rather than a few isolated instances of misconduct. The book, Frail Professionalism: Lawyers' Ethics after the Post Office and Other Cases, is based on the author's Hamlyn Lectures. It details how ordinary legal practices can end up distorting truth and ruining lives.

The Myth of the "Bad Apple"

The central idea is that legal misconduct is rarely just the work of rogue practitioners. Instead, it appears to stem from a toxic combination of institutional cultures, psychological vulnerabilities, and what he terms "irresponsible orthodoxies". These orthodoxies, which are often accepted as standard professional behaviour, are used to construct "legality illusions". These are practices which present a veneer of lawfulness while actively misleading courts and opponents.

While some within the legal sector maintain that the Post Office scandal was a unique failure of in-house lawyers and private prosecution, Moorhead shows that the problems are far more pervasive, involving elite private firms and senior barristers alike. While it could be argued that lawyers are simply playing their required role in an adversarial system, the book argues that this role morality is often used as a convenient shield to excuse harmful behaviour.

The Human Cost on the Ground

The human cost of these tactics is illustrated through several cases. Pamela Lock, a subpostmistress who ran a franchise branch, was prosecuted for theft and false accounting after the Post Office's Horizon IT system generated phantom shortfalls. Advised to plead guilty to false accounting, she ended up with a community service sentence and had to sell her family home to pay a £26,000 debt.

Another subpostmaster, Lee Castleton, tried to represent himself when his legal funds ran out. He lost his case after the Post Office hid helpdesk call logs which indicated widespread system errors. Castleton was bankrupted by £320,000 in costs. Moorhead suggests that these aggressive strategies were used to protect the reputation of the IT system and deter others from coming forward. Ordinary legal processes failed to find the truth.

The Problem of Zealous Advocacy

This legal aggression is not unique to the Post Office. It appears to be driven by a professional ideology which prioritises client interests over the wider administration of justice. Moorhead critiques the traditional conception of "zealous advocacy". He points to the case of Alistair Brett, an experienced solicitor for The Times, who was found to have recklessly allowed a court to be misled during an injunction hearing regarding the identity of an anonymous blogger.

Brett knew the blogger's email had been illegally hacked by a journalist but helped draft a witness statement which suggested a legitimate search process. This focus on clever compartmentalisation over honesty may show how easily professional morals can disengage under pressure.

A Blueprint for Reform

To address these issues, Moorhead calls for a whole-systems reform of legal regulation and corporate governance. Simple code revisions or low-level disciplinary actions are unlikely to succeed on their own. Instead, he suggests establishing accountability systems where named individuals are held personally responsible for legal risk decisions within organisations. He also suggests that legal services regulators need to be better resourced and that the legal profession should consider adopting a single, unified code of conduct. Ultimately, the book argues that true professionalism requires lawyers to exercise "lucid integrity," putting an active duty to avoid misleading others at the core of their practice.