Christopher Harding

Christopher Harding

Barrister, Experience of Criminal Defence

Practice:

• Crime - Murder, serious sexual offences, major drug importations, financial and regulatory offences and serious fraud. Appeals, particularly in fresh evidence cases, and Judicial Review.
• Proceeds of Crime - Restraint, Receivership & Charging Orders. Confiscation and enforcement proceedings. Also civil Condemnation proceedings in relation to seized goods and vehicles.
• Professional Regulatory Tribunals - Defending allegations of misconduct, negligence and dishonesty.
• Judicial Review and public law - Matters affecting criminal clients, including challenges to police cautions, prisoner categorisation, parole decisions etc.

Experience:

Crime:

Christopher has a long and wide ranging experience of criminal defence, across all categories of case. He is regularly instructed in high profile and complex criminal cases, from murder and violent sexual offences through to commercial serious fraud.

Christopher is often instructed in two counsel cases where painstaking preparatory work, proficiency in IT presentation, and imaginative advocacy are required.

He has particular experience in the defence of professionals charged with white-collar fraud, and of businesses facing Trading Standards, BERR/DTI, Health & Safety or Revenue & Customs prosecutions.

He is also regularly instructed in complex appellate work, particularly appeals against conviction relying upon fresh evidence.

Some Recent Cases include:

• Regina v L.M. - Instructed to defend businessman prosecuted by trading standards department for orchestrating a nation-wide website advertising fraud. Three employee defendants also charged. Prosecution alleged that the whole business was a sham and infringed the copyright of Apple, Virgin, Adidas, Merlin and Sky. A detailed abuse of process argument was lodged (investigative/disclosure failures, defective indictment, no authority to prosecute). Prosecution offered no evidence on all counts - accepting that their had been fundamental failures in the disclosure process, and that it was not in the public interest to prosecute.

• Regina v S.K. - Female defendant (previous convictions/mental health issues) charged with sexual assault on learning disabled adult. Disclosure applications revealed previous documented false allegation of sexual assault. s.28 recorded cross-examination used. Jury acquitted on all counts.

• Regina v D.G. - Instructed to defend a businessman charged with 10 conspiracies to import and supply drugs, and to launder money. Throughout Crown Court proceedings complaint was raised about disclosure and the "reverse-engineering" of a circumstantial case against the defendant. Following the service of an abuse of process argument, and the appointment of Special Counsel to enquire into disclosure issues, the Crown eventually offered no evidence on all counts - accepting that there had been fundamental failures in the disclosure process, and that material which the police had not revealed to the CPS made their case against the Defendant untenable. He should not have been charged.

• Regina v A.T. - Successful defence 19 year old charged with the attempted murder of 4 police officers. The prosecution alleged that a frenzied knife attack, on officers responding to a false 999 call, had been a pre-mediated attempt to kill. The defendant, who had no history of violence and no previous convictions, had been smoking a particularly potent form of cannabis. He was acquitted of attempted murder and convicted only of wounding offences, to which he had offered to plead guilty before the trial.

• Regina v E.K. - Appeared first as junior led by Sir Geoffrey Cox QC, and later on his appointment as Attorney General, as leading counsel in a massive immigration applications fraud. Trial ran for more than 7 months at Southwark Crown Court.

• Regina v W.F. - Successful defence of Park Home site developer in 9 week trial at Hull Crown Court. The prosecution alleged fraud by misrepresentation in the sales of park homes to 70 elderly, vulnerable purchasers over a 4 year period - amounting to more than £7million. Through painstaking work and cross-examination it was demonstrated that the witness accounts were unreliable and motivated by self-interest, and that the fairness of the police investigation had been compromised by outside influences. The defendant was acquitted on all counts at half-time, when the trial judge ruled that the Crown had no reliable evidence of fraud.

• Regina v D.L. - Instructed as junior counsel to defend a professional accountant to media industry clients, charged with cheating the public revenue. HMRC alleged that the defendant's company had lodged false tax returns on behalf of a client base of over 7,000 individuals and companies - leading to a loss to the revenue of more than £10million. Crown's case ranged across large sections of the defendant's client base, and the two trials involved very substantial document analysis and handling skills, as the total evidence relied on by the Crown exceeded 50,000 pages, and the unused material contained more than a million documents.

• Regina v Q.R. - Represented professional financial advisor charged with fraud and forgery. Case was brought by SFO and concerned the disinvestment and disbursement abroad of £52million distressed pension fund assets by the professional trustees appointed to manage the funds.

• Regina v A.C. - Successful defence of a businessman charged with the murder of a Cheetham Hill Gang member. As the subject of two previous unsuccessful prosecutions for murder brought by the same police force, the Defendant maintained that this prosecution was brought in bad faith. The case turned on the interpretation of a huge body of forensic scientific evidence. Prosecution eventually accepted, after being served with a very substantial dismissal argument, that they were unable to prove that the killing had not been in self-defence.

• Regina v G.M. - Successful defence of managing director charged with substantial fraud and theft in respect of the company's nationwide direct sales operation. Case involved complex factual circumstances, including the assertion that the desperate financial circumstances had been inherited, unwittingly, from outgoing directors. Shortly before the listed trial Crown accepted that to continue with the prosecution would amount to an abuse of process.

• Regina v D.C. - Groundbreaking prosecution, under the Computer Misuse Act, of a security analyst suspected of having "hacked" into the Tsunami Relief Fund donations website.

• Regina v B.L. - Multi-handed Flying Squad prosecution at the Old Bailey involving a series of armed robberies. Instructed as leading counsel and conducted successful defence.

• Jubilee Line - Instructed as junior counsel to defend in this exceptionally lengthy and complex case at the Central Criminal Court. The case concerned allegations of conspiracy to defraud and corruption by professional surveyors, in the context of a huge, politically-charged civil engineering project.

• Transatlantic Aircraft Terrorist Plot - Instructed to defend one of the 15 men arrested and charged in connection with a terrorist suicide plan to detonate liquid explosives on transatlantic flights.

Proceeds of Crime

Christopher has extensive experience of confiscation work, including the protection of third party interests, revisiting confiscation orders upon the discovery of new assets, certificates of inadequacy and the enforcement of orders through the implementation of default sentences, High Court restraint orders and civil freezing injunctions.

Tribunals:

He regularly represents professionals on a regulator's applications for orders based on misconduct, breaches of professional regulations, negligence and dishonesty. Application of recent regulatory reform legislation and standards expected of regulator's investigations by the BERR's Statutory Code of Practice for Regulators.

Recent success includes forcing the withdrawal of allegations in the Solicitor's Disciplinary Tribunal and obtaining an order that the Respondent's costs be paid by the Regulator, owing to deficiencies in the quality and extent of the investigation by the SRA.

Some Reported Cases include:

• R v Camwell (Barry) [2003] EWCA Crim 1388
(Sentence for Rape, aggravating features, extended sentences)

• R v Tanzarella & Bryars [2007] EWCA Crim 2987
(Sentence for Kidnap and False Imprisonment)

• R v Stodgell (Colin) [2011] EWCA Crim 402
(Successful appeal against terms of original confiscation order to remove hidden assets and tainted gifts from the Court approved schedule of assets)

• R v Robert Knott [2013] EWCA Crim 2198
(Successful appeal against murder conviction, based on criticism of cross-examination of original trial Q.C. Re-trial ordered)

• R v Martin O'Hara [2017] EWCA Crim 525
(Successful appeal against a 6 year sentence for series of indecent assaults by gymnastics coach)

Accreditations

Lancaster Royal Grammar School.

Kings College, London LLB (Hons).

Kings College Organ Scholar.

Appointments

Companion and Honorary Senior Fellow of the North and Midlands School of Music

Former Chair of Governors of Church of England Primary School

Memberships

Criminal Bar Association

Ecclesiastical Law Society

Bar European Group

South Eastern Circuit