What We Do…
Member Profile
Howard Godfrey QC
Year of call: 1970
Year of silk: 1991
Recorder: 1992
Education: LLB (Hons) (London LSE)
Practice
- Serious fraud, corporate and personal
- Revenue and Customs offences
- Financial services, regulatory and criminal
- Money laundering, national and international
- Insider dealing
- MTIC or carousel fraud
- Corporate insolvency fraud
- Mortgage Fraud
- Regulatory crime and professional discipline
- Commercial fraud, proceeds of crime and confiscation
- Health and safety enforcement
- Gross negligence and corporate manslaughter
- Trade descriptions
- Abuse of Process cases
- Solicitors' compliance
- Drug trafficking
- Serious crime
- Murder
- Sex offences
Howard Godfrey QC has an extensive crime and civil commercial practice with particular expertise in fraud and financial services; he is regularly instructed by leading City and West End firms specialising in white collar crime.
Cases involving tax, VAT and corporate insolvency fraud play a large part in his practice. He advises in cases where fraud is or may be alleged against a client, and in financial services matters, both regulatory and criminal.
He also has a substantial money laundering and international drugs practice, including confiscation of assets proceedings.
A growth area has been ‘abuse of process’ cases. Notable examples include Finch and Others (Gibraltar money laundering): proceedings were stayed on the grounds of abuse of process. Others include Whittome (company liquidation fraud) and Coulier (drug trafficking; unlawful arrest by Royal Navy on behalf of Customs on the high seas). In cases such as these, European Court of Human Rights arguments played a large part.
In addition to solicitors’ compliance advice and representation, he advises company directors on potential fraud/money laundering liability in company takeover, management buyout, and various other situations.
His criminal work includes health and safety, trade descriptions, corruption and perverting the course of justice cases, as well as murder and other cases of a violent and/or sexual nature.
Civil work (with a specialist junior if necessary) includes commercial cases and defamation where vigorous cross-examination is called for, especially those involving dishonesty or fraud. He often advises jointly with specialists in other fields where a case crosses conventional thresholds.
To contact Howard Godfrey please click here 
Cases
Drugs | |
| R v Sofu | International Drugs Conspiracy. |
| R v Coulier | |
| R v Doran | |
Serious Fraud Office Prosecution | |
| R v Rosenthal (Wickes Building Case) | Final defendant acquitted in plc auditing fraud. |
| R v McNamara | |
| R v Rowlands | |
Health and Safety | |
| R v Camp | Hotel gross negligence manslaughter |
| Zeebrugge Ferry Disaster | Coporate Manslaughter. |
Money Laundering | |
| R v K |
Laundering proceeds of VAT fraud. |
| R v Akram |
Drugs money laundering. |
| R v Dulku |
Laundering proceeds of VAT fraud. |
| R v Roberts |
Anglo-Spanish money laundering. |
| R v Sharifh | Bureau de Change money laundering. Stay of proceedings as abuse of process by Customs & Excise. |
| R v Barnes | (Terry Adams & Ors) Money laundering proceeds of Very Major Crime. Date: 2006/2007 |
| R v Finch and Others | Appeared as leading counsel for a lawyer charged with laundering the procedds of duty and excise frauds through offshore companies. Following the longest pre- trial application ever (418 days), the case was stayed as an abuse on the grounds that the police had incited the commission of offences and in doing so had committed offences in other jurisdictions. |
Confiscation and Restraint | |
| Asset Recovery Agency v J | £6 million asset recovery claim after unsolicited goods/trade description offences. |
Fraud | |
| R v Sophocleous |
House Building VAT Fraud. |
| R v Mackay |
Derby County Football Club directors' take-over fraud. |
| R v E |
Missing Trader VAT fraud. |
| R v Maya |
Confiscation after pension fund fraud. |
| R v Hofberg | US Entertainment attorney implicated in UK /Hong Kong £44 million VAT fraud. |
| R v Whittome | |
| R v Lucas | |
| R v Golding | |
| R v Short & Others | |
| R v Cohen | |
| R v McMenemy | |
| R v Harman | |
Domestic Appellate Cases | |
| R v Galbraith | |
