Viberts wins Privy Council appeal in Jersey’s biggest money laundering case
On 4th November this year the Privy Council quashed the conviction of Mr Peter Michel on 9 charges of money laundering, expressing "deep dismay simply by reference to the number and character of the judge’s interventions in the course of the trial".
David Le Quesne, the litigation partner in Viberts, has represented the defendant, Peter Michel, since the beginning of the trial process; he explains the main steps leading to this victory in what is Jersey’s biggest money laundering trial:
"Mr Michel was charged with 10 counts of money laundering.
Before I took over Mr Michel’s defence, a trial date had been fixed, and I had to apply for a substantial delay so that the new defence team would have time to consider the documents provided by the prosecution - over one million - and to prepare Mr Michel’s defence. The application was refused, with unfortunate results.
A few days after the start of the trial on 3rd July 2006, when the court was told, again, by the defence that it was unable to proceed because it was not fully prepared, the court took the unusual step in such circumstances of proceeding to try one of the 10 counts, and leaving the remaining 9 counts to be tried later. The trial on the one count led to Mr Michel being found guilty.
In due course, there followed the main trail on the remaining 9 counts, which lasted 30 days and finished in May 2007. On behalf of Mr Michel, we appealed to the Court of Appeal mainly on the ground that the trial had been unfair because of the conduct of the judge. That appeal failed. The Privy Council gave leave to appeal, and that appeal was heard in the summer of 2009. The Privy Council quashed the 9 convictions and ordered that the Appeal Court shall decide whether or not there should be a retrial.
These are the bare bones of a long and complicated trial process, consisting of two Royal Court trials, several Court of Appeal hearings, two appeals to the Privy Council and innumerable ’interlocutory’ hearings. Two Jurats who were due to sit for the first trial had to be discharged, one defence lawyer (my predecessor) had to withdraw due to illness and a representative of the local newspaper was brought before the trial judge and rebuked for its report of proceedings.
An unfair trial leads to an unfair verdict, so it is clearly a triumph for Mr Michel and Viberts to have established, in Jersey’s ultimate court of appeal, that the trial was unfair and that the verdict had to be quashed. It remains to be seen whether there will be a retrial."
Attached is a link to the Privy Council Decision:
http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKPC/2009/41.html