Benjamin Newton KC and Kate O’Raghallaigh secure acquittals regarding £5m money-laundering conspiracies

Benjamin Newton KC and Kate O’Raghallaigh were instructed by Ruth Harris of Hodge Jones & Allen to represent FA, a forty-year-old woman of good character. She had worked as the Personal Assistant to the principals of two sophisticated schemes through which the proceeds of substantial international fraud were laundered using shell companies and bank accounts set up for ‘mules’ brought into the country from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. At the conclusion of an eight-week trial FA was found not guilty of involvement in either conspiracy, and of a substantive count of acquiring criminal property. The prosecution subsequently offered no evidence in relation to a further count of attempting to convert criminal property upon which the jury had been unable to reach a verdict.