Malta: Solicitor went to visit client
The first solicitor prosecuted by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) for ‘tipping off’ a client about a money laundering investigation has failed in his appeal against conviction.
The Court of Appeal rejected [1] multiple grounds of appeal made by William Osmond, which focused in particular on issues which the trial judge decided should not be put before the jury.
In late 2023, Mr Osmond, now 72, was sentenced [2] to nine months in jail, suspended for 18 months.
Her Honour Judge Rebecca Trowler KC also ordered him to complete 100 hours of unpaid work and pay £5,000 toward the SFO’s costs.
Mr Osmond was co-founder and senior partner of London firm Osmond & Osmond, as well as its money laundering reporting officer.
In 2018, SFO investigators made covert enquiries about businessman James Redding Ramsay, Mr Osmond’s client, who had paid £4m toward the purchase of a Mayfair property.
Mr Osmond immediately contacted his client to inform him about the investigation and went on to meet Mr Ramsay to discuss the matter across the next five months, including by flying out to Mr Ramsay’s home in Malta the following week and meeting him at a West London private dining club.
This was despite being repeatedly warned by the SFO not to tell Mr Ramsay.
He was also found guilty of forging a letter of engagement to carry out the purchase. The SFO asked him to provide it and Mr Osmond had never had such a letter.
On appeal, his KC, Mark Fenhalls, submitted that the judge unfairly narrowed the scope of the defence case by making rulings of law on issues which should have been left to the jury.
“We do not accept this submission,” said Lord Justice Males, giving the court’s unanimous decision.
“In our judgment the judge’s rulings were necessary to ensure that the case was dealt with efficiently and expeditiously, as required by the overriding objective, and that the jury was enabled to focus on the real issues in the case.
“There was a real danger… that the trial would become bogged down in a morass of irrelevant material.”
Section 333A(3) of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 deals with tipping-off where the disclosure “is likely to prejudice that investigation” and the information on which the disclosure is based “came to the person in the course of a business in the regulated sector”.
Mr Fenhalls argued that the disclosure did not come to Mr Osmond in the course of a business in the regulated sector, but from the SFO. The fact that Mr Osmond had acted as a solicitor in relation to the transaction five years earlier was not enough, he submitted.
The court had no truck with this. “Mr Osmond’s business was as a solicitor engaged in transactions concerning the purchase of real property, the acquisition of off-the-shelf companies and the handling of client money, all of which were involved in the 10 Hays Mews transaction. Undoubtedly that was a business in the regulated sector…
“It was in his capacity as Mr Ramsay’s solicitor that he received the information from the SFO. The fact that the information about the SFO investigation came from the SFO does not assist the defence.”
The fact that the transaction happened some time in the past was of no help either. “That will inevitably be the position when an investigation into past events is being carried out,” observed Males LJ.
Separately, Mr Fenhalls argued that the SFO had not suffered any prejudice as a result of Mr Osmond’s disclosure.
But the Court of Appeal said there was no requirement to show there was prejudice or that its absence was a defence.
“The issue, which was an issue of fact for the jury, was whether the disclosure was ‘likely’ to prejudice the investigation. Accordingly the judge was right to reject the submission of no case on count one.
“In any event, it seems to us that disclosure of the investigation to the target is inherently likely to prejudice the investigation because of the risk that evidence will be destroyed or compromised or that an offender may seek to evade justice. At any rate, a jury would be entitled to reach that conclusion.”
As a result, because the proposed appeal was not arguable, the court refused leave.
“However, because (as we are told) this is the first case about the tipping off provisions in section 333A(3) to reach this court, we give leave for this judgment to be cited.”
In April 2025, Mr Osmond was suspended from practice for a year [3] after allowing a client to use his firm’s account as a banking facility.