Regular readers may remember that Carter-Ruck, the UK’s most notorious libel law firm, issued vague threats to Commsrisk earlier this year. They were acting on behalf of Global Voice Group (GVG), the telecoms tax business founded by Laurent Lamothe, a former Prime Minister of Haiti who has since been sanctioned by the US government for corruption. So I beg your forgiveness for sharing some news that has nothing to do with the comms sector but has a lot to do with the way bad actors silence legitimate criticism. The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), a body which regulates most law firms in England and Wales, has announced they will be prosecuting Claire Gill, a lawyer and Partner at Carter-Ruck, for recklessly acting on behalf of a client that should have been identified as a fraud.
Gill’s motto on the Carter-Ruck website is “ferocious in protecting the client”. It appears she may have been rather too ferocious when protecting OneCoin, a fraudulent cryptocurrency racket run by offshore companies OneCoin Ltd (based in Bulgaria and registered in Dubai) and OneLife Network Ltd (registered in Belize). OneCoin was essentially a Ponzi scheme that made payments to early investors by giving them some of the money taken from later investors. One founder of the fraud, Ruja Ignatova, has disappeared and is listed among the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 10 most wanted fugitives. The other, Sebastian Greenwood, is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in the USA.
To be clear, it has not yet been determined if Gill acted improperly when she threatened critics of OneCoin. This is how the SRA website describes Gill’s case:
The Tribunal has certified that there is a case to answer in respect of allegations which are or include that, on or around 26 April 2017, Ms Gill sent or arranged to be sent correspondence which contained an improper threat of litigation.
The allegations are subject to a Hearing before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal and are as yet unproven.
Carter-Ruck was referred to the SRA by Tax Policy Associates, a campaign group founded by Dan Neidle, a high-ranking member of Britain’s ruling Labour Party, and an expert who describes himself as a ‘tax realist’. Neidle became a citizen journalist after stepping down as a tax lawyer for international firm Clifford Chance, and he won “Investigation of the Year” at the British Journalism Awards 2023. Tax Policy Associates’ description of the case against Carter-Ruck includes the claim that Carter-Ruck persuaded the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the regulator of financial services firms in the UK, to remove warnings about the risks of investing in OneCoin.
In 2023, Ed Siddons and Matthew Valencia reported for The Bureau of Investigative Journalism that infamous libel firm Carter-Ruck had acted for a supposed cryptocurrency business called OneCoin. Cryptocurrency experts had made plausible allegations that OneCoin was in fact a fraud, and Carter-Ruck sent them libel threats. The FCA warned potential investors about OneCoin; and Carter-Ruck somehow forced the FCA to remove their warning.
Tax Policy Associates dug into the story behind Carter-Ruck’s actions and did not like what they found.
We published a detailed investigation and legal analysis of Carter-Ruck’s actions in December 2023. We looked at what Carter-Ruck had done, and whether this was justified on the basis of the information available to them at the time. Our conclusion: Carter-Ruck recklessly acted for a client it should have known was a fraud, and recklessly made accusations Carter-Ruck should have known were false. It’s likely that Carter-Ruck’s actions caused more people to lose more money to the fraud — and this was foreseeable at the time.
They consequently felt compelled to refer Carter-Ruck to the appropriate regulator for law firms. Carter-Ruck tried but failed to stop this news becoming public.
We therefore referred Carter-Ruck to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The SRA announced today that they will be prosecuting the solicitor responsible, Claire Gill, before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.
Typically, Carter-Ruck tried to prevent the SRA making this public. Credit to the SRA for standing firm.
Gill’s online biography states she is an expert in securing the removal of material published online or elsewhere. Those skills might be exercised through the Right to Erasure/Right to be Forgotten that was created by GDPR. For example, if you were to google a phrase like “Laurent Lamothe Commsrisk”, it will be that particular GDPR right which was exercised and which prompted Google to end their list by commenting: “some results may have been removed under data protection law in Europe”. I have no way of knowing who has been so diligently removing search results involving Commsrisk’s old articles but we should all appreciate how it was done.
I want to be clear with readers of Commsrisk that none of this should affect what they think about Global Voice Group. As far as this article is concerned, the only connection between GVG, a business incorporated in offshore havens that was founded by Laurent Lamothe, and OneCoin, a USD4bn fraudulent racket executed via offshore corporations, is that both have engaged the services of Carter-Ruck to represent them.
Carter-Ruck demanded that I give them advance notice of the content of any articles that include “any allegation or criticism of GVG”. I have not complied with that demand.
