Gerard Pounder started out as a common law advocate with a practice built around crime, general PI, clinical negligence and work place injuries. He now specialises in crime with a particular emphasis on commercial fraud. He acts for both defence and prosecution.
As a prosecuting advocate, he has been instructed by the Serious Fraud Office on a regular basis since 1990. He is instructed as a leading junior by HM Customs & Excise (now the Revenue & Customs Prosecutions Office) and by the Crown Prosecution Service. He has also appeared on behalf of the Inland Revenue, DTI [now BERR], HSE and DEFRA.
Gerard Pounder also specialises in such crime-linked matters as money laundering and restraint. He also continues to undertake professional disciplinary work and coroners inquests.
Past fraud cases have involved large-scale dishonesty arising out of such areas of commerce as bills of exchange, company flotations and reversals, stocks, shares and investment, industrial projects, corruption, international letters of credit, VAT evasion, forgery and international advance fees. As a result, he is expert at marshalling lengthy and complex financial evidence.
He has also advised police forces and others and has appeared in the civil courts re suspicious money movements.
He has acted in Police disciplinary hearings and has sat as a Legal Assessor, including Operation Lancet in Cleveland. Furthermore, he has represented the Home Office in Coroner's inquests arising out of prison deaths.
Gerard Pounder has lectured on disclosure and PII, money laundering, advocacy and sexual offences.
Recent Cases of Note
R v Simmons et al (2003)
A Serious Fraud Office prosecution of a fraud based on corruption in the cable laying industry. The court heard how Michael Simmons the group director of construction at Bell Cablemedia, received bribes of more than £700,000 in return for awarding an engineering company contract to lay cable television and telephone networks. The bribes came to light after a sub-contractor taped a conversation with Simmons, in which he asked for "payback" money, and went to West Yorkshire police. Simmons was sentenced to three years in prison after being convicted on corruption charges. Two sub-contractors, Danny Thomas and David Hutchinson, were given 12- and 4-month sentences after pleading guilty to paying bribes in the mid 1990s.
R v Steen et al (2000)
This 5-month long case concerned an international advance fee fraud perpetrated against business loan applicants in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand of down payments made for phantom loans. The court heard the three defendants had benefited to the sum of US$5million.
Operating a firm in Brighton known as "Corporate Advances", loan applicants responded to press advertisements for commercial loans. The fraudulent scheme required applicants to pay certain non-refundable advance fees to have their applications processed. Hundreds of applications were received for loans ranging between half a million and twenty million pounds, however the court heard how no loans were forthcoming and instead further financial conditions would be imposed that proved impossible for the applicants to meet. As a result the applicants would withdraw and thereby forgo their deposits.
