Stephen Hellman

Year of Call: 1988

Stephen Hellman is an expert in asset confiscation/forfeiture and money laundering.  He specialises in cases covering all aspects of these fields under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and its predecessor legislation, and the related fields of criminal/civil fraud.

On the confiscation side he deals regularly with a broad range of issues relating to restraint, receivership and confiscation orders.  These run from the meaning of ‘obtaining’ benefit in R v Jennings in the House of Lords, to whether a magistrates’ court has power under the Criminal Justice Act 1988 to vary the date on which interest on a confiscation order made by the Crown Court begins to accrue.  His practice includes helping overseas governments to enforce external confiscation orders. For example, he obtained a restraint order on behalf of the Government of India in a case connected with the Bofors munitions scandal.

Criminal fraud and money laundering complement Stephen’s work in asset confiscation and forfeiture. For instance, he was part of the prosecution team that secured convictions for fraudulent trading, money laundering and regulatory offences after a two and a half month trial in a multi-handed Ponzi fraud.  The media dubbed the case a ‘£3.2 million pray day’ as many of the victims were members of the Seventh Day Adventist Church.  He also acts in an advisory capacity, for example advising trust companies and other offshore clients on money laundering and compliance issues, and is consultant to the Financial Intelligence Unit of St Vincent and the Grenadines.

Before joining Furnival Chambers in 2002, Stephen worked for eight years in commercial law firms in Guernsey and the Cayman Islands.  Admitted to the Cayman Islands Bar in 1994, he regularly advised banks and other financial institutions on production orders and suspicious transaction reports, and was money laundering reporting officer for a Guernsey trust company.  He is used to dealing with regulators, having acted for the SEC and represented clients in discussions with the Guernsey FSC.

Much of his work offshore involved high value commercial litigation in cases such as BCCI.  He worked in collaboration with major international law firms in leading financial centres such as London, New York and Hong Kong.  This has left him well equipped to deal with the increasingly important civil dimension to fraud and asset recovery.  For example, in Jordan v Borders UK Ltd he acted for an offender who was sued by his victims, a consortium of booksellers, in a civil claim for damages.

Stephen also undertakes pro bono work and has appeared as junior counsel on appeals to the Privy Council in Caribbean death row cases.  A notable success was Peart v The Queen, in which the appellant’s conviction was quashed.  He is a past chairman of the committee of Amicus, a charity that assists US defence attorneys working on death penalty cases.

Stephen writes and lectures widely on issues related to his practice.  For example, he chaired the CLT Proceeds of Crime and Confiscation conference in March 2008.  He is a contributing editor of the forthcoming Association of Certified Fraud Examiners’ Manual; edits the chapters on confiscation and international co-operation for Mitchell Taylor Talbot on Asset Confiscation and Forfeiture; and is joint author of the chapter on Guernsey law in Butterworths International Guide to Money Laundering Law and Practice, Second Edition, 2002, which he is currently updating for the Third Edition.