Acquittal £11.7 Million Fraud

Operation Discan was a large police investigation into a Money Services Bureau (MSB) operated from Leicester.

It was alleged that some £11.75 million of criminal monies were laundered through the MSB.  Geoff Payne, instructed by Pretesh Chauhan of JD Spicer Zeb represented the second defendant of five in was listed to be a lengthy trial at Leicester Crown Court.  After several weeks, which featured a number of disclosure problems and legal arguments, as a result of personal issues affecting the defendant, the defence successfully secured her case being severed from the rest.  In the absence of junior counsel, senior solicitor and partner of the firm Mr Pretesh Chauhan painstakingly perused over 30,000 pages of documents in order to highlight disclosure issues which had not been identified by anyone on the Prosecution’s legal team. This resulted in concessions being made by the Prosecution which greatly assisted the defence case.  Following the conclusion of the trial, as a result of the much-weakened case against her the prosecution conceded that there was no longer a public interest in prosecuting the defendant, no evidence was offered in her case and she was acquitted.