Nick Valios QC has had a busy and successful start to 2014:
R v JH Sayers (2014) Woolwich Crown Court. Nick Valios QC was instructed to take over the POCA confiscation proceedings for the defendant, who was alleged to be one of the biggest gang leaders in the NE of England. The Crown alleged a ‘benefit’ figure in excess of £3,000,000 from tax fraud and fraudulent trading in respect of the running of public houses through nominee companies and individuals and laundering the proceeds out of the jurisdiction. The case was linked to one against his father in relation to mortgage and tax frauds and the setting up of an offshore family trust. NVQC successfully represented the father on an unfitness to plead trial in which the jury found he ‘did the act’ in respect of the tax fraud but were unable to agree on the mortgage fraud matters. In the event as the father was found to be unfit to plead there were no confiscation proceedings in his case. In JHS case the Crown finally agreed a ‘benefit’ figure of under £900,000 and a confiscation order in the sum of £250,000.
R v Arash & Anor (2014) Birmingham Crown Court. Nick Valios QC successfully defended a man accused of being the get-away driver in a professionally and well planned armed robbery of a jeweller’s store in which about £1,000,000 of jewellery was taken. The robbers had stolen two fast Audis as get-away cars and a truck to ram through the wall of the store and a rear car park wall to allow the gang access to the Audis that awaited them. One car was followed by police helicopter. The driver, described as Asian looking, was seen to run from the car into a 3 bed-sit house. Jewellery from the robbery was in the car. As he ran to the house the driver was described as of similar build to the defendant when he was brought from the house by police. A mobile phone, linked by cell site data to having been in the area of the robbery at the time of it, was found on the flat roof below the bathroom window that the defendant admitted he had opened having been in the bathroom. The defence case was that the robber must have run through the ground floor passage to a rear door to the garden and made his escape out of view of the helicopter that was overhead and thrown the phone onto the flat roof.
R v Williams (2014) Mold Crown Court. Nick Valios QC successfully defended a former company director accused of fraud on his own company by moving company funds to his own personal account and charging company land for a ‘personal loan’. Defence disclosure requests gave rise to material that caused the Crown to admit the prosecution could not rely on evidence it proposed to adduce. A Defence Costs Order was made in favour of the Defence.