An MP yesterday criticised the Solicitors Regulation Authority for failing to sanction lawyers who were facilitating ‘legal intimidation’ on behalf of a Russian warlord. Lloyd Hatton, a member of the all-party anti-corruption parliamentary group, said regulators were allowing lawyers to be used as ‘hired guns’ by rich and powerful clients.

Hatton highlighted the regulator’s decision not to prosecute now-closed London practice Discreet Law, which had initially represented Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, reportedly on the basis that the firm had acted appropriately.

In 2021, Discreet successfully applied to the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation for permission to receive funds from Prigozhin in order to sue British journalist Eliot Higgins. Discreet ceased working for Prigozhin the following year, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and in December 2023 announced its closure. Higgins had reported Discreet to the SRA in 2022, stating that the libel proceedings ‘seem to be a textbook example of a SLAPP [strategic lawsuit against public participation]’.

‘We have become the libel capital of the world,’ said Hatton, who suggested UK courts are being used to ‘settle scores and squash scrutiny’.

Hatton said it was ‘astounding’ that the SRA accepted Discreet Law did not know that Prigozhin - a former close aide of Russian leader Vladimir Putin who was killed in an air crash last year – ran the mercenary Wagner Group.

‘If this case isn’t a SLAPP then what is?’ added Hatton, who was speaking at yesterday’s Legal Services Board conference. ‘It is hard to imagine a clearer case of abuse of process. Law firms face no detriment to using harmful lawfare tactics.’ He pointed out that even though Discreet had folded, people involved with the firm continued to practise in other firms.

Lloyd Hatton

Hatton suggested UK courts are being used to ‘settle scores and squash scrutiny’

Source: Parliament.uk

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The MP called for the SRA to take a more robust approach to examples of SLAPPs.

Another speaker, tax lawyer Dan Neidle, told the conference that he will press the SRA through a freedom of information request to release letters between a law firm and a company that threatened to sue him.

Neidle gave several examples of what he said were attempts to intimidate people from speaking out about wrongdoing. He gave one example of a high-profile businessman accused by a woman of sexual assault: when more women posted on social media that they too had also been assaulted, they received legal letters telling them to stop. He called law suits from lawyers who know their client has done wrong a ‘fraud’. He suggested the tactic has now sometimes changed from issuing libel threats to asserting copyright in legal letters.

There needs to be clear guidance from the SRA about how far lawyers can go in defending their clients’ interests, Neidle said, but that parliament had allowed abuses to happen.

 

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