Michael Gomulka

Barrister

Michael is a specialist advocate in fraud, financial crime and regulatory law and is ranked by the Legal 500 as a Leading Junior in Crime and Crime: Fraud. Michael came to the Bar from the City where he worked as an analyst and then as an equities’ trader. He brings, therefore, a wealth of experience, not only as a criminal defence lawyer, but also as someone with first-hand knowledge of complex instruments, financial markets and forensic accounting. As such he is perfectly placed to advise and represent individuals and corporates regarding compliance, regulation, investigation and through to trial, confiscation and asset recovery.

Michael is a leading junior with extensive experience of all aspects of criminal defence including homicide, organised crime, drug and money-laundering conspiracies and serious sexual violence, as well as the financial and regulatory matters in which he now specialises.

In fraud, cases have ranged from the use of international businesses as alleged fronts for washing the proceeds of crime, to large-scale investment frauds, boiler room fraud, thefts in breach of trust and other financial malfeasance. Michael has extensive experience of cash seizures, retentions and forfeiture, contested confiscation hearings and consequent appellate work.

Recent instructions have included: a $250m warrant fraud for the head of desk; £100m money-laundering conspiracy; an carbon credit boiler room; an extensive land-banking conspiracy; 20-year care home fraud; large and complex international cigarette smuggling conspiracy; £multi-million fraudulent conspiracy and bribery case regarding an internationally renowned charity; property fraud scheme regarding loans, lease options and mortgages over a number of years.

In addition, Michael has advised a television network on the potential criminal liability arising from the proposed airing of a party political broadcast that may have been considered to incite racial hatred and advised several board directors of a large corporate as to their options when it was discovered that a vexatious litigant intended to issue a private criminal prosecution in respect of fraud and perjury - advice which ultimately prevented the proceedings being issued.

Michael can be instructed via the Direct Access scheme.

Background

Michael came to the Bar after a successful career as a trader in the City.
As a leading junior, Michael has extensive experience of fraud, while collar and financial crime, restraint and confiscation. He has also led in cases of organised crime, large scale drugs conspiracies, sexual grooming and violence.

Associated Work

7 Bedford Row Criminal 2001 prize for an essay, “Conspiracy”, which argued that the offence should be abolished.
Major Scholar, Inner Temple – 2001/02.
Captain of "University Challenge" team in 1995 (first year of the Paxman era)
First Class honours achieved in every finals paper and for dissertation "Will Jerusalem be the rock upon which a Palestinian State founders?"
In the top 1% of those who graduated from Bristol University in 1995.

Professional Memberships

Proceeds of Crime Lawyers Association (POCLA)
Financial Services Lawyers Asscociation (FSLA)
Criminal Bar Association (CBA)

Languages

Polish (fluent)

Private Prosecution v S and W and Ors - Instructed in these interlinked international frauds which are being privately prosecuted on behalf of the alleged losers and/or their families. The case concerns a large, organised and sophisticated team who are alleged to have persuaded investors to part with £millions at a time in exchange for very sizeable returns over the short-term. When they became suspicious then elaborate methods were used to keep them from reporting the transactions whilst the spoils were dissipated.
R v TG & Ors - Leading counsel for the first defendant in a Trading Standards prosecution relating to multiple “clone” websites charging consumers for toll crossings, toll tunnels and fishing licences. A very substantial factual case made more complicated by the recent judgments in the Court if Appeal concerning the operation of s.222 of the Town and Planning Act 1972 and the remit of National Trading Standards in these circumstances.
R v MK & Ors - Leading counsel for the first defendant in a 6-month fraud trial where the defendant elected to instruct MG despite the Court granting a certificate for Queen’s Counsel and junior. The case concerned an alleged £24m pension transfer fraud that dated back to 2008-2010. Issues of investment suitability, fees, regulation (national and international) made an already complex and voluminous case significantly more challenging.
R v SK & Ors - Counsel for the first defendant in a 7-handed international fraud trial listed for 4-6 months in 2023. The allegations surround investment frauds in the US, Germany and Switzerland. This is a private prosecution that is conducted alongside contemporaneous civil forfeiture and retention litigation with all the issues that brings to the fore.
R v IK & Ors - Leading counsel for a defendant facing allegations of a Class A drugs conspiracy and related money laundering which collapsed following extensive argument over disclosure. A follow-on trial for money-laundering extensively considered the limitations of Anwoir in that there must be more than just unexplained in order for the jury to be able to draw the irresistible inference that cash was the proceeds of an unspecified crime.
R v I & Ors - Counsel for the first defendant in a very large scale copyright infringement case whereby the defendants had a variety of goods manufactured to give the impression they were the genuine article. Conducted over a period of years and generating £hundreds of thousands profit in a sophisticated operation.
R v M & Ors - This is an industrial scale drugs conspiracy to supply cocaine, produce cannabis and supply nitrous oxide across several counties over the course of a year with 20 defendants indicted and 12 taking the matter to trial. The level of factual complexity can be seen by D1 using 168 different SIM cards in one handset over an 11-month period.
V v A - The ultimate corporate client had lent £30m to a litigant to settle his civil case. The assets provided as collateral included a number of very valuable artworks. Following judgment it became apparent that the litigant may have been involved in fraud in relation to transactions concerning various artworks (not those taken as collateral). Advice was sought as to whether, following default on the loan, the artworks could be sold, or whether the client was on notice they might be the proceed of crime. If the latter then what were the options? This required liaison with partners in various areas of the instructing law firm across the world as well as general counsel of the corporate. Urgency, the assimilation of detailed information and a commercial sensibility were essential to deliver lucid and accurate advice at very short notice.
LB of Lewisham v LAT - A difficult licensing case where there were years of alleged minor breaches that were then compounded by a misunderstanding of the Covid regulations. Following lengthy exchanges a compromise that suited both sides was arrived at and litigation and further costs avoided.
R v CM & Ors - Michael is instructed to represent the defendant in this very extensive alleged care home fraud concerning the manipulation of residents over two decades in order to deprive their rightful heirs of inheritance and defraud their estates.
R v JP & Ors - Michael is instructed in this bribery allegation whereby it is alleged that a major charity was defrauded over a six-year period by one of its suppliers who exchanged cash for false contracts and overcharged its legitimate orders.
R v GU & Ors - Michael was instructed to represent this defendant in an alleged $250m fraud concerning the trading of currency warrants. The previous civil proceedings had generated over 100m documents in the initial disclosure trawl, and over 1/2m pages were relied upon by the parties during the 49-day civil trial.
R v MF & Ors - the defendant faces two trials. First, a carbon credit boiler room allegation concerning the intense mis-selling of VER and subsequently CER carbon credits to individual investors. Secondly, a much longer and similarly sophisticated land banking fraud that is said to have generated seven-figure profits for the ringleaders.
R v PM & Ors - leading counsel on behalf of an alleged fraudster who operated a number of property investment businesses, including lease options, SARB and buy-to-let operations. In addition to taking loans without intending to repay them and cash for service not delivered, the defendant was alleged to have secretly taken over a company when an undischarged bankrupt, stripping it of cash and leaving creditors unpaid when it was phoenixed into a new entity which also subsequently failed. Further, he was alleged to have forged court documents to delay repossession of a £1m property.
R v SS & Ors - following a Panorama investigation a number of arrests were made and charges brought alleging that the defendants assisted in widescale fraudulent breaches of immigration law by: falsifying bank statements; obtaining college places by deception and sending impostors to take English language exams for others.
R v JA & Ors - a 13-handed international fraud and multi-million money-laundering allegation involving dating sites, advance fee, investment and other confidence frauds. The case was complicated by a duplicate operation being set up in Manchester as arrests in Cardiff were made. Michael represented the businessman who is alleged to have laundered hundreds of thousands of pounds from both sets of frauds and recruited others to do the same.
R v T & BA & Ors - Michael represented a husband and wife accused of mortgage fraud arising dating back almost a decade and concerning six properties and a total mortgage value of some £650,000. Pleas were negotiated on the basis that as there had been no actual loss (given the poor market post-2008), no intended or risk of loss (given the amount of equity) the sentence should be non-custodial and there ought not to be any confiscation.
R v S & Ors - The first defendant was a UK domiciled Ukranian silent business partner in a number of highly profitable enterprises in his country of origin. He paid Michael's client over £1m in return for the provision of skilled labour on a number of large building sites across the country. The workers themselves were paid in cash. The successful defence required extensive disclosure requests, analysis of both audited accounts and cash receipts and consideration of the tax implications for the defendant.
R v GP & Ors - The defendants was one of 23 charged with a very substantial conspiracy to evade duty on imported cigarettes costing the Revenue millions. All but one other defendant pleaded guilty. At the first trial it was successfully argued that the prosecution could not prove any knowledge of the wider conspiracy per Griffiths. However, the trial judge allowed the substitution of a substantive offence and ordered a retrial. Prior to the second trial the proceedings were stayed as an abuse of process.

Confiscation

R v BS & Other - following pleas to substantive counts of unlawful waste dumping the two defendants face very extensive confiscation proceedings concerning millions of pounds. Issue is taken with loss, responsibility, apportionment, general benefit and pecuniary advantage calculations.
R v MG & Ors - The defendant pleaded guilty to his leading part in two substantial conspiracies to supply Class A. The subsequent confiscation proceedings continue to be litigated and involve the multiple assertions of third party interests, hidden assets, foreign assets including real estate, gold, diamonds and complicated calculations regarding benefit and apportionment not only as between defendants on one indictment, but as between defendants with mutual assets but facing separate proceedings.

R v S & Others - The defendants were alleged to be parties to an international contract killing conspiracy to murder that led to a man gunned down in his home in front of his partner and child. The case was, and continues to be, one of the leading Encrochat trials with extensive legal argument concerning the admissibility and reliability of the material. Although Michael was initially instructed as junior counsel, when his leader was unable to continue after 4 weeks of the trial, rather than appoint a new silk both the Instructing Solicitor and lay client insisted Michael lead instead. A new junior was instructed and Michael took over the conduct of the trial for the following 10 weeks.
R v GK & Others - leading counsel in a case the 18 defendants were alleged to have run a very large number of drug lines from Liverpool to the South-West of England over a period of years with the suspected values running to £millions. Almost 40 lines were identified with some 130 phones, iPads and laptops seized and analysed leading to the service of over 1m lines of data.
R v C - The defendant killed three of his five teenage children in 1974 and served sentences for manslaughter. A matter of incest was left to lie on the file. 35 years later allegations of historic abuse by the surviving daughter led to a 19-count indictment, trial, appeal and re-trial.
R v CP & Others - A multi-handed murder where the secondary parties were said be guilty on the basis of parasitic liability, joint possession of a firearm and phone evidence was heavily relied upon to prove the notion that there were "a gang with access to a gang gun". Acquitted of murder.
R v CSu & Others - A two-year investigation by the NCA lead to charges of money-laundering against the defendants as it was alleged they were washing the proceeds of international drug trafficking. In addition, it was suggested that this defendant bribed council officials to secure planning advantages. Acquitted on direction of the judge at the close of the prosecution case, a ruling that withstood the Crown’s appeal to the Court of Appeal.
R v JK - Leading counsel for a middle-aged man accused of befriending a 15 year-old over the internet whilst posing as a teenager and then agreeing to meet up with her for sex. Once his laptop was seized over 200,000 pages of web chats with a large number of girls across the country were served in furtherance of many more serious allegations.
R v L S & Another - Leading counsel for the defendant who was alleged to have been the boss of a large-scale and long-running cannabis cultivation conspiracy. Two of his co-conspirators fell out and one was said to have killed the other - the body was never recovered. Following the “murder”, the defendant was alleged to have helped to cover up the killing and intimidated a number of witnesses. The defendant contested whether the missing man was killed at all. Issues of proof of life, blood spatter and inferences from telephone data were among those considered by the jury.
R v SA - The defendant was alleged to have sold hampers of champagne to the players and manager of a Premiership football club and not only were they not delivered, but tens of thousands of pounds were fraudulently spent on their credit cards. The case involved cross-examination of a number of footballers, live and by video-link, but also of the current England manager.
R v FM & Others - The defendants were alleged to have smuggled significant quantities of very high purity cocaine into the UK having posed as golfing tourists and then filling their clubs and bags with narcotics before travelling back.
R v K & Others - A murder that took place during a street fight between rival gangs in East London. Michael extensively cross-examined the key eye-witness, the victim's 14 year old brother, who witnessed events from behind a hedge. Acquitted of murder.
R v CS & Others - The defendant was a serving prisoner at the time the victim, a notorious drug dealer, was assassinated as he approached the front door of the prison. The prosecution alleged that this defendant was at the heart of a conspiracy to kill the victim and supplied the crucial information to the gunmen as to when the victim would be arriving. The case involved anonymous witnesses, extensive bad character evidence and the interpretation of phone traffic over a period of weeks between some ten phones. Acquitted of murder.
R v PJ & Others - Counsel for the first defendant in a six-handed conspiracy to prevent a lawful and decent burial. The deceased was attacked by three strangers and left in his room in a house of Polish squatters. Three weeks later his decomposing body was found by police and a large grave was discovered in the back garden.
R v S - The complainant was alleged to have been raped by the defendant during a dwelling burglary. She was a paranoid schizophrenic with a history of hallucinatory auditory as well as visual episodes and sexual disinhibition. Over ten years of clinical records had to be considered following lengthy disclosure arguments between the defence, Crown, hospital and Official Solicitor.

Westminster Council v M - A trading standards prosecution alleging fraudulent business practices and misrepresentation by the defendant, a personal trainer " to the stars". The allegations concerned claims he had made on his literature and in person to some ten clients. A very favourable basis of plea was negotiated on his behalf and he avoided a custodial term, costs and confiscation.
Trading Standards v S&S - Copyright and ongoing confiscation arguments in respect of counterfeit clothing and arguments regarding the proportionality of further proceeding.
Restraint, Confiscation and Asset Recovery
R v SJ - The defendant, dubbed "The Raffles burglar" by The Times, specialised in breaking into the homes of the very rich. The seven-figure confiscation proceedings covered property dealings going back 30 years, a gift from a Saudi princess and numerous accounts and transactions.
R v AA - Advice on appeal in a case that was wrongly proceeded with under PoCA and considering whether a different outcome might have been possible under the Criminal Justice Act 1988.