Commercial Fraud

Introduction 

Lisa Linklater KC is a leading silk with a well established reputation nationally for her expertise, advocacy, advice and strategic excellence in cases involving commercial fraud, particularly in the context of corporate insolvency, shareholder disputes and tax fraud. She is Vice-chair of the Northern Business and Property Bar Association.

Recommendations

Lisa is recommended as a Band 1 silk by both Chambers and Partners UK Bar 2025 and Legal 500 UK Bar 2025, which recognise the strength of Lisa’s skills in three practice areas: Commercial Dispute Resolution, Chancery and Insolvency and restructuring. Testimonials are in the recommendations section opposite. They recognise Lisa’s many skills and personal qualities that have cemented her reputation in heavyweight and high profile cases in silk. The current legal directories note: “Lisa is very capable with complex commercial litigation and is able to cut through complicated matters quickly. She is a pleasure to work with and is also great with clients”, “Lisa is technically excellent” and “a formidable opponent”.

Expertise

Lisa’s practice in this area is high value, high profile (including attracting media attention) and legally and/or factually complex. Her practice in this field includes:

• Asset recovery and tracing;
• Breach of trust;
• Breaches of directors’ duties;
• Cross-border issues;
• Knowing receipt;
• Dishonest assistance;
• Unlawful means conspiracy;
• Emergency interim relief (including freezing orders, interim injunctions and proprietary injunctions);
• Transactions at an undervalue and defrauding creditors;
• Claims that documents have been forged;
• Legal professional privilege and the iniquity exception;
• Piercing the corporate veil;
• Deceit;
• Bribery;
• Undue influence and duress;
• Account of profits and equitable compensation;
• Sham transactions and
• Cases involving parallel or potential criminal proceedings, including Serious Fraud Office investigations.

Lisa gained considerable experience of heavyweight matters involving fraud from a very early stage in her career, having been appointed as Junior Counsel to the Crown on the prestigious Attorney General’s Regional Panel of Counsel (civil) for three consecutive terms (18 years) prior to taking silk, regularly advising and representing the Secretary of State for Business and Trade and HM Revenue and Customs.

Experience, Skills and Personal Qualities

Lisa brings 30 years of experience in advising and representing a diverse range of companies, individuals, banks and other lenders, office holders of insolvent companies, Government departments, local authorities and other public sector bodies in this field of practice. She has significant experience in claims (for both Claimants and Defendants) involving multiple causes of action or parties, cross-border issues or a variety of strategic options. Lisa is adept in cases involving forensic accounting, digital forensics and other expert evidence.

Lisa is sensitive to the particular pressures on clients and legal teams in this field of practice. She is valued for leading and fostering positive, cohesive and collaborative teams to effectively advance clients’ cases. She regularly leads legal teams that include lawyers specialist in the law and practice of different legal jurisdictions (recent examples include Jersey, Isle of Man, Scotland, Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia) or complementary fields of practice, including criminal law and procedure.

Recent Experience and Highlights

Recent highlights of Lisa’s practice in silk in commercial fraud include:

• Acting in the High Court in London for Defendant to very high profile, factually and legally complex alleged claim of £12m by company administrators. The claim is for alleged dishonest assistance and knowing receipt of breach of trust and alleged breaches of directors’ duties, relating to a share sale by the Defendant of his shares in the company. Lisa has collaborated closely with Jersey lawyers in respect of a freezing order obtained in the Royal Court of Jersey (2023 – ).
• Acting in respect of very substantial property portfolio in claim involving allegations of sham within a family business (2023 – ).
• Successfully acted for Petitioner in unfair prejudice petition under s994 of the Companies Act 2006 involving allegations of tax evasion in respect of a company in the hospitality sector in London (2021 onwards, case settled before trial listed in 2023).
• Successfully deflected threatened removal as a director of a company of client who was accused of tax evasion, securing important strategic success in bitter dispute between family members of a business in the leisure sector. Lisa acted in parallel with other silks in different fields of specialism (2022).
• Acting in claim for specific performance of shareholders’ agreement, requiring shares to be transferred for nil consideration, including responding to claim that a shareholders’ agreement has been forged (2022 – 2023)

Lisa’s experience in commercial fraud before taking silk (all in the High Court) includes:

• Securing a favourable settlement for the defendants to a £5m misfeasance and transaction defrauding creditors claim, brought by the liquidators of an offshore partnership that had moved onshore (2018 – 2021).
• Acting in a shareholder dispute involving a company in the energy sector and the alleged misappropriation of over £2m by a director (2021).
• Successfully obtaining the withdrawal of an appeal against an assessment of over £1m in a complex MTIC tax fraud involving precedent legal issues and in which the fraud had taken place in Poland and Hungary (2016 – 2021).
• Successfully resisting an application to remove a trustee, alleged to have misappropriated trust funds, in the context of a factually and legally complex property dispute within a family spanning 40 years in respect of a property portfolio valued at c. £4m and alleged partnership, in which she led other Counsel (2020).
• Successfully obtaining settlement for Defendants to serious claims of knowing assistance, knowing receipt and related tracing claims, brought by a company registered in Gibraltar, acting by its liquidators, where the claims and costs were in excess of £1m (2017).
• Successfully defending injunctive relief proceedings brought by a major manufacturer of bed products that had purchased a portfolio of properties from administrators in a “fire sale” and obtaining favourable settlement of claim before trial. The claim centred on allegations of civil fraud and was related to the first modern slavery prosecution in England (2016).
• Successfully representing the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in winding up numerous companies in the public interest, including companies that had:

   

  • Acted as the trustee of pension funds of over £4m and yet could not clearly explain the application of those funds (2018).
  • Defrauded members of the public who had understood that the companies would engage in trading in binary options on their behalf (2017).
  • Falsely promised investors in the United Kingdom lucrative returns on alleged gold mining operations. The companies were registered in South and Central America (2015).
  • Successfully representing the Official Receiver in both the Crown Court and the High Court in connection with civil proceedings arising from a criminal investigation into the storage and sale of non-duty paid goods and associated money laundering activity (2015).

Further Expertise and Personal Qualities

Lisa is very widely published in her areas of specialism, as set out in the publications section above. She is regularly invited to chair or speak on topical legal developments in commercial fraud and related practice areas. In 2023 Lisa was chair of a prestigious panel of international experts at the 40th Cambridge International Symposium on Economic Crime and in 2024 she chaired at the Artificial Intelligence and Digital Security Conference in Manchester.