The Legal 500

Position

David Walbank is standing counsel to the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office. He is instructed in the most serious, complex and sensitive prosecutions and has immense experience and proven expertise in the trial of serious and complex fraud and serious organised crime. In addition to David's work for the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office, he has been regularly briefed by the Serious Fraud Office and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. He has extensive experience in conducting the 'heaviest' and most demanding fraud cases, as well as a significant appellate practice (in both the Court of Appeal Criminal Division and the Divisional Court) and has appeared in the House of Lords. He regularly advises and makes submissions on novel or complex points of law and is invariably entrusted by RCPO with responsibility for the conduct of its highest-profile cases, viz. those with reputational consequences for that department. David has developed a particular expertise in confiscation proceedings and is equally at home with contested and complex factual issues or with the more arcane points of law and procedure. He appeared in the House of Lords in the seminal case of Soneji [2006] 1 AC 340 and has argued confiscation points in the Court of Appeal on a number of occasions. He acted as moderator at several of the CBA's training sessions for barristers on the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. Equally, David's expertise on disclosure issues is widely recognised. In July 2004 he drafted the 'Protocol For National MTIC Diclosure Exercise', which was issued by RCPO to all prosecution teams, defence teams and judges in more than 60 pending MTIC prosecutions and continues to be used in all such cases. What has become known as the 'Walbank Protocol' has been approved in a number of first instance rulings and in the Court of Appeal. The CBA treated it as a model for criminal disclosure in its submissions on the Fundamental Legal Aid Review. Whilst the majority of David's work in recent years has been for prosecution authorities, he has also excelled in defending such cases and in the conduct of civil fraud litigation.

Career

Called 1987; Inner Temple. Regularly lectures to lawyers and law enforcement officers; provides strategic advice for general policy applications; and conducted (with Professor David Ormerod) a series of seminars on the Fraud Act 2006 and on different routes to non-jury trial (jury-tampering, sample counts and the 'burdensome trial' provisions). David wrote the original chapter on disclosure in 'Fraud: Law, Practice and Procedure' (1st ed, 2004 Butterworths).

Practice Areas

Crime - corporate; Environment; Fraud: crime