Timothy Hannam KC
Head of Chambers
Year of Call: 1995
Year of Silk: 2018
Direct Access
In suitable cases he is happy to accept instructions direct from members of the public. Please see the Direct Access section of this website for further information.
Continuing Professional Development
Lectures on confiscation proceedings and enforcement.
Areas Of Specialism
Drugs & Gang-Related Offences, Financial crime, Firearms, Murder Manslaughter
Career overview
Before his appointment as Queen’s Counsel, Tim was a Grade 4 prosecutor on the Fraud and Serious Organised Crime panels and was authorised to prosecute for the SFO on Panel A. In August 2008, he was appointed as Standing Counsel to the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office. Together with Charles Miskin KC, he prosecuted the largest criminal fraud case ever brought to court by HM Revenue and Customs: Operation Amazon, before Southwark Crown Court in 2017.
Practice Summary
Instructed in a wide variety of criminal matters by both prosecution and defence, but has significant expertise in homicide, sexual offences, large scale organised crime and white collar crime, including international drug trafficking, excise fraud, VAT fraud, Revenue fraud, corruption and bribery, money laundering and the exploitation of Hawala banking, and dental and medical fraud within the NHS. He is also experienced in cases concerning the cooperation of foreign powers, including those based in offshore tax havens.
Tim accepts privately funded work before the First Tier Tax Tribunal.
Described in Chambers & Partners
- 2012 as ‘ .. thoroughly able’, with an ‘… all-encompassing criminal practice’,
- 2013 edition noted that he is ‘ .. well known for his work in white collar crime …’ and ‘ .. for his work in investigatory and post-conviction issues including public interest immunity, disclosure and confiscation’,
- 2014 entry mentioned ‘ … a particular specialism in white-collar crime, including cases involving money laundering’,
- 2018 entry ‘he is excellent in terms of the quality of service and the work he provides’.
Judicial appointment
Recorder
Details of practice
Tim has a proven expertise in the prosecution and defence of cases of homicide, sexual assault, large-scale drug trafficking, serious organised crime, corruption, money laundering and complex fraud (including international carousel, direct tax, duty evasion, organised benefit and NHS medical) before the Crown Court, Administrative Court and the Court of Appeal.
He has significant experience of large-scale Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings. He recently concluded the confiscation proceedings in Operation AMAZON, in which the benefit figure alleged is in excess £35 million, and the issues included sham trusts, piercing the corporate veil and the use of off-shore company and trust jurisdictions. Prior to Operation AMAZON, he conducted several months of confiscation hearings in Operation HAYRICK (a large VAT fraud) and in Operation BREAD (a drugs-trafficking conspiracy), which again raised difficult trusts issues in the context of the matrimonial home and other jointly owned property.
He has appeared in applications to discharge restraint orders obtained at the request of foreign powers.
He also has a proven ability to master quickly difficult scientific evidence, and to cut through masses of disordered material in order to identify the real issues in a case and to present them clearly. He has an outstanding ability in the interpretation and presentation of complex scientific and financial evidence.
He has a particular expertise in disclosure (including large scale e-disclosure exercises, public interest immunity and matters arising under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and the Investigatory Powers Act 2016) and appeared for the prosecution in the recent leading case in this area: R -v- R [2016] 1 Cr.App.R.20 (Operation AMAZON).
He is well versed in claims for legal professional privilege and has acted as independent counsel during the execution of search warrants. He is an acknowledged expert in confiscation matters and has great experience in the field of abuse of process.
Financial crime
Relevant cases include:
- Operation AMAZON: CPS Fraud Division Manchester; 2008 to date; 8 defendant direct tax fraud; 80,000 pages of evidence; 2.3 million unused documents; complex e-disclosure issues; substantive abuse of process hearings in 2013 and 2014; over 25 detailed trial management hearings; successful appeal against terminating ruling in 2015; 9 month trial in 2017 before Edis J. at Southwark Crown Court; appeals against conviction and sentence in 2019; confiscation before Edis J. at the Old Bailey to date. AMAZON was a case of exceptional significance, both to the public interest (as the first prosecution of this type of tax fraud conducted by city professionals in which a huge amount of tax was at risk) and also to the CPS and HMRC. It is the largest HMRC direct tax fraud prosecuted to date, and is now the leading case on disclosure in large document heavy cases: R. v. R [2015] EWCA Crim 1941. Since the trial in 2017, there have been unsuccessful appeals against conviction and sentence and the subsequent confiscation proceedings (involving difficult trust and corporate veil issues), the latter of which concluded (in terms of advocacy).
- Operation SECONDMENT: CPS OCD Birmingham; 2013 to 2015; 4 defendant conspiracy to produce £1.3 m in exceptional quality counterfeit £10 notes; 5 week trial; confiscation and SCPOs; appeal against confiscation orders. Last minute return, involving very complex expert evidence on printing, cell-site analysis and computer analysis.
- Operation VENETIC: 2020 – 2021; Complex restraint proceedings in Encrochat cases.
- Operation YULAN: 2020 to date; massive pensions liberation fraud.
- Operation BIDDER: 2020 to date; large scale duty evasion fraud.
- Operation RED WEZEN: 2020 to 2023; complex chargeback fraud.
Drugs and Gang-Related Offences
Relevant cases include:
- Operation SABRE: CPS OCD Birmingham – 2014 to 2016; 6 week trial; confiscation and appeal; 2 defendant conspiracy to import heroin, one of whom was a litigant in person and did not speak English as a first language.
- Operation ABSOLVER: CPS OCD Birmingham; 2015 to 2019; 3 month trial; 8 defendant conspiracy to import and supply heroin; appeal against conviction; a contrived and organised defence, undone by the last minute decryption of a PGP Blackberry over which PII was successfully sought concerning the manner in which the relevant codes had been cracked. Complex expert cell-site and other scientific evidence.
- Operation ORLANDO: CPS OCD Birmingham; 2017 to 2019; 4 defendants; massive conspiracy to import and supply class A drugs. Truly exceptional in size and complexity, involving the amalgamation of four historic investigations conducted by different law enforcement agencies in order to target the ‘king pins’ who had been behind those earlier conspiracies. Over 100,000 pages of evidence. There were difficult abuse of process issues and also very difficult, novel, sensitive disclosure issues, including the appointment of Special Counsel.
- Operation TREASURER: CPS Birmingham; 2019; 6 defendant conspiracy to handle stolen goods; a complex car-ringing case, with 200 high-end vehicles worth over £2,000,000. A rigorous analysis of the evidence and a restructuring of the case provoked pleas of guilty from all defendants, including from one at trial. PII successfully sought over elements of the expert evidence in the case.
Murder and Manslaughter
Relevant cases include:
- Operation FANTAIL: Defending; 2019; murder – death by arson.
- Operation KARENGO: Defending; 2019-2020; murder and rape; Successfully secured an exceptional nine year reduction to the usual mandatory minimum prison term of 30 years after guilty pleas to murder, vaginal rape and anal rape.
- R. v. K; Prosecuting; 2020; attempted murder of wife and baby whilst under the influence of drugs leading to a psychotic episode, raising issues of the defence insanity.
- Operation MERTLE: Defending; 2020; murder of a child by a child, requiring the close analysis of CCTV evidence.
- Operation MUIR: Prosecuting; 2021; drug-related murder raising issues ofepilepsy and the defence of automatism.
- Operation BIANOR; Defending; 2021 to 2022; initially a missing-body murder of wife by husband; complex archaeological, scientific, cell site and CCTV evidence. Cross-examination of the prosecution data analyst based on a careful analysis of CCTV timings and other timing issues demolished the Crown’s Sequence of Events.
- Operation DINAR; Defending; 2021 to 2022; historic murder committed in 1982 of the defendant’s wife, whose remains were found in the septic tank of their former home; defendant was 89 at the time of trial; requiring the careful analysis of old, incomplete evidence and raising issues of fitness to plead, and the proper treatment of an elderly vulnerable defendant.
- Operation EIDER; Defending; 2022 to 2023; joint enterprise murder involving 5 child defendants and the careful analysis of CCTV evidence.
- Operation CONTIGO; Defending; 2022 to 2023; joint enterprise execution murder and attempted murder, involving the use of a shotgun and multiple stabbings. Careful cross-examination of the CCTV analyst undermined the evidence of identification.
- Operation CORINTHIAN; Prosecuting; 2022 to 2023; joint enterprise attack involving three defendants killing a man in the garden of his home. Difficult issues of pathology and causation.
- Operation HYDRAK; Defending; 2023; joint enterprise murder involving 4 young defendants.
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Operation PROPARD: Prosecuting; 2024; murder; the only eye witnesses were the defendants themselves. The victim had himself been armed with a knife and had seriously injured one of them before he was killed. He was a 16 year old boy with gang affiliations, whom the defendants stabbed to death in a flat used as a crack den in September 2023. Both defendants convicted of murder.
Firearms
Relevant cases include:
- Operation BREAD: CPS OCD Manchester; 2009 to 2017; two indictments: 7 defendant heroin supply conspiracy and a 2 defendant possession of a prohibited firearm; 5 week trial; long confiscation proceedings separately against each defendant; appeals against conviction and confiscation orders. Difficult legal argument on the admissibility of contemporaneous notes kept by one defendant during the conspirator as evidence of the involvement of his co-accused.
- Operation CONTIGO; Defending; 2022 to 2023; conspiracy to murder; shotgun blast to chest.
Sexual Assault
Relevant cases include:
- R. v. J; Defending; 2021; rape of two complainants; requiring the detailed analysis of social media and raising issues of consent in the context of relationships involving mutual enjoyment of sadomasochistic practices.
- Operation BEAM; Defending; 2021 to 2022; multi-handed rape and penetrative sexual assaults of children indictment; the prosecution alleged that the defendants had groomed a number of vulnerable young girls in order to commit serious sexual offences against them. Close analysis of the unused material and careful section 8 applications revealed fundamental disclosure failings leading to a confession by the disclosure officer that they had been prevailed upon by more senior officers to make misleading statements about disclosure; part way though the abuse of process application, the prosecution offered no evidence.
- Operation BOOKBINDER: Defending; 2024; arranging or facilitating transport with a view to exploitation; secured acquittals on all counts after a seven week trial in a case which had a history of serious disclosure failings.
The two complainants were, in 2016 and 2017 when the events were alleged to have occurred, aged between 15 and 17. They did not make their complaints to the police until 2021, by which time they were both adults. They asserted that they had been encouraged to attend, or had been transported to, several parties with a group of Afghan young men at which drink and drugs were supplied and at which sexual activity took place. The defendant was a member of that group, was also 17 at the time, and denied the supply of drugs or that any sexual contact involving him had ever taken place. His case was that he, just like the complainants, was then a young teenager present at parties where all in attendance were simply having fun. He was the youngest of the six defendants charged in the proceedings.
Through a series of focussed disclosure applications made over several months before the trial, following a detailed trawl of social services records, Tim identified significant material that was capable of suggesting that each complainant had been motivated to make their (very late) claims out of a desire to obtain police assistance in moving to better local authority accommodation, and that this assistance had been provided. This material had originally been extensively redacted in manner which concealed much of what was relevant, and which was revealed in more detail following his submissions.
He also identified material that showed that, far from having been corrupted by the Afghan men as claimed, the complainants had in fact partied and taken drugs with several other groups of people before they had ever met the Afghans, and continued doing so after they had parted ways with the Afghans, and that these occasions had not properly been investigated by the police. These other groups were of western descent.
Tim was also able to show fundamental failures in the prosecution disclosure process concerning the analysis of mobile telephones and social media accounts. This material had effectively been ignored by the prosecution, which had simply relied on the complainants to provide videos and photographs of the parties which they thought supported their claims. The police had sought to justify these failures by inaccurate claims that the material was no longer available. This came to a head two weeks into the first trial listing in 2023, which had to abandoned as a result when the prosecution conceded that a proper CPIA-compliant review had not taken place and was necessary, following which many thousands of pages of material were ultimately disclosed.
The re-trial began in 2024, and Tim was able to demonstrate significant flaws in the complainants’ assertions of corruption and vulnerability and that the defendant was, in fact, in no different a position to them. He was also able to demonstrate that one of the complainants had deleted important material from their SnapChat account. The defendant was acquitted of all charges.