Keydata judicial review begins

21 July 2011 2:37 pm | By Natalie Holt

Keydata founder Stewart Ford has today begun the legal battle against the FSA over the way the regulator conducted its investigation into Keydata.

Money Marketing revealed that Ford secured a judicial review against the FSA in May.

Speaking in the Royal Courts of Justice in London today, Mr Malek, acting on behalf of Ford, set out the points on which the judicial review is based. He suggested emails from Ford’s former lawyer Irwin Mitchell, which were passed to the FSA and Keydata administrators PricewaterhouseCoopers, were subject to legal professional privilege and as such cannot form part of the FSA enforcement investigation into Keydata.

He said these emails were the basis of an FSA warning notice issued against Keydata and subsequent investigation report.

He said: “We are concerned that the FSA prides itself on being fair and transparent but in this case it was not fair nor transparent in the way it got that information.”

Mr Justice Burnett, the judge presiding in the case said: “The dispute concerns whether the FSA would be entitled to use that material. The argument advanced by Mr Ford supported by interested parties and resisted by the FSA is that the documents introduced legal professional privilege.

“That having been established, the next step is to require that material to be removed from the FSA process altogether.”

The case continues.

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