Keydata's Ford wins court case against FSA
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Keydata founder Stewart Ford has won the judicial review he brought against the FSA which challenged the use of legally privileged information in its Keydata investigation.
A two-day hearing was held at the Royal Courts of Justice in London in July and the judgment was announced on Tuesday this week.
Hodge Malek, QC, acting for Ford, argued that emails that formed the basis of the FSA’s warning notice against Keydata and subsequent investigation reports were subject to legal professional privilege.
The hearing centered on eight emails that were passed from Ford’s former lawyers Irwin Mitchell to the FSA via Keydata’s administrators Pricewaterhouse-Coopers. The nature of the emails cannot be disclosed due to reporting restrictions.
Both Malek and lead counsel for the FSA, Bankim Thanki, QC, agreed that in passing the emails to the FSA, PwC had waived the legal privilege which applied to Keydata. But Malek argued that Ford, sales director Mark Owen and compliance officer Peter Johnson still retained individual privilege over the emails.
In his judgment, Justice Burnett ruled that joint legal privilege applied to two of the eight emails in dispute. He said: “It is accepted that PwC’s waiver of privilege on behalf of the company did not impact on the claimant’s privilege. It follows that the FSA may not rely upon the content of those communications in the regulatory proceedings against Keydata or the executives.”
An FSA spokeswoman says: “There will be a further hearing in due course to determine remedy, which may take some time.”
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