Lal, R. v

1. MR JUSTICE HOLROYDE: On 27 April 2016 in the Crown Court at Harrow, Mr Sunil Lal was convicted after a lengthy trial of an offence of conspiracy to defraud. On 8 June 2016 he was sentenced by the trial judge, His Honour Judge Greenwood, to 4 years' imprisonment.

2. His application for leave to appeal against that sentence was refused by the single judge. He now renews it to the full court.

3. The relevant facts can be very briefly stated. In 2013 the Applicant was employed by a bank. It appears that he had fallen into personal financial difficulties. It may have been for that reason that he was persuaded by a co-accused, Hardeep Bharya, to play an essential role as the "inside man" in a very well-planned and carefully executed fraud on the bank.

4. In bare outline, the conspirators identified a genuine customer of the bank, a Mr Parkinson, as having substantial funds standing to his credit. On 28 August 2012 the Applicant, in breach of his position of trust, assisted in opening a joint account in the names of Mr Parkinson and a Mr Javed, that being a false name used by a co-conspirator who was equipped with documents for the purpose. £99,561 was then transferred from Mr Parkinson's account to the account in joint names. Two days later, most of the money was transferred from the joint account to an account in the name of Javed alone. Later that day, the money was dissipated by transfers to a number of companies which had been set up for the purposes of the fraud. Thus by 31 August 2012, nearly all of the money had gone.

5. On that same date, 31 August, the Applicant assisted in a similar fraud involving a different genuine customer. On this occasion, a total of £99,700 was transferred and dissipated in the space of four days.

6. The evidence suggested that the Applicant was to receive £10,000 for his assistance, though to his expressed annoyance, he in fact received less than £3,000. The Applicant was arrested on 9 January 2013. He said he had agreed to join the fraud because he was under pressure.

7. Mr Bharya meanwhile went on to commit a similar fraud with the assistance of a different dishonest employee of a different bank.

8. The learned judge addressed the Sentencing Council's definitive guideline on sentencing in fraud, bribery and money laundering offences. He found, in our view entirely properly, that this was a case of high culpability for at least two of the reasons listed on page 6 of the guideline, namely "abuse of position of power or trust or responsibility" and "sophisticated nature of offence/significant planning". It seems to us that he might with equal propriety also have identified a third of those criteria, namely "a leading role where offending is part of a group activity".

9. Having regard to the amount obtained by the fraud, the learned judge placed the offence into category 2, which covers a loss of between £100,000 and £500,000. That gave a starting point of 5 years' imprisonment with a range between 3 and 6 years. The guideline's starting point is based on a loss of £300,000. The learned judge reduced the starting point accordingly to 4 years to reflect the fact that the loss here was of the order of £200,000.

10. So far as matters of mitigation were concerned, the judge accepted that the Applicant was effectively of good character. The judge also accepted that there had been some delay in sentencing, though it is difficult to think that that point can have carried much weight when the Applicant had contested a hopeless trial. The learned judge concluded that the appropriate sentence was 4 years' imprisonment.

11. Two grounds of appeal have been advanced. The first is that the judge placed the sentence too high in the range set by the guidelines. In our view, that point cannot realistically be argued. As we have said, this was a case of high culpability for at least two reasons, not just one. The effective good character of the Applicant was at least balanced out, if not indeed outweighed, by the Applicant's attempts at trial to place the blame for his wrongdoing on others.

12. The second ground contends that there is unjust disparity as between the sentence on this Applicant and the sentence on Mr Bharya. Bharya, who had pleaded guilty, was sentenced on the basis that the starting point before giving credit for his guilty pleas would have been 5 years.

13. In his case, he had been involved in further offending after this Applicant had been arrested. In addition, Bharya had relevant previous convictions. As against that, although we do not have full details, it does appear that Bharya gave evidence for the prosecution, which was clearly helpful in identifying how the fraud had been operated.

14. It does not seem to us that there is any arguable ground of disparity here. Even if it could be said that Bharya had been somewhat fortunate in the sentence which he received, it would not follow that the sentence on this Applicant was either wrong in principle or manifestly excessive. In our judgment, it was neither.

15. This court, therefore, agrees with the view of the single judge that there is no arguable ground of appeal against this sentence. The renewed application accordingly fails and is dismissed.