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The strategy of blaming your lawyers may not pay off for POCA defendants, writes Cameron Brown KC
- Making unsupported complaints against a former legal team may lead the court to refuse a legal aid transfer or revoke legal aid altogether.
- Courts can lawfully conduct POCA confiscation hearings without defence representation if the lack of lawyers is a result of the defendant’s own actions.
- Defendants have no automatic right to swap legal teams at public expense, nor can they force prosecutors into endless new investigations during confiscation proceedings.
Confiscation proceedings and no lawyer—can a court proceed? This was exactly the situation in which the Crown Court found itself in the case of R v Grochiatskij and another [2026] EWCA Crim 387.
The defendants had been convicted of various money laundering counts and had been sentenced to terms of imprisonment of 16 and 17 years respectively. Both then sought to appeal their convictions and sentences. They alleged they had been let down by their legal teams.
