Giles Bedloe

Call: 2001

"He’s got a large degree of gravitas and a certain calmness about him: when he speaks, you listen."

Chambers & Partners 2024

Giles Bedloe specialises in fraud and financial crime, commercial dispute resolution and business regulation.

Ranked in Legal 500, Giles is recommended for Business & Regulatory Crime and for Fraud including money laundering and asset forfeiture. Praise includes that Giles: “knows how financial services regulators and financial institutions operate”; and that he “provides clear, practical advice tailored to the client’s needs”. He is described as “an advocate who is able to get to grips with the issues and explain them in clear terms”.

Professional clients commend him for “continuing to be excellent in his field” and being “approachable, knowledgeable, and extremely diligent”. He is credited for “not being fazed by unexpected complications” and to have been “thoroughly reliable”.

Giles is an accomplished advocate, equally at home before the Court of Appeal as in front of a jury. He regularly appears in the High Court, in Chancery and Queen’s Bench matters, and before a variety of tribunals. Giles is also a versatile advisor, able to provide a range of solutions tailored to the specific needs of his clients.

Giles has extensive expertise in restraint, confiscation and asset forfeiture having appeared in the Court of Appeal authority of McDowell and having represented intervening parties in the substantial confiscation proceedings arising out of Operation Amazon and in the seminal matter of Ahmad & Fields.

In 2015 and 2016, he was engaged by one of the UK’s major banks as a consultant in respect of a £4 billion review of the mis-selling of derivatives, directed by the Financial Conduct Authority.

He is appointed to the CPS Specialist Fraud Panel and the Attorney General’s Panel of Specialist Regulatory Counsel.

As part of his commercial defence practice, Giles regularly advises and represents individuals before the professional and disciplinary tribunals, and businesses before their regulators. Giles has particular expertise in matters involving the pensions and financial services ombdusmen.

Giles is a qualified mediator and is adept in multiple forms of non court-based dispute resolution including arbitration.


Expertise

Giles has in recent years developed an impressive reputation in his specialist field of fraud and financial crime. He is appointed to the Specialist Fraud Panel and is instructed by HMRC and the Metropolitan Police in addition to his private client work. His ability to get to grips with and simplify complex issues is regularly acknowledged by clients.

Giles has acted, both as leading and junior counsel, include acting in a substantial renewable energy fraud involving particularly vulnerable consumers; the UK’s largest mortgage fraud – Attorney General’s Reference (Nos 7 and 8 of 2013) [2013] EWCA Crim 709; National Trading Standards’ most substantial copycat government website fraud; one of the defining, market-altering recycling credit frauds prosecuted by the Environment Agency; fraud and embezzlement by the CEO and CFO within the flagship Academy Trust championed by the Blair government. Giles recently successfully overturned a conviction for fraud, 899 days outside the time limit for lodging the appeal, on grounds of failure to direct as to separate verdicts on a multi-count indictment R v Boaden (Patricia) [2019] EWCA Crim 2284.

As a natural corollary to fraud, Giles’ practice in confiscation and asset forfeiture has seen him involved in some of the seminal cases of recent times including R v Christopher McDowell [2015] EWCA Crim 173, the denouement of Operation Amazon before Edis J at the Central Criminal Court and being instructed by two of the interveners in the defining confiscation case of Ahmad and Fields.

Giles receives regular instruction across a broad spectrum of commercial litigation including civil fraud, contractual and tortious claims and property work, with clients seeking out his cross-disciplinary expertise in complex, multi-layered disputes. His property work encompasses land registration, boundary disputes, party wall appeals, easements, forfeiture of leases, insolvency, dilapidations, nuisance and trespass, breaches of covenant and all aspects of residential tenancies, including service charges. Giles regularly advises insurers in property matters, often applying professional negligence experience to surveyor, developer and contractor disputes.

Cases have involved issues ranging from the fundamental principles of res judicata and issue estoppel -Kadiyali Madhava Srivatsa v (1) Secretary of State for Health, (2) The Practice Surgery Ltd [2016] EWHC 2916 (QB) – High Court, and [2018] EWCA Civ 936 – Court of Appeal, to the more esoteric and archaic doctrines of marshalling and subrogation – (1) Highbury Pension Fund Management Co. and (2) Cezanne Trading v Zirfin Investments Ltd and Others [2013] EWHC 238 (Ch).

Giles has long-standing experience of employment law, having acted for the Environment Agency and the Police Federation, and has appeared before the Employment Appeal Tribunal.

Giles has particular expertise in civil disputes which involve a cross-over with regulatory or criminal law. Giles’ dual expertise is particularly valuable in helping clients to navigate cross-jurisdictional problems. In a current matter requiring his multi-disciplinary expertise – incorporating commercial, regulatory and criminal – Giles advises a group of investors seeking to recover substantial savings invested and lost in a Ponzi fraud where the financial advisor acted under the authority of an established investment firm.

Giles is experienced in obtaining, stress-testing and cross-examining expert testimony. He works with a wide range of professionals and is very comfortable getting to grips with complex and technical evidence in a multitude of specialisms. He has advised in cases with significant international dimensions, and is adept at securing and handling evidence from abroad – his cases will often involve an element of overseas evidence.

Giles’ regulatory practice encompasses the full range of government and professional regulation. He has expertise in advising and representing in a broad remit of regulation as set out below:

  • Representing and advising professionals in relation to disciplinary hearings and professional conduct matters including accountants, solicitors, healthcare professionals and police officers.
  • Local authority regulation and enforcements of matters including planning, trading standards, food standards and environmental offences
  • Regulation by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, HM Revenue and Customs and the Insolvency Service.
  • Financial services regulation including by the Financial Conduct Authority, the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsmen.
  • Acting for and against the Health and Safety Executive, the Environment Agency and the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
  • Applications under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 in the civil courts.
  • Licensing applications, in relation to firearms, taxis and liquor
  • Consumer Protection regulation by the Competition & Markets Authority and industry stakeholders including Which?

In 2015 and 2016 Giles was engaged as a consultant by HSBC in a team monitoring the Bank’s management of redress for customers who had been miss-sold derivative products in the years leading up to and beyond the global financial crash.

Giles is a member of the Attorney General’s panel of Specialist Regulatory Counsel, instructed in matters by the Health & Safety Executive and the Environment Agency.

Giles is also regularly instructed by Local Authority trading standards and business enforcement teams across the UK – recent High Court cases include Braganza v London Borough of Camden [2017] EWHC 2720 (Admin) and Chuckwu v Redbridge BC [2015] EWHC 2683 (Ch).

Giles often presents seminars and talks on regulatory law, and edits the Lexis PSL Practitioner’s Guide on Corporate Crime: Food Information and Labelling Law.

Recent News


Regulated by the Bar Standards Board (BSB)

Regulated by the Bar Standards Board (BSB) and holds a current practising certificate. To see my privacy notice click here.

  • Inns of Court School of Law (Bar Vocational Course)
  • City University (post-graduate Diploma in Law)
  • Oxford University – MA Hons in Classics

  • Middle Temple
  • Fraud Lawyers Association
  • Association of Regulatory & Disciplinary Lawyers
  • South Eastern Circuit
  • Criminal Bar Association

  • CPS Specialist Fraud Panel – Level 4
  • Attorney General’s Panel of Regulatory Counsel
  • CPS Grade 4 prosecutor
  • Middle Temple Hall Committee

  • R v Christopher McDowell [2015] EWCA Crim 173
  • Kadiyali Madhava Srivatsa v (1) Secretary of State for Health, (2) The Practice Surgery Ltd [2018] EWCA Civ 936 – Court of Appeal

"Giles is friendly and approachable to solicitors and clients alike. This style carries across into his advocacy, which is sure and assertive yet jury-friendly and cogent. He masters voluminous amounts of papers with ease and forensic knowledge of the case as a whole. His grip of the law is also second-to-none."

Legal 500 2024

"Knows how financial services regulators and financial institutions operate"

"Provides clear, practical advice tailored to his client’s needs"

"An advocate who is able to get to grips with the issues and explain them in clear terms"

"Approachable, knowledgeable and extremely diligent"

"Continues to be excellent in his field"

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