[By the Editor Of Sarawak Report]

I learned I’d been made ‘subject to an anonymity order’ only after my attention was drawn to a report in the UK Law Society Gazette.

The article explained that there had been a hearing of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) at which the Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA), in prosecuting a complaint I had made about the law firm Hamlins, had agreed that the identities of several witnesses and entities should not be disclosed, including me. The SDT had made an order to that effect.

No one had warned me about the proposed secrecy order or notified me about the hearing at which it was made; to me it felt like a stitch up. When I asked to see the memorandum that was issued, to understand the extent of the restrictions and who else was to be ‘anonymised’, I was told that the Respondent (defending party), a solicitor at Hamlins, had objected.  Instead, I was issued only with a three line instruction:
“The Tribunal orders that the disclosure or publication of any matter likely to lead to the identification of any person, entity or other matter anonymised in the proceedings is PROHIBITED.”

I was not enlightened as to what ‘matters, persons or entities’ had been anonymised (20 names and 81 dates/events were reportedly affected) or what might be considered as leading to their identification. I was told merely that the entirety of my own evidence would be heard in secret, behind closed doors, without any observers or reporters allowed.

Chillingly, I was also instructed that this meant I would not be allowed to talk about the fact I was a witness in the case, let alone write about it; even my gender must be disguised.

Did a disciplinary tribunal for a professional body I don’t belong to possess such draconian powers against me I wondered?  What about the right of the press to report quasi-judicial proceedings?  What if I outed myself by mistake and what could be done to me if I did?

Lawyers who have threatened me with ‘contempt’ have not hesitated to mention the words ‘fines’ and ‘jail’; would this be an example of contempt? I felt intimidated and worried about what this new level of secrecy means for the right of the press to report judicial proceedings.

My research soon informed me that I was caught in a ‘grey area’. Unlike a court of law, the SDT has no ‘powers of contempt’, but implies it could refer you to a court if disobedience can be shown to disrupt their work.

The SDT has been increasingly relying on secrecy and redactions to make it easier to use ‘privileged information’ to decide their cases (mainly emails between lawyers and their clients). However, many are concerned at the encroachment on civil rights and restrictions on reporting by an over-zealous response to AI and other information tools.

One lawyer, Tim Bullimore, has become a frustrated voice in pointing out that the SDT appears to be exceeding its powers if it is making orders which purport to affect the rights and freedoms of the public and the press. Rulings such as this only have the power of a withholding order, he argues, meaning that the SDT itself and those subject to it can’t release specified names but journalists who know them or find out cannot be gagged. He points out that it is absurd to suggest the public and press are bound by unpublished orders issued without notice or consultation by the SDT.

Court reporters had also protested at the prospect of being shut out during my evidence.  The situation was galling. I have no wish for my complaint to be kept secret and nothing to hide; I had already waived my own privilege given I had gone to the effort of making this complaint because of the very real public concern about abusive tactics against journalists.

As a result of my exposure of various frauds involving a web of politicians and businessmen, I have become an unwilling expert on the topic of so-called SLAPP suits (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation), having been aggressively and abusively threatened by numerous defamation/’reputation management’ firms in the UK (dubbed the ‘libel capital of the world’).

It is not just freelance journalists, but major newsrooms and regulators themselves who are being routinely silenced by such threats made by a handful of law firms who earn millions out of a select group of super-rich clientele who thereby escape accountability.

These have included notorious Russian oligarchs, the head of the Wagner Group (while he was claiming not to be), multiple fraudsters and shady power-brokers across the globe. They bring their cases here to Britain, often to bully journalists who are not even living or writing in this country.

I am not going to reveal anything about the background to the complaint I made against Hamlins, beyond information which has been published by the SDT itself.  In short, one of the people mentioned in a series of articles said that they were defamatory. I settled, thereby avoiding costs.

I later published a book, which the claimant would allege put me in breach of the settlement.  My solicitor and I believed that the claimant’s solicitor (Mr Hutchings of Hamlins) made untrue claims and inappropriate threats in the course of making these allegations.  That was reported to the SRA, which led to the proceedings against Mr Hutchings in the SDT.

What was at issue before the Tribunal were the steps Hamlins took after the settlement I’d previously agreed to. I was accused of breaching the terms of that settlement (and thus of being in contempt of court) for an apparent ulterior motive. Hamlins wanted to obtain copyright to my relevant articles, so that they could then get copies of those articles taken down in the United States.

It was no secret to Hamlins when they took on these new proceedings that, though they were acting for an individual, their fees were being paid by a notorious entity. The company that employed their client and was footing their bills had long been identified by the US Department of Justice as a key party to a fraud I’d exposed. The company’s shareholder and a director have subsequently been sentenced to years in prison.

However, in a case which completed its journey through the SDT just before mine, another law firm, Carter Ruck, was exonerated for taking up cudgels on behalf of the notorious conwoman, Ruja Ignatova (the ‘Bitcoin Queen’) against members of the public – and even against regulators who had warned against her activities. The Financial Conduct Authority and the City of London police had posted warnings against Ignatova’s One Coin scam, but Carter Ruck had threatened them into taking them down and likewise gone after victims who had sought to alert others online about losing their life savings.

If important public watchdogs and authorities can be persuaded to withdraw warnings by reputation lawyers, which in turn can expect to be absolved of any misconduct by their own regulatory tribunal, what chance did I have?

Indeed, the SDT would proceed to rule in my case as well that the disparity of resources between a freelance journalist and a fraudulent enterprise who had stolen hundreds of millions should not be a consideration in its adjudication; Hamlins were not responsible for who was funding their client.

Pre-Publicity vs Post-Publicity

I was invited to speak with the SRA’s legal team to make sense of the SDT’s secrecy regime. It was explained to me that one reason for that regime was that ‘the cat was not yet out of the bag’ about who the parties were to this case: meaning that if the identity of Hamlins’ client had already been in news then the SDT would have judged it impossible to protect them, so tough they wouldn’t bother.

That had been the situation, for example, a month or so before when the ex-Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi’s solicitor faced proceedings in the SDT for making undue threats to the writer Dan Needle and there was no secrecy order made because everyone already knew the story and the names.

However, Hamlins’ client was now said to be out of the public eye. Thus, it seems, are rights and wrongs decided; consistency is not the issue.

Jigsaw Identification

However, the main reason I was ordered to be anonymised, as Mr Hutchings’ barrister articulated during the case management hearing to which I was not invited, was Hamlins’ concern that their client (Client A), who was not being prosecuted by the SRA, should be entitled to preserve the anonymity and not become known through ‘jigsaw identification’.

According to the Law Gazette, “Ben Hubble KC, for Hutchings, argued jigsaw identification could cause ‘prejudice’ to Client A, because Client B [me] had made a ‘false and defamatory’ allegation against him.”

The SRA’s own barrister had separately argued identification would undermine ‘Client A’s’ privilege (which they had not waived), and therefore conceded on my behalf that I should become anonymised – without consulting me – to make it harder to work out who Client A was.

The theory of jigsaw identification has become a popular concept in the age of AI. Once I was identified, the logic goes, then an enterprising journalist or member of the public could cross reference court records and news reports to identify Hutchings’ client.

In fact, to work out Client A’s identity simply from knowing my name is hard to say the least and takes specialist knowledge of the court system and record databases. Moreover, given the issues from the settled dispute had little bearing on the case before the SDT, and Mr Hutchings was the only respondent to that case, the identity of Client A was largely irrelevant to journalists reporting on it.

There was another massive hole in these various arguments, which I could have pointed out had I been given a voice. This was the apparent false assumption that the agreement I had reached with Hamlins’ client had included a secrecy clause which such settlements so often do.  To the contrary, Hamlins had specifically demanded that the court order I signed should be kept open so that it could be shown to others they were seeking to persuade to take down secondary articles.

What the SDT had achieved, therefore, was to turn an open agreement into a secret agreement. It felt like a form of SLAPP, effected not by a lawyer but by a tribunal and without me getting a single say in the matter.

With considerable misgivings, I agreed to continue as a witness under these conditions in the vain hope that the efforts by the SRA to bring some accountability to the UK defamation business might prove successful through this case. As I saw it, the stakes for society in enabling reporters to hold the richest and most powerful to a degree of accountability could not be higher.

Yet, on Day One of the trial last October the entire secrecy construct fell apart after the key arguments were uploaded onto its website. Arriving as the first witness I had been told to redact my name from the court register, to hide myself away and not to talk to people in the corridor: generally to keep as low key as possible so that any journalists floating around wouldn’t clock me.

Just after midday, I received an email from The Times newspaper.  The paper was following the case and understood that the anonymised journalist who had brought the complaint was me. This was “a significant case in the attempt to crackdown on Slapps” so would I agree to speak to their chief reporter?

There were many ways the The Times could have discovered my identity and may well have known it for some time. However, it would soon become clear that, completely separately, other third parties had meanwhile identified Hamlins’ client as well.

The same afternoon Tim Bullimore wrote to the SDT Mr Hutchings’ main argument – published by the SDT itself – gave away Client A’s identity by quoting from a reported court judgment.  It was not the revealing of my identity that gave the game away, but the paperwork which appeared on the SDT’s own website!

Not wanting to derail the proceedings, I simply did not reply to The Times. However, it was obvious that the cat was most certainly now out of the bag, just as it had been in the Zahawi case a few weeks before. What was the point of keeping me secret when the Times had published my name and Client A could be easily identified from the papers published by the SDT?

By the end of the day The Times had published their story with a striking lead focused on the personalities involved:

The Duke of Sussex’s solicitor attempted to “blackmail” Gordon Brown’s sister-in-law with a threat which could have sent her to jail, a disciplinary tribunal has heard.
Christopher Hutchings, one of the country’s leading “reputation management” lawyers with a string of celebrity clients, is accused of acting dishonestly.

Transparency had prevailed after all and the inconsistencies were over; or so I thought. Hamlins’ client was not named by The Times, thereby preserving the intent of the order to the same degree as the Tribunal itself had done.

Nonetheless, far from giving up on the matter, I learned the SDT entered into a raging war of attrition with The Times. They wanted the article taken down; immediately.

The Times apparently asserted their own opinion that the SDT had no authority to make such demands and nor to issue reporting restrictions. While the battle continued into the night the article remained online for several hours.

In the end, The Times, for reasons I do not know, decided to comply with the Tribunal and removed the article from their website ‘without prejudice’. This, despite having described the case “as an important test of attempts by the legal regulators to crack down on so-called Slapps … defined as “a misuse of the legal system through bringing or threatening claims that are unmeritorious or characterised by abusive tactics, in order to stifle lawful scrutiny and publication”.

Empowered by this triumph, the Tribunal rather than accepting the cat out of the bag theory, attempted instead to thrust the genie back into the bottle. It ordered that further unprecedented levels of secrecy should be ordered over the remaining proceedings.

Under their revised ruling, the entire hearing would be held secretly behind closed doors with no reporters or members of the public allowed to attend at any stage whatsoever. Neither would I as the first witness be allowed to listen to the remainder of the proceedings or hear the other witnesses, as would normally be allowed. The observers who had been following the case were kicked out and the online feed went blank.

Even the SRA was moved to lodge an official letter expressing its concern at this crossing of a major new boundary against transparency. By now, it was clear to me that the case wasn’t making the situation better it was making it worse.

The nub of my complaint against Mr Hutchings is laid out in the documents published by the SDT. (links to those documents appear at the end of this article, so that both sides of the story can be seen).  Having agreed to sign a settlement to remove coverage of Hamlins’ client, I found myself re-approached by the law firm some months later alleging I had broken the settlement by an indirect reference in a book (which my lawyers refute).

The SRA’s case against Mr Hutchings was that he was trying to use the leverage of this threat of contempt proceedings against me with a different objective entirely. It was in order to get me to surrender my copyright over articles he wanted third parties to take off the internet in the United States. In the light of America’s press freedom laws some sites had refused to remove those articles, whereas copyright law give considerable powers of enforcement.

As the SRA put it, the threat made included a suggestion by Mr Hutchings that I was “liable, amongst other things, to be committed to prison for contempt. The threat was, therefore, one with very serious consequences”.

After what appears to have been considerable planning (including the writing of a script) Hutchings and a colleague had made what might be described as an ambush call to my solicitor. During the call they implied they had just read my book and that a top legal counsel had confirmed that its contents gave them a ‘strong case‘ to sue me for contempt, on the basis that it allegedly broke the settlement with their client (the actual phrase the counsel used was ‘a reasonably arguable case’).

Threatening “criminal sanctions“, like jail, they offered me “a way out” of the situation.  They would be willing to turn a blind eye to the alleged breaches in the book if I surrendered them my copyright over the earlier articles so they could force the recalcitrant US sites to take down the remaining posts under copyright law.

The SRA’s case was that the relevant correspondence showed that neither Mr Hutchings nor his client had any intention of carrying out the threat to litigate over the book. Mr Hutchings had, for example, told his client he was asking for the Counsel’s opinion only “on the basis we are aiming to set out a “credible threat” as you have rightly put it, to forcefully apply pressure on [Sarawak Report] to take steps to assist you more broadly, and you have no intention to pursue a full legal complaint for the potential contempt.”
He later reiterated ” I will stress that the strategy is to put forward a plausible threat with a view to engaging in discussions with [Sarawak Report’s lawyer] to seek an agreed remedy”

Mr Hutchings’ client (‘Client A’) in turn would emphasise several times they had no interest in taking legal steps to activate Hamlins’ exaggerated ‘strong claim’. For example: “There is no point litigating this, so the question is whether the threat is sufficiently credible and the threat sufficiently real, for [Sarawak Report’s lawyer] to advise offering up the [copyright] license to make it go away”.

Hutchings again responded “we are aiming to set out a “credible threat” as you have rightly put it, to forcefully apply pressure on [Sarawak Report] to take steps to assist you more broadly, and you have no intention to pursue a full legal complaint for the potential contempt.”

After that exchange, Hutchings wrote to his expert counsel: “ Client A’s underlying objective is to put [Sarawak Report] under sufficient pressure so as to obtain a license to copyright in [Sarawak Report] articles, which would facilitate our take-down requests for online content providers….. [Client A] wants to proceed with the threat on the basis [Client A] does not intend to litigate this but to apply pressure on [Sarawak Report] to take action… It is important of course that it is as compelling as it can be, to exert maximum pressure on [Sarawak Report]”

In response to this the counsel had replied by issuing a stark warning that what was being contemplated appeared tantamount to a criminal offence.  “[Client A] does not want to litigate for contempt ... The letter cannot be seen to be offering a ticket out – there can be no possibility at all of it appearing as blackmail, or contempt proceedings will be thrown out. Further, there is no collateral gain, only [Client B/Sarawak Report Editor] being imprisoned….”.

Despite this warning by their own counsel against saying or doing anything which might look like blackmail, the first thing my lawyer informed me having received Hutching’s call was that it was clear Hamlins were indeed attempting to blackmail me. On the one hand they had threatened they could land me in prison and with a heavy fine over the alleged breaches in my book, on the other they were offering a “pragmatic proposal” to drop their claim if I surrendered up my copyright.

No wonder, I thought, that the lawyers had decided on a phone call rather than the original plan of sending me a letter. However, in a follow up email, after I had emphatically rejected their suggestion as improper, Hutchings also put it in writing.

His email threatened that if I did not ‘reconsider my position’ and comply with his “pragmatic proposal” within seven days, he would sue me for a breach of a court ordered settlement which would carry ‘criminal sanctions’, including “the likelihood of an order being made for the Book to be pulped, [me] being fined and/or [me] being committed to prison for contempt.”

Later, Hamlins denied to the Tribunal that they had implied any quid pro quo in either the phone call or that email and claimed they were merely threatening legal action over my alleged breach of the settlement. In that case, I wondered, what was the “pragmatic proposal” they were asking me to “reconsider” that would avoid the pulping of my book and me being “committed to prison“?

If Hamlins were solely looking for the removal of alleged offending words how else could I solve their problem other than by pulping the book? They never said. Yet, in that same email, while seeking to deny their copyright objective, Hamlins also took the trouble to mention that in their legal opinion giving them my copyright fitted in with the order I had signed. There were no other suggestions for the ‘way out’ they had in mind.

If there remained any doubts about the intention of the call I believed these would be dispelled by further evidence produced by the SRA showing the Hamlins team had worked on a series of advance preparation notes entitled “Script for Call With [Sarawak Report’s solicitor]”. These notes were revised several times as the lawyers honed their pitch.

First, they framed how to make their allegation under the heading “Contempt of Court” – our client has been advised in clear terms that the serious breach amounts to basis to bring contempt proceedings. Your client should treat this seriously.”

Then, they crafted their follow up remarks under the heading “Way out – If your client will give an exclusive licence of copyright in the original unedited articles solely for the purpose of allowing A to have passages taken down by resistant platforms A may be prepared to forgo A’s right to go back to Court….. If option one is not accepted, left with only alternative, which A instructs me A will pursue, to bring contempt”

That script for the phone call might seem entirely consistent with the original plan warned against by counsel, as the SRA plainly thought. However, Hutchings would claim to the Tribunal that this script did not amount to a quid pro quo as argued by the regulator. The Tribunal would agree with him; at the end of the secret hearing it announced that it was dismissing the SRA’s allegations.

At the time I had rejected what I viewed to be a blatant blackmail attempt and decided to call Hamlin’s bluff. Sure enough, after I further rejected the follow-up email calling it criminal behaviour, the law firm backed off, in line with its client’s refusal to move beyond threats.

That established, I later reported the law firm to the SRA.

Tribunal Exonerates Hutchings On All Fronts 

If this was a strange backdrop to the secret hearing it soon felt even stranger to find myself questioned by a small group of self-regulating lawyers with no outside observer allowed to take note of what was said.

The line of questioning also seemed strange. Although Mr Hutchings was denying that he sought to bully me into surrendering copyright, I found myself challenged for being unreasonable in not having done just that.

Shouldn’t I have given in to the demand that was not made, asked his KC?

It was now being argued that it should have been perfectly acceptable for me to let Hamlins use copyright law to navigate US press freedom laws in order to get websites and a hosting company called WordPress to take down articles in the United States.

I thanked the KC for admitting that this was indeed the purpose of making contempt allegations against me, including threats of prison. However, there were no reporters or observers present to report the interchange or apparent contradictions.

The KC then claimed I had worked in cahoots with the management of the US hosting site WordPress. I explained I knew no one from WordPress. The barrister then produced an old email where I said I was glad I still had draft copies of my removed articles stored on the WordPress content creation tool (a separate service entirely) in my computer. This he alleged was evidence that I was indeed conspiring with the management of WordPress to frustrate their client!

Any blogger can download WordPress to create their content. The panel looked bemused, yet, it was the libel lawyers who were to be acquitted on each and every count.

Ruling right after the hearing came to a close the panel concluded it was not satisfied that Hamlins had tried to make improper threats or blackmail me, let alone employ an untruth by misrepresenting a legal opinion they’d received.

Indeed, if Hutchings had done that during his call with my solicitor, he testified it was merely “a slip of the tongue“.

In what might appear to be a contradiction, the SDT also agreed with another secret witness, a famous libel lawyer, who agreed with Hamlins’ KC that even if the quid quo pro was mentioned using copyright law to get round US freedom of speech protections was in their view a “permissible objective” for Hamlins to hold on behalf of their client.

So, Mr Hutchings was exonerated of the regulator’s charges of dishonesty and making improper demands, and the libel industry’s controversial tactics against the press were upheld.

Notably, the SDT did not award costs to Hamlins; was this a gentle nudge that defamation lawyers should ‘tone it down’?

If so that message was not received. The following day, one champion of the libel industry published another article in the Law Society Gazette. This time it was an excoriating denunciation of the SRA for its attempts to bring the UK’s reputation launderers to heel. These attempts must now stop thundered the libel lawyer.

Heavy lobbying of the Ministry of Justice is now further reported to have successfully persuaded the Labour government to drop anti-SLAPP legislation previously drafted then also abandoned by the Conservatives when they dissolved parliament before the last election. This week over 50 Labour MPs signed a petition to restore the pledge.

Until such time, well-heeled defamation lawyers can celebrate that their trade remains relatively unhindered in protecting the super-rich from unwanted comment.

Meanwhile, in the absence of affordable justice in this sphere, the right to a reputation remains an inaccessible expense for ordinary folk (including mere celebrities and politicians) whose pockets are simply not deep enough to engage the £1,000 an hour lawyers who prowl the Royal Courts of Justice.

And what about myself? I had made a complaint in good faith in order to highlight concerns about the tactics used to silence journalists and ironically exited the process under harsh instructions to remain anonymous and keep schtum.

When I asked what right it might have to gag me, the STC last week told me their ‘orders remain in force and are binding‘ but failed to cite under what authority, on whom or with what enforceability:

The Tribunal made orders regarding the anonymity of certain individuals, of whom you were one. Those orders remain in force and are binding. While you indicate that you do not propose to name other anonymised individuals, it may be that identifying yourself publicly in connection with the case could have the effect of identifying matters or individuals whose anonymity the Tribunal ordered should be preserved. [Clerk to SDT]

The same day the Tribunal published a whole new set of policies, without notice or consultation, re-asserting their right to issue reporting restrictions and sanction those who don’t comply, again giving no clear source for their authority.

Can this really be the case in modern democratic Britain?  I now think not. Senior lawyers tell me they believe the SDT has been exceeding its powers.  One High Court judge reprimanded the SDT in 2022 for the “creeping march of anonymity and redaction” in a different case, saying “sweeping anonymity orders in respect of the third parties ought not to have been made. Courts and tribunals should not be squeamish about naming innocent people caught up in alleged wrongdoing of others. It is part of the price of open justice and there is no presumption that their privacy is more important than open justice.”

That view can only be hardened by a recent court judgement which overturned a separate order made by the Tribunal where the judge said “What [a journalist] did and did not have a (legal) right to publish is, in the end … not [a question] on which the Tribunal was competent to give a definitive ruling.”

Therefore, The Times newspaper may have backed down but I have decided not to.

If it is found the SDT have not exceeded their legislated powers and that it is I who have exceeded my rights to freedom of expression and to report in the public interest, then I am resigned to pay the price.