Practice Areas
Brian's specialisms are in public inquiry and review work, business crime and investigations, and regulatory work. His practice has included advising high net worth individuals, multinational corporations, private clients, here and abroad, Middle Eastern royalty and the UK Government, on a wide variety of esoteric issues, as well as conducting internal reviews and investigations.
In January 2023, Brian was instructed in behalf of the Ministry of Defence in the Independent Inquiry relating to Afghanistan, which is investigating alleged unlawful killings by UK Special Forces in 2010-2013, and an alleged cover-up. The Inquiry is ongoing.
In June 2023, Brian was instructed to advise and assist Boris Johnson, the former UK Prime Minister, who was called as a witness in Module 2 of the Covid Inquiry in December 2023.
In May 2021, Brian was commissioned by the Director of the Serious Fraud Office to investigate and report into the collapse of the Serco trial of R v Woods and Marshall in April 2021. His report was published by the Serious Fraud Office on 21 July 2022. The link to the then Director’s statement and the Report and Annexes can be found at:
https://www.sfo.gov.uk/2022/07/21/publication-of-brian-altman-KC-and-sir-david-calvert-smith-reviews/
In May 2021, Brian was appointed lead counsel to the Brook House Inquiry which investigated the mistreatment of formerly detained persons at Brook House Immigration Removal Centre then run by G4S, which was exposed by the BBC's Panorama programme in September 2017. The Inquiry's hearings ended in April 2022 and the Inquiry's report was published in September 2023.
In January 2017, Brian was appointed lead counsel to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse and led in the Inquiry's Rochdale investigation in 2017 which involved examining institutional failures regarding allegations of child sexual abuse committed by Sir Cyril Smith MP. He led in the 2019 Westminster investigation which examined institutional failures regarding allegations of child sexual abuse made against people of public prominence linked to Westminster. He was also lead counsel to the 2019 investigation into wider issues regarding the Roman Catholic Church and in the 2020 investigation into institutional responses concerning allegations of child sexual abuse made against Lord Janner of Braunstone KC. He also led the investigation into Effective Leadership in Child Protection which took place in late 2020. The Inquiry's final report was published in October 2022.
In 2020, Brian led a large counsel team advising Post Office Ltd in relation to the CCRC's referrals to the Court of Appeal and to the Crown Court of the historical convictions of postmasters for theft, false accounting and fraud. He then led the team in the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, in four days of hearings in March 2021 in relation to the 42 cases referred by the CCRC in what was the largest conjoined appeal ever heard by the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division. The appeals related to individuals who had been privately prosecuted by the Royal Mail Group and post-2012 by Post Office Ltd between 2000 and 2013, relying on evidence from the Horizon accounting system which was found to suffer from bugs, errors and defects. Leading a team of over 60 review counsel, the counsel team oversaw an enormous post-conviction disclosure review exercise (with over 4 million documents subjected to review and substantially over 300,000 pages of material disclosed) to enable the appellants to advance their appeals. The case is reported as R v Hamilton & Others [2021] EWCA Crim 577.
Examples of Brian's other work include advising directors of a property company about the potential for criminal liability under health and safety law and fire regulations arising from a fire in commercial premises; a UK regulator regarding its statutory functions; an Estonian company regarding a potential private prosecution in England regarding a European-wide multi-million Euros fraud; on a potential private prosecution involving allegations of conspiracy to defraud and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, among other possible substantive offences, arising out of High Court commercial litigation involving parallel imports of luxury items; a high net worth property magnate on issues arising in the course of commercial litigation following false accusations made against him by the SFO; a property developer in an internal investigation of fraud; on instruction by Singaporean lawyers, a high net worth Singaporean client accused of serious drugs offences in Singapore; a nationwide firm of solicitors on issues arising in private litigation under the Official Secrets Acts; a US aerospace company on suspected money laundering and POCA compliance during a $100m acquisition of a British PLC; a public Swedish multinational corporation who suspected it was the victim of a €200m fraud arising during an acquisition by a British PLC of a €1.7bn part of its pan-European business; a Middle Eastern Royal family on issues of international State-led criminality; City of London insolvency practitioners on allegations of fraud underlying the tracing of £100m of hidden assets of a PLC; a well-known credit reference company during due diligence of a target company's systems, bearing on issues of cybercrime and data protection; a national construction PLC on POCA compliance; a significant high net worth victim of phone hacking; the Bar Council on the Bribery Act 2010 and its application to the Bar; and LOCOG, pre-the 2012 Olympics on ticket touting offences online.
Examples of privately funded defence work include successfully defending a young man for assault; a man accused of a large housing benefit fraud; a former chief police officer accused of sexual offences; a police officer in a high profile case accused of misconduct in public office arising from the murder of a Bristol man falsely alleged to have been a child abuser; a haulier accused of involvement in a large-scale conspiracy to supply drugs; in appeal proceedings, a large property company accused of breaches of an enforcement notice; a money lender who, having pleaded guilty to large-scale cross-border money laundering, avoided imprisonment.
Brian's prosecution instructions include for the CMA in a construction industry-wide cartel case, for the SFO in two blockbuster investigations and for the FCA in an insider dealing case.
His past prosecution work includes the first trial of the high profile killing of PC Andrew Harper in Berkshire in August 2019. PC Harper had been dragged to his death behind a car being driven away from a theft. The first trial which took place in March 2020 had to be aborted in its third week due to the impact of Covid-19 on the jury. (Brian was unable to prosecute the retrial in June 2020 due to other pre-existing professional commitments.)
In 2018, Brian successfully prosecuted Russell Bishop in the notorious 'Babes in the Woods' murders prosecution from 1986, following a successful application to the Court of Appeal to quash his 1987 acquittals. Examples of other very high profile cases include the prosecutions in 2008 and 2011 of Levi Bellfield for the murders of Milly Dowler, Amelie Delagrange and Marsha McDonnell, and the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy; the prosecution of Mark Dixie for the murder of Sally Anne Bowman; the prosecution of Armel Gnango, which was the murder of a Polish care worker killed in the crossfire of a gunfight between Gnango and another youth, where Gnango had not fired the fatal shot, and the victim had been the unintended target. This landmark case passed through a seven-justice Supreme Court and a five-judge Court of Appeal on issues of joint enterprise, accessory liability and transferred malice. Gnango's murder conviction was restored on a prosecution appeal to the Supreme Court from the Court of Appeal.
Brian also has a long track record of prosecuting high profile terrorism cases. His cases include: Khalid Ali, a former Taliban fighter, for bomb-making offences in Afghanistan and preparation of terrorist acts in the UK; an Islamic State cyber-terrorist; an Islamic State-influenced plot to kill police or military personnel in London. He was instructed to prosecute Moazzam Begg for alleged terrorism offences arising from the conflict in Syria, and he has prosecuted several other cases arising out of the conflict in Syria. Also, Brian led for the prosecution in the case of alleged IRA man, John Downey, for the 1982 Hyde Park bombing, where the abuse of process argument turned on whether Downey had erroneously received a so-called 'comfort letter' from Government in 2007 amounting to a promise not to prosecute.
