Oligarchs spied on senior lawyers who ran Serious Fraud Office cases

Oligarchs whose business empire was under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office spied on lawyers who ran some of the UK's most sensitive criminal cases.

- Tom Burgis

The Guardian has obtained surveillance images of former SFO prosecutors taken by hired spies. Their goal is said to have been gathering information on the agency's activities, identifying its sources and gaining "leverage".

Backed with billions from Vladimir Putin's regime, the oligarchs were at the time waging a counterattack against an SFO investigation into suspected corruption and fraud, a major case the agency ultimately dropped.

Andy Slaughter, a Labour MP who chairs parliament's justice committee, said: "It is deeply troubling that individuals with knowledge of serious fraud inquiries should be surveilled by the very organisations they have been investigating." He added: "The hunter has become the hunted."

The surveillance began in 2019. It is unclear when, or if, it finished. As the law enforcement agency that takes on the toughest white-collar crime cases against multinational corporations and billionaires, the SFO often faces fightbacks by well-funded law firms and even cyber-attacks. But this is believed to be the first time surveillance of former SFO prosecutors has been revealed.

Lawyers for the oligarchs' mining company did not dispute that the surveillance took place. But they said any "investigations" into the targets were lawful, undertaken in preparation for lawsuits it brought against the SFO.

'We're not fair game' On Saturday 7 March 2020, the spies pulled up in a car outside the home of the former senior SFO prosecutor Tom Martin. At 10.39am, the target emerged from his front door wearing jeans and a Wolverhampton Wanderers hoodie. It was a momentous day: Martin was taking his young son to the football for the first time.

Martin had run complex transnational bribery investigations at the SFO. Although he never worked on the oligarchs' case, he felt he would have been an attractive target for anyone seeking intelligence on the agency.