[2025] EWCA Crim 1289

Lord Justice Holroyde:

Private prosecutors appealed, pursuant to s58 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, against a ruling by a judge of the Crown Court that the prosecution of the respondents, on charges of conspiracy to defraud and money laundering offences, should be stayed as an abuse of the process. We allowed the appeal and ordered that the proceedings in the Crown Court may be resumed. The private prosecutors applied for an order pursuant to section 17 of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 (“s17”; “the POA 1985”) that their costs of resisting the application in the Crown Court, and of their appeal to this court, be paid out of central funds. We permitted the Lord Chancellor to intervene in that application, and we received most helpful written and oral submissions on behalf of the private prosecutors and the Lord Chancellor. This is the reserved judgment of the court in relation to the application for costs.

At the conclusion of the substantive hearing, we ordered that the reporting restrictions which had been in place pursuant to section 71 of the 2003 Act should remain in force; and further ordered, pursuant to section 4(2) of the Contempt of Court Ac 1981, that no report of the proceedings may be published until the conclusion of the resumed proceedings in the Crown Court. Those proceedings are still continuing, and it has accordingly not been possible thus far to publish the court’s judgment on the substantive appeal.

The present application raises issues of general importance in relation to the payment from central funds of the costs of a private prosecution. It is desirable that the guidance which we feel able to give in this judgment should be available to judges and legal representatives in other cases. We are able to give our judgment without referring in any detail to the facts of the case or to other features which may identify it. We direct that the reporting restrictions pursuant to s71 of the 2003 Act be disapplied, and our order pursuant to s4(2) of the 1981 Act be varied, to the extent necessary to permit this judgment in its present anonymised form to be published. We emphasise that, in accordance with the order made at the substantive hearing, nothing else may be published which names any of the respondents or which could otherwise lead members of the public to identify them. These restrictions will continue until the proceedings in the Crown Court have been concluded.