R v Vijay Deuchande

The Registrar has referred to the full court the applicant's applications for an extension of the time for appealing and, if the extension of time is granted, for permission to appeal against the concurrent sentences of three years and six months' imprisonment imposed on him on 29 August 2023 in the Crown Court at Oxford for each of five money laundering offences to which he had pleaded guilty in the same court on 9 August 2023, namely four counts of acquiring criminal property, contrary to section 329(1)(a) of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, and one count of entering into or becoming concerned in a money laundering arrangement, contrary to section 328(1) of the same Act.

The sole ground of appeal is that the judge sentenced the applicant on the basis that the total amount of money laundered was a little under £2 million, when in fact it was just over £530,000. The judge sentenced on this basis as a result of an error made by an officer which only came to light during the confiscation proceedings. In those circumstances the Crown do not oppose either application. In some, if not many, cases where a mistake of this nature has been made, the defendant might be expected to identify it. However, no criticism is made of the applicant in the particular circumstances of this case. We grant both applications and go on to consider the appeal.

Bank accounts controlled by the appellant were used to receive the proceeds of a sophisticated fraud practiced on two companies which provided payroll services. In sentencing the appellant, the judge placed his offending in the medium culpability category in the offence-specific sentencing guideline. No complaint is made about that.

The sentencing guideline deals with harm in two stages, harm A and harm B. Harm A is initially assessed by the value of the money laundered. The judge placed the appellant's offending in category 3 in harm A. That category covers amounts from £500,000 to £2 million, with a starting point of five years' custody based on £1 million. The next highest category is category 2, which covers amounts from £2 million to £10 million, with a starting point of six years' custody based on a starting point of £5 million.

The guideline says as follows under the heading “Harm B”:

The judge referred to both types of harm and said:

As we have said, six years' custody was the starting point for a medium culpability category 2 case based on a starting point of £5 million. It follows that, in moving from five years to six years, the judge cannot simply have been relying on the amount of money laundered, but must also have been having regard to an appreciable extent to the level of harm associated with the underlying offences. However, we do not consider that the level of harm associated with the underlying offences, which was similar to the amount of money laundered, warranted an upward adjustment of the starting point.

The Crown conceded that there were no aggravating factors. The judge then took account of the mitigating factors and of the one fifth reduction in sentence to which he decided the appellant was entitled by reason of his guilty pleas. There is no challenge to the judge's decision that the appropriate reduction on that account was one fifth. The judge did not state what the sentence would have been before that reduction, but the sentence imposed was 42 months' imprisonment, which indicates that it had been reduced by 11 months by reason of the defendant's guilty pleas. That gives a notional sentence of four years and five months’ (or 53 months') imprisonment before the reduction for the appellant's guilty pleas. It follows that the judge had reduced the sentence which he proposed to impose by 19 months (i.e. from six years to four years and five months), or by roughly one-quarter, by reason of the mitigating factors before reducing the sentence by reason of the appellant's guilty pleas.

We consider that it was wrong in principle for the appellant to be sentenced on the basis that he had laundered nearly four times as much money as he had in fact laundered. We quash the sentences of three years and six months' imprisonment and we impose instead concurrent sentences of two years and four months' imprisonment on each count. In arriving at this figure, we have sought to follow the judge's approach to sentencing, save in respect of the harm caused. From a starting point of five years' imprisonment, we have applied a one year reduction to four years by reason of the fact that the amount laundered was near the bottom of the range for category 3. Like the judge, we have reduced the sentence by one quarter to three years to reflect the mitigating factors. We have then reduced the sentence by a further one fifth to two years and four months to reflect the appellant's guilty pleas.