Expertise
Polly is a Partner in the Global Investigations Group. She specialises in corporate crime, guiding clients through investigations and subsequent remedial litigation. Her practice is cross-border and cross-discipline: she has recent experience of bringing and defending high-profile, high-value matters in both the civil and criminal courts.
Her recent work has focused on:
- fraud investigations, asset tracing and recovery on behalf of investment funds and other defrauded entities
- bringing and defending high-value private prosecutions on behalf of corporate and individual victims of crime
- conducting investigations into misconduct affecting corporations, including suspected fraud, corruption, theft of commercial data, false accounting, tampering with safety equipment, and unlawful surveillance
- acting for corporates and individuals facing asset freezing and forfeiture orders
- advising on industry-wide campaigns of private prosecutions and
- acting as a leading advocate for the proper and lawful conduct of private investigations.
Polly also advises a growing number of corporate clients grappling with allegations of sexual offences in the workplace, and other sensitive, business-critical matters. Her advisory work extends beyond legal remedies into managing reputational issues and crisis planning, preparedness and response.
Polly was junior counsel in the high profile prosecution of News of the World journalists in 2014, and served as technical advisor to a Parliamentary inquiry into private investigators and phone hacking in 2012. Polly previously served as Head of Strategic Intelligence at the UK Serious Fraud Office and worked for several years as a corporate investigator and investigative journalist.
Polly is recommended as a Leading Individual for corporate crime, and is ranked in legal directories in private prosecutions, civil fraud, investigations and white collar crime. She was recognised by Global Investigation Review in its directory of the top 100 women practicing globally in investigations and was shortlisted for the Employed Bar Awards in 2018. She is the author of Deferred Prosecution Agreements: the Law and Practice of Negotiated Corporate Criminal Penalties (Sweet and Maxwell, 2014) and a co-author of Arlidge & Parry on Fraud (4th and 5th editions). She was the Managing Editor of the Code for Private Prosecutors, the industry- and peer-reviewed code of conduct published by the Private Prosecutors' Association. Polly writes and lectures extensively on the subjects of conducting lawful investigations, civil and criminal remedies to trace and recover misappropriated assets and private prosecutions.
