Richard Burger

Richard has over 25 years’ experience of representing clients in investigations by financial regulators and law enforcement agencies, as well as advising boards on strategic governance decisions. Richard is a former investigative lawyer with two of the UK’s financial regulators: the FSA the predecessor to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Financial Reporting Council (FRC). He is a former named FCA Skilled Person. He has senior in-house legal experience from a secondment as the Head of Compliance and Legal for a London market insurer.  

Richard is admitted to practice in England and Wales.  

• Successfully defended the former Chief Executive Officer of a UK PLC accused of making misleading statements to the stock market. His client was acquitted at trial. This was the first criminal prosecution by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) under section 89 of the Financial Markets Act 2012.
• Acted for an insurance intermediary in a global bribery and corruption investigation conducted by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and the US Department of Justice (DOJ). The SFO discontinued the case with no further action.
• Successfully acted for firms and ‘c-suite’ executives in FCA and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), enforcement investigations, resulting in the discontinuance of the investigation.
• Represented firms and senior individuals in enforcement proceedings by the Society of Lloyd’s (“Lloyd’s”). Advised the London insurance market on bribery issues raised by Lloyd’s on broker remuneration.
• Advising firms on their engagements with the FCA and PRA in particular assertive supervision, FCA “minded to” letters and own-initiative powers, anti-financial crime, corporate governance, conduct and culture, board effectiveness reviews and remediations schemes.
• Advising on third-party and maxwellisation rights in government, regulatory and internal investigations.
• Advising financial institutions on the UK sanctions regime and licence applications to the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI). Since 2010 he has advised London market insurers on financial sanctions including client onboarding, screening and licencing.
• Conducting private prosecutions for regulators, local government and corporates. Richard has prosecuted serious health and safety accidents, food hygiene offences, conspiracy to defraud and offences of dishonesty, copyright theft, and specific offences under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.
• Representing accountancy, legal, insolvency professionals under investigation by their professional bodies: FRC, ICAEW, ACCA, CIMA and Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) with a focus on non-financial misconduct anti-money laundering and client money.
• He has acted for the UK’s lead medical and dental professional bodies before fitness to practise and health committees. Richard now sits as chair of the disciplinary panel for the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investment (CISI).
• Informed by his extensive experience in criminal, regulatory and professional disciplinary law, Richard has successfully defended clients under investigation by a wide range of regulators and law enforcement agencies.
• He has acted for private individuals in sensitive criminal investigations and proceedings. He has advised the victims of crime utilising the Victims’ Right to Review scheme to review decisions by the CPS not to prosecute.
• Whilst at the Financial Services Authority he was the case lawyer: in the first published case of market abuse, the regulator’s first use of High Court certification powers and the first private warning issued to a bank for Anti-Money Laundering failures.
• He has acted as the MLRO/assistant MLRO to UK law firms.