Serious questions were raised last night in parliament by former soldier and Isle of Wight MP, Bob Seely, on legal firm, Matrix Chambers, who are also known to work for Wild Justice. Wild Justice comprises of the BBC's Chris Packham, Ruth Tingay and Mark Avery.
Conservative Bob Seely told the House of Commons last night that the legal system had become ‘corrupted’. He deployed parliamentary privilege to identify Hugh Tomlinson QC of Matrix Chambers who, he claimed, worked on behalf of Russian clients to silence rivals and critics. According to the Telegraph, Hugh Tomlinson QC of Matrix Chambers, who also represent Wild Justice, represented now sanctioned Russian businessman Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, the head of Russian lender Alfa-Bank.
[The Wild Justice threesome will likely find their 'Putin links' uncomfortable]
Seely said a free press should be intimidating kleptocrats and criminals but suggested that those roles had been reversed. 'We have a coalition not of the willing but of the woeful,’ he added. ‘Oligarchs, Putin’s henchmen… teaming up with amoral lawyers. These firms set up a one-stop corruption shop to offer a form of legalised intimidation to silence their rivals but also journalists and authors, but also an unstructured and unregulated private eye business which is now collecting kompromat on people in this country.
‘Do not get me wrong – people have the right to advice and legal representation. But they are abusing it very badly in our society at the moment.’
'Bob Seely MP made the comments in parliament last night'
Seely said he had been told by whistleblowers working for big firms that they do not do proper client checks and that ‘know your client’ systems were ‘non-existent’. He added: ‘Some actually have a list of people that they specifically do not do those checks on because they know that they are inherently corrupt and inherently criminal.'
Mark Avery, one of the Wild Justice trio, has written about the support he has had from Matrix chambers in the past, saying in 2020 on his blog that he thought his barrister had 'played a blinder.'
It is not the first time that Wild Justice have associated themselves with controversial legal advisers. It was previously reported in the media that their other regular legal firm, Leigh Day, earned £11m from the MOD after leading ‘a witch hunt of British troops in Iraq’.
The tragedy unfolding in Ukraine, on the orders of Putin and his henchmen, has so far killed almost 10,000 and displaced over 890,000.
It remains to be seen whether Wild Justice will continue working with the legal firm after these assertions in parliament. Given the number of losses they have had in court in the last year however it might end up being to their benefit to cut their ties.