A Geneva court found a British lawyer guilty of defamation and attempted extortion for writing letters to Western intelligence services accusing his former client, a Russian-led oil trader, of financing terrorism.
An indictment presented to the court by a Geneva state prosecutor said that Matthew Parish, a 44-year-old Cambridge graduate, wrote in a letter to MI5 on April 27, 2018, that Integral Petroleum had close links to terrorist groups such as the Taliban and Islamic State.
Parish also accused the firm of using front companies to carry out what he called “the greatest fraud in recent history”. The indictment said a dispute had arisen between the parties in 2017/2018 over legal bills that Parish said Integral owed him. Parish denied this, saying they fell out over employment terms.
In May 2018, he sent similar letters to U.S. and EU authorities, according to the indictment.
Late on Thursday, a spokesman for the Geneva prosecutor’s office said: “Mr. Parish is found guilty of defamation, calumny, a coercion attempt and of failing to conform with an authority’s decision.”
He said Parish was ordered to pay a fine of 5000 CHF ($5,121) and the full costs of the proceedings and given a suspended sentence of one year in prison.
He was also instructed by the court to see a psychiatrist.
Reuters could not determine how the court reached its verdict. Geneva court rulings are only made public if an appeal is lodged and then only several weeks after the judgment.
David Bitton, lawyer for Integral and a plaintiff in the case, confirmed the verdict by telephone on Thursday. He did not respond to later requests for further comment.
Britain’s interior ministry, which oversees the MI5 domestic intelligence agency, declined to comment. The foreign ministry said it was providing consular assistance to a British man in Switzerland, but gave no other details.