CASE OF NEOPHYTOU v. THE UNITED KINGDOM

SECOND SECTION

CASE OF NEOPHYTOU v. THE UNITED KINGDOM

(Application no. 28805/21)

JUDGMENT
 

STRASBOURG

23 September 2025

This judgment is final but it may be subject to editorial revision.

In the case of Neophytou v. the United Kingdom,

The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting as a Committee composed of:

 Jovan Ilievski, President,
 Tim Eicke,
 Oddný Mjöll Arnardóttir, judges,
and Dorothee von Arnim, Deputy Section Registrar,

Having regard to:

the application (no. 28805/21) against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 1 June 2021 by a Cypriot national, Mr Achilleos Neophytou, and a British national, Mr Stefanos Neophytou (“the applicants”), who were born in 1950 and 1990 respectively, who live in Birmingham and Wrexham and who were represented by Mr S. Murria (Newton Law Practice), a lawyer practising in Birmingham. Following the close of proceedings, Mr Virinder Ghaiwal (Londonium Solicitors), a lawyer practising in London, replaced Mr Murria as the applicants’ representative;

the decision to give notice of the complaint concerning Article 6 § 1 of the Convention concerning the length of the confiscation proceedings to the United Kingdom Government (“the Government”), represented by their Agent, Mr M. Boulton of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and to declare inadmissible the remainder of the application;

the decision of the Cypriot Government not to exercise their right to intervene in the proceedings (Article 36 § 1 of the Convention);

the parties’ observations;

Having deliberated in private on 2 September 2025,

Delivers the following judgment, which was adopted on that date:

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

1.  The applicants, a father and son, were convicted in the Crown Court on 16 September 2016 of conspiring to manage a brothel. They were sentenced to twenty-seven months’ imprisonment, and were released on licence on 3 December 2017.

2.  The prosecution applied for a confiscation order under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (“POCA”). Pursuant to POCA, the court could make a confiscation order before sentencing or postpone the proceedings for a specified period of two years (which could be extended) from the date of conviction. In R v. Guraj ([2016] UKSC 65) the Supreme Court held that a procedural defect which gave rise to no unfairness, or none that could not be cured, would be no obstacle to making a confiscation order.

3.  A directions hearing scheduled for 19 May 2017 took place on that date, even though both parties had missed deadlines to submit statements required by POCA. The court directed an interim hearing on 22 September 2017 and a final hearing on 20 November 2017.

4.  Further directions hearings took place in September 2017, December 2017 and March 2018.

5.  The final confiscation hearing began on 10 August 2018 but was postponed due to a lack of court time. The judge granted the prosecution’s application to extend the specified two-year period (see paragraph 2 above).

6.  The trial resumed between 13 and 15 February 2019 and 11 and 13 March 2019. On each occasion it was postponed due to a lack of court time.

7.  On 29 March 2019 a further directions hearing took place. The prosecution’s file note indicated that the judge was not happy with the defence for requesting an adjournment.

8.  The trial resumed between 29 April and 2 May 2019 and was postponed due to a lack of court time.

9.  On 7 June 2019 the parties made submissions to the judge, who indicated that he would hand down his ruling by 17 July 2019.

10.  On 17 January 2020 the judge made a confiscation order against each applicant in the sum of GBP 3,174,809.18 to be paid within three months (later extended to six months), with a ten-year term of imprisonment in default.

11.  The judge noted that the finances had been “complicated”. Mistakes had been made by both parties’ financial experts and their reports had to be revised on several occasions causing real delays and further complicating the case. Furthermore, the time estimate for the proceedings had been wholly inadequate, meaning that on several occasions the case had to be adjourned. The delays were lengthy as all counsel had been unavailable for long periods of time. The judge indicated that he had been unable to produce the judgment for several months after hearing final submissions as he was not given the number of reading days required to consider and write it.

12.  The applicants were refused permission to appeal by a Single Judge. They renewed their application to the Court of Appeal, which was denied by a full court on 9 February 2021.

13.  One of the grounds of appeal was that the hearing was unfair because of the delay and that some adjustment should accordingly be made. The court considered this ground to be “unarguable” as “the delays were not such as to prejudice the applicants”. It said the following :

“There were numerous delays in the confiscation proceedings being concluded. The delays in concluding the hearings were principally caused by (1) the financial reports on each side needing to be revised by the experts to rectify mistakes and to deal with new points raised by counsel and by the judge; and (2) court days and counsel being unavailable – a problem exacerbated by inadequate time estimates giving rise to a number of adjournments. In addition, the judge was unable to produce the judgment for several months due to the lack of reading days provided for him to be able properly to consider the case.”

14.  On 25 November 2021 the case was listed for enforcement, as the applicants had paid only GBP 49,000 in satisfaction of the confiscation order. They applied for the enforcement proceedings to be stayed as an abuse of process. The application was refused by the District Judge and warrants were issued for their arrest.

15.  The applicants sought permission to judicially review the District Judge’s ruling, arguing, inter alia, that the delay between their conviction and the making of the order, and between the making of the order and the exhaustion of their appeal rights, had breached their Article 6 right to a hearing within a reasonable time.

16.  On 27 April 2022 the High Court refused the application for permission. It noted that the delay had occurred before the Court of Appeal refused permission to appeal; the applicants had not alleged, and there was no basis for alleging, that there had been any subsequent delays. As the Court of Appeal had found that the delays had no significant prejudicial impact on the applicants, there was no arguable basis for challenging the decision not to stay the enforcement proceedings on grounds of delay.

17.  The applicants did not renew the judicial review application before the High Court, and were subsequently imprisoned for defaulting on the confiscation order.

18.  They complain under Article 6 that the confiscation proceedings violated their right to a fair hearing within a reasonable time.

THE COURT’S ASSESSMENT

19.  The Government claimed that the applicants had not exhausted domestic remedies as they did not argue at any stage of the proceedings that the postponement of the specified two-year period (see paragraph 2 above) was unwarranted. Furthermore, they only contended that the delay had breached their Article 6 rights in the enforcement proceedings, after the present application had been made to the Court.

20.  Alternatively, the Government argued that the application was manifestly ill-founded.

21.  In Bullen and Soneji v. the United Kingdom (no. 3383/06, § 45, 8 January 2009) the Court rejected the Government’s assertion that the applicants had failed to expedite the confiscation proceedings by relying on the Human Rights Act 1998, since they had neither cited with sufficient clarity a particular remedy that was available to the applicants, nor a similar case in which such a remedy had been successfully pursued (see also Minshall v. the United Kingdom, no. 7350/06, § 35, 20 December 2011). The Government have not suggested any grounds on which the present case might be distinguished from Bullen and Soneji and Minshall.

22.  While the applicants did not expressly invoke Article 6 in their application for permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal, they raised it in substance, arguing that the confiscation hearing had been unfair because of the delay and that some adjustment should accordingly be made (see paragraph 12 above). In light of the Supreme Court judgment in R v. Guraj (see paragraph 2 above), once it was accepted by the Court of Appeal that there had been no prejudice as a result of the delay, there would appear to have been no further remedy available to the applicants to challenge the delay prior to the Court of Appeal decision. During the enforcement proceedings it would have been open to them to challenge any delay following the decision of the Court of Appeal, but they did not do so (see paragraphs 15 and 16 above).

23.  Consequently, the Government’s objection on non-exhaustion – insofar as it relates to the period prior to the decision of the Court of Appeal – must be dismissed. However, insofar as the applicants now seek to complain about delay in commencing the enforcement proceedings, the Court considers that they have failed to exhaust domestic remedies as required by Article 35 § 1 of the Convention.

24.  The Court further notes that the complaint relating to the period between conviction and the decision of the Court of Appeal is not manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 (a) of the Convention or inadmissible on any other grounds. It must therefore be declared admissible.

25.  The Government argued that no tenable complaint had been raised concerning the length of the confiscation proceedings and there was no basis for the applicants’ assertion that they were prejudiced by any delay. The facts did not suggest that there was any dilatory conduct on the part of the prosecution or the court. Rather, the time taken for the confiscation proceedings to conclude was the result of the complexity of the finances and case management issues.

26.  The applicants argued that the lapse of time between their conviction and the refusal of permission to appeal by the Court of Appeal was exceptional and breached the reasonable time requirement in Article 6.

27.  The applicants have not complained about the length of the criminal trial, and the Court has found that any complaint concerning delay after the Court of Appeal refused permission to appeal is inadmissible for failure to exhaust domestic remedies (see paragraph 23 above). Therefore, for the purposes of the present application the period to be taken into consideration lasted four years and five months, having began on 16 September 2016, with the applicants’ conviction, and ended with the decision of the Court of Appeal on 9 February 2021 (see Minshall, cited above, § 31).

28.  The reasonableness of the length of proceedings must be assessed in the light of the circumstances of the case and with reference to the following criteria: the complexity of the case, the conduct of the applicants and the relevant authorities, and what was at stake for the applicants (see, among many other authorities, Pélissier and Sassi v. France [GC], no. 25444/94, § 67, ECHR 1999-II).

29.  It is clear from the ruling in the confiscation proceedings and the Court of Appeal decision that there were significant delays in this case (see paragraphs 11 and 13 above). Both parties would appear to bear some responsibility for many of those delays. At the outset, there appears to have been a delay by both parties in submitting statements to the court, even though this does not appear to have delayed the proceedings as a whole (see paragraph 3 above). More importantly, the time estimates were wholly inadequate; combined with the unavailability of counsel for both parties this resulted in several lengthy adjournments. Mistakes were also made by both parties’ financial experts, which required their reports to be revised, causing further delays (see paragraphs 11 and 13 above).

30.  Looking specifically at the conduct of the applicants, there is a suggestion that their counsel sought an adjournment at a directions hearing on 29 March 2019. The length of the adjournment is not known, but the trial resumed a month later (see paragraphs 7 and 8 above). The respondent State, on the other hand, would appear to have been solely responsible for the unavailability of court days and the judge having insufficient reading days, which delayed his ruling for six months (see paragraphs 9-11 and 13 above).

31.  With regard to the complexity of the case, the confiscation proceedings undoubtedly involved complicated financial questions (see paragraph 11 above). However, there is nothing to suggest that they were unusually complex for proceedings of this nature.

32.  On the other hand, the applicants had a considerable amount at stake during the proceedings, as they each faced a confiscation order for a very substantial sum of money (over GBP 3,000,000) with a ten-year prison sentence in default (see paragraph 10 above).

33.  Therefore, having regard to the nature of the proceedings and what was at stake for the applicants, the Court finds that the State was responsible for periods of delay which were unreasonably long and in breach of the reasonable time requirement as provided by Article 6 of the Convention.

34.  There has accordingly been a violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention.

APPLICATION OF ARTICLE 41 OF THE CONVENTION

35.  The applicants did not submit a claim for just satisfaction.

FOR THESE REASONS, THE COURT, UNANIMOUSLY,

Done in English, and notified in writing on 23 September 2025, pursuant to Rule 77 §§ 2 and 3 of the Rules of Court.

 Dorothee von Arnim Jovan Ilievski
 Deputy Registrar President