Held, appeal allowed. When considering the circumstances in which a person who had consented to a confiscation might be allowed to resile from their agreement the starting point was that a defendant’s consent could not confer jurisdiction upon a Crown Court to make a confiscation order if, on examination, the facts on which the consent was based could not, as a matter of law, support the conclusion that the defendant had benefitted. Provided that the prosecution’s case disclosed facts upon which, if they were proved, the judge would be entitled to make a confiscation order, a consensual settlement which served the purpose of buying off the risk of an adverse finding in the proceedings could provide the evidence upon which the judge might rely without mounting a further investigation. In such a case, a defendant would have to show “the most exceptional circumstances” in order to set aside the confiscation order that had been made by consent. In addition, a defendant had to show (as a separate requirement) that “the whole process” was unfair. That did not mean that every aspect of the process had to be unfair before an appeal could succeed but, if it were to be held that no unfairness resulted from the process, it seemed clear that a defendant would have no legitimate cause for complaint. Where a defendant contended that his consent followed incorrect legal advice, an appeal based on that asserted mistake would not always be well-founded; further enquiry would be necessary. There was a strong public interest in holding defendants to orders made by consent. A further feature was the role and responsibilities of counsel. The conduct of the case was the responsibility of the trial advocate. He had an obligation to take points that were fairly arguable but that was not an absolute duty and was tempered by the need to act in the client’s best interests, which commonly involved an exercise of judgment on the part of the advocate. Accordingly, if taking an arguable point would not be in the best interests of the client, there was no obligation to take it. In the present case, counsel’s advice was wrong; his advice was predicated on the assumption that the fact of the convictions on counts 1 to 4 demonstrated conclusively that the benefit from the defendant’s particular criminal conduct, which he specified as being “from the offences of which [the defendant] was convicted”, amounted to £5,952,417 and could not be challenged. However, counsel wrongly elided the concept of “criminality” with the statutory requirements of “benefit” under POCA He was right that the indictment sums were properly to be taken into account in assessing the defendant’s “criminality” for the purposes of determining what sentence of imprisonment should be imposed; but that was not a case where the fact of the conviction demonstrated conclusively that the proceeds of the frauds were POCA benefit for the defendant. First, the proceeds of the frauds were paid to, or retained by, the companies and not the defendant; second, the companies could not be described as a “sham” or merely a device to facilitate the fraud; third, although the defendant was the director of the companies with control of and responsibility for their financial affairs, that alone did not subvert the principle of separate legal personality, as properly understood; fourth, although SLM might be described as a one-man company, since the defendant was its sole shareholder and director, the other companies were not; fifth, it was not obvious that the facts of the case fell within either the evasion principle or the concealment principle as explained in the authorities. It was now clear that the mere fact that a company was implicated in a defendant’s criminality did not either necessarily or probably lead to the conclusion that benefit accruing to the company should be attributed to the defendant. If the defendant’s criminality did not justify a conclusion that the benefit to him was determined by the fact of his conviction, it was necessary to look at all relevant features of the case, Although it was clear that counsel was wrong to advise that the issue of separate legal personality was unarguable and to refuse to argue the point the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) as a court of review did not have the benefit of findings of fact from the court below, and was not in a position to determine what the outcome should or would have been had the point been taken. Furthermore, the information that was available showed a state of affairs that could be characterised as “the most exceptional”: the mistake of law arose because counsel, as he was right to do if he thought the point to be unarguable, refused to argue it. On the question whether “the whole process” was unfair, it was clear that the procedure adopted by the Crown Court was not unfair in any respect. Nevertheless, what happened could and should be characterised as unfair because the defendant, facing a very substantial potential confiscation order, was deprived of the ability to advance a point, which was reasonably arguable, by the refusal of his counsel to argue it. Accordingly, that was a case where the most exceptional circumstances existed such that it would be unfair not to allow the defendant’s appeal. However, the issues raised on the appeal went solely to the calculation of the defendant’s benefit and there was no good reason to interfere with the negotiated outcome of the sum agreed as available assets. The question of the defendant’s benefit would be remitted to the Crown Court. For the avoidance of doubt, the question of the defendant’s available assets would not be remitted (paras 72, 73, 77,78, 79. 80, 81, 84, 86, 91, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 102, 104, 105).