A financial adviser has denied that he copied his ex boss’s entire database because he wanted to poach his clients when he set up his own business.
Stephen Wales told a jury he had no intention of getting any financial benefit from the six gigabytes of client files which he downloaded onto zip drives on his last day at work.
He said he was trying to save himself time by copying information about a small group of private clients who he was taking with him by agreement with his former employer.
Mr Wales, aged 35, said he did not use any of the information to try to lure any clients to his new business when he set up on his own the day after leaving.
He had worked for investment consultant Jonathan Walker at his Torbay based Pension Drawdown Company for almost four years before leaving to start his own firm called Positive Solutions Financial Services in 2010.
Computer studies graduate Mr Wales, from Torquay, denies fraud. He says he took the data but had no dishonest intention.
The prosecution told the jury at Exeter Crown Court he was found with his old company’s database on two laptops when police seized them two months after he left to start a rival business.
Mr Walker told the court that a stream of clients moved away from his firm to Mr Wales’s new outfit in the weeks after he left and he became concerned about the threat to his business.
Mr Wales told the jury he had agreed that he would take a number of clients with him who he had introduced to the firm either in person or when through another adviser who had passed them over through him.
He said he took the data so he could serve these clients and had deleted and not used any that related to the 400 other customers of the Pension Drawdown Company.
Mr Wales said Mr Walker had broken agreements with him before he left and bullied and threatened him after he started his rival business.
He accepted he had broken data protection rules by removing the zip drive files but denied any dishonest intent lay behind his copying of client risk and valuation files.
He said: “It saved my having to get the information from my clients again, which would be irksome for them. I had no intention of rifling through the files or to abuse that data or cause harm to any clients.
“It was my last day and I panicked. I was lazy and silly. It was a daft thing to do but there was no malicious intention. It was never my intention to benefit from the files.
“There was no risk to anyone. It was about saving me time. I did not benefit from it. There was no intention and no benefit.”
The trial continues.
