A Mayfair accountant has pleaded not guilty to wounding a police officer with intent during a dawn raid by HMRC and the Metropolitan Police.
Charles Charalambous, an ICAEW-qualified chartered accountant and sole director of Charles Alexander & Co. LTD, registered at North Audley Street in Mayfair, appeared at Southwark Crown Court before Judge Gregory Perrins and entered a not guilty plea to a charge of wounding with intent.
The Crown Prosecution Service alleged that on 29 September 2026 Charalambous “unlawfully and maliciously wounded” a police officer, identified only by number, “with intent to resist or prevent the lawful apprehension or detainer of himself”. At an earlier hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, prosecutors alleged an officer was stabbed in the leg while executing a warrant.
Judge Perrins told the court that the trial “may not” begin before June 2027, and that he expected it to take place at the Old Bailey.
Part of a wider operation
The Metropolitan Police said the charges form part of a wider operation targeting a “suspected organised crime group”, in which more than 800 officers carried out dawn raids at 24 properties across London, Essex, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk in the early hours of 29 September 2026. The operation resulted in 17 arrests, while searches remain ongoing at a number of the addresses.
Charalambous denies the charge, and the allegation remains unproven until trial. The case is one of two major pleas heard at Southwark Crown Court this week, alongside a guilty plea over the Berkeley Square knife attack on a visiting Saudi man, and follows seven men charged over unfit meat and animal cruelty — a busy period for the capital’s courts.
