A prominent businesswoman married to Police Minister Chris Philp has been reported to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) by a former employer and is facing charges in the High Court on charges of corporate espionage.
Elizabeth Philp, 40, whose husband has called for ‘zero tolerance’ of all crimes, is accused of data processing offenses and unlawfully using confidential information from her former employer to set up a rival company.
She denies the allegations and is suing her former employer, whom she accuses of cyber attacks on the website of the company she subsequently founded.
The legal battle centers on Philp’s departure from the London Specialist Pharmacy Group (LSPG), where she was CEO until 2017, and the creation of her own company, Roseway Labs.
Her former employer has accused her of storing and keeping “trade secrets” on a Dell XPS laptop that was not wiped before she left the company.
It is further alleged that Philp, along with three other former employees of London Specialist Pharmacy, conspired to take her former employer’s customer lists for their new business, leading to losses of around £1.5 million.
In Philp’s defense and counterclaim, she denies the allegations and claims that a delay in resetting her laptop to factory settings was the result of being “fully involved in supporting her husband’s campaign as part of the June 8 general election 2017”.
“As far as she can remember, [Elizabeth Philp] did not have access to the laptop at any time after she stopped working for the plaintiffs prior to the factory reset,” the defense said.
The LSPG has also detailed a number of cases in which Philp’s alleged co-conspirators allegedly downloaded or sent confidential information to personal email addresses.
In response, it is claimed that the information was not confidential and was sent in the normal course of business. Last October, the General Pharmaceutical Council rejected a complaint relating to one of the employees.
The claimants, Gluck Health Limited and its subsidiary, London Specialist Pharmacy, are seeking the return of a £10,000 severance payment paid to Philp, along with hundreds of thousands of pounds in damages.
In a letter to the CPS, lawyers acting for London Specialist Pharmacy also claim that Philp and the other former employees committed offenses under section 170 of the Data Protection Act 2018.
Philp said she had not been contacted by CPS or police. She now describes herself as co-founder and CEO of Roseway Labs, a pharmacy founded in 2018 to partner with private physicians to provide personalized medicine.
The company provides medicines for health conditions such as hair loss, skin problems and hormonal imbalances, an industry in which the LSPG claimed to have a “near monopoly” before Roseway was founded.
The legal action is the latest twist in a bitter rivalry between Dr Marion Gluck, 74, who founded Gluck Health Limited, and Philp’s company.
Gluck, considered a pioneer in the treatment of hormonal imbalances, was suspended from medical practice for four months in September after it emerged she had accessed restricted parts of Roseway’s website after borrowing its login details.
The data breach was discovered and reported by Philp in 2022. Gluck had denied that she had personally accessed the details, but she accepted that she “facilitated” the use of the login address for her staff and claimed that it was intended to improve the format of study Roseway’s website. Lawyers for Roseway are now seeking damages.
Philp said: “Roseway Labs was the victim of a deliberate and sustained cyber attack by Specialist Pharmacy, who only made allegations against Roseway Labs when it was clear their activities had been discovered.
“This was four years after Roseway Labs started trading. Nothing substantive was discussed. Roseway Labs reported the attack to the Information Commissioner’s Office, who suggested we report it to police under the Computer Misuse Act.
“We chose not to do this at the time and instead reported this to the relevant regulators. At no time did Roseway Labs receive any contact from the police or the Crown Prosecution Service [Roseway Labs] has committed no offense.”
Philp’s husband is set to be re-elected as MP for Croydon South. In February, he called for a significant increase in arrests, arguing that there is no such thing as a petty crime.
“I want zero tolerance for all police crimes and a back-to-basics approach that significantly increases the number of criminals caught and prosecuted,” he said.