Adrian Leppard

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Retired Commissioner of the City of London Police; advisory board of Black Cube

Adrian Leppard

Image Adrian Leppard Black Cube.jpg
Portrait from the Black Cube about-us page (firm's own material), accessed 19 October 2026
Born 11 February 1962
Nationality British
Occupation Police officer; security adviser
Known for Commissioner of the City of London Police, 2011–15; advisory board of Black Cube

Adrian Allen Leppard (born 11 February 1962) CBE QPM is a retired British police officer. He was Commissioner of the City of London Police from January 2011 until 31 December 2015, and the national policing lead for fraud and cyber crime. He served 32 years, in Surrey, Kent and the City. Since leaving the force he has sat on the advisory board of Black Cube and, until January 2024, as a director of Templar Executives Ltd. His first public link to the Israeli security circuit is earlier than the Black Cube seat: he attended the Herzliya counter-terrorism summit in 2012 and spoke there in 2013.[1][2][3]

Early life and education

He completed an MBA at City University in 2000.[1]

Police career

He joined in the 1980s and served with Kent Police and Surrey Police before the City. For much of the career he was a detective, in hostage negotiation, intelligence and covert operations, with command experience in firearms and counter-terrorism. He served ten years as a chief officer across three forces. As a senior investigating officer he dealt with homicides, contract killings, and the cash robbery of £53 million, which the firm’s own note on him calls the world’s largest. In December 2007 he was deputy chief constable of Kent, and from March to July 2010 temporary chief constable. He also served as counter-terrorism commander, and was involved in the shaping of the national Counter Terrorism Command network.[1][4]

National Domestic Extremism Team

The National Domestic Extremism Team was the investigation wing of the National Domestic Extremism Unit, set up by Assistant Chief Constable Anton Setchell, the national coordinator. It was based in London and overseen by the Association of Chief Police Officers terrorism and allied matters committee. Its work was described as co-ordinating operations against domestic campaigns and extremists, and identifying linked crimes. A principal target was animal-rights campaigning, in particular Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty and SPEAK. Operation Forton was an intelligence-gathering job across Sussex, Hampshire, Surrey, Kent and Thames Valley.[5][6]

The arrest phase opened with the detention of 32 SHAC activists on 1 May 2007. By then the job was Operation Achilles, overseen by Leppard as head of specialist operations at Kent. It was described at the time as the largest police operation of its kind, costing £3.5 million, with twelve forces and the FBI. Twelve activists were imprisoned in trials between 2008 and 2012. Undercover officers from the sister unit, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, had been deployed against the same campaigns, including the officer known as RC. Private intelligence specialists were also used, among them Adrian Radford, active as Ian Farmer from 2004 to 2007.[7][8][9]

Commissioner of the City of London Police

He was appointed in January 2011, in succession to Mike Bowron, and also headed the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau. The force hosted the national fraud and cyber intelligence bureau, an international fraud academy, and a specialist economic-crime directorate of about four to five hundred, working with the National Crime Agency. He led the policing of the Diamond Jubilee and the 2012 Olympics, and the building of regional economic-crime units, while the force took budget cuts. He retired on 31 December 2015. Ian Dyson succeeded him. The ICT biography dates the retirement to January 2016.[1][4] The Financial Times of February 2021 says he "retired from the police in 2016".[10]

Herzliya

He has appeared at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at IDC Herzliya, now Reichman University, since 2012. The first visit was September 2012. He returned in 2013 for the 13th World Summit, took part in a round table on “Dealing with Terrorism,” and told the hall it was his second visit. Haaretz of 10 September 2013 reported him warning that the West must brace for a “9/11 of cyber attacks.” At the 14th summit in 2014 he spoke and presented a gift to Boaz Ganor on behalf of the City of London Police. The 2012 visit predates the Black Cube seat by about eight years.[1][11][12]

Awards

He was awarded the Queen’s Police Medal in the 2012 New Year Honours.[13] He was appointed CBE in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to policing and the prevention of economic crime.

After retirement

He was a director of Templar Executives Ltd (05939511) from 1 January 2016 to 8 January 2024. The company is in liquidation. The address on the appointment was 16 Great Queen Street, Covent Garden. Nationality British, residence England. One appointment is on the Companies House file. He has also been named as a director of Waste2Energy Development Ltd.[2]

He joined the international advisory board of Black Cube in December 2020.[10] Intelligence Online reported on 14 December 2021 that his business interests were flourishing as the firm’s were.[14] The International Fraud Group page, which lists him from February 2021 on its own strategic advisory board at Mishcon de Reya, describes the Black Cube seat as a company “specialising in complex asset tracing and corporate investigations.”[3]

In the February 2021 interview Leppard said that austerity-era cuts to police funding had left a vacuum in white-collar crime investigation: “No new police resources were ever made available to investigate it. And as a result of which, only one in 500 frauds are actually prosecuted now,” so “there’s absolutely a business need for private investigation.”[10] Defending the firm’s methods, he said: “It’s quite lawful to deceive people if you’re doing it for the greater good,” pointing to what he called successes among Black Cube’s roughly 350 cases, including its role in revealing corruption in the Mexican oil industry.[10] He would not rule out that Black Cube would investigate journalists, only that it was “extremely unlikely”; each case, he said, depended on “what’s the greater good of what you’re seeking to achieve.”[10] On the 2016 Romania operation he said his understanding was that Black Cube had believed it was working for Romanian intelligence.[10] He also said that under new ethics rules the firm would not take cases involving sexual harassment, or clients who were violent criminals, that it complied with the law in every country it operated in, and that it no longer used offensive cyber techniques such as hacking.[10][14] The Harvey Weinstein contract was 2016–17. The Romania hacking instruction, which Dan Zorella acknowledged, was 2016. The ethics line is five years after both.

He has given evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee on cyber crime, written for the New Statesman, and spoken at Gresham College.[1][15][16]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 ICT, Commissioner Adrian Leppard, ict.org.il, accessed 2026.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Adrian Allen LEPPARD personal appointments, Companies House, officer ID KpgCEGaHj4bDyPBvoeuHFpWIoP0, date of birth February 1962.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Adrian Leppard, International Fraud Group.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 City Security Magazine, Profile of former Commissioner of City of London Police: Adrian Leppard QPM, 2 July 2018.
  5. ↑ National Co-ordinator Domestic Extremism, Frequently Asked Questions, Association of Chief Police Officers, c. 2010–11, archived by Undercover Research Group.
  6. ↑ Gordon Mills, The successes and failures of policing animal rights extremism in the UK 2004–2010, International Journal of Police Science & Management, 15:1, 18 February 2013.
  7. ↑ Police quiz animal activists, Daily Express, 1 May 2007.
  8. ↑ Haroon Siddique, Animal rights activists guilty of blackmailing research lab suppliers, Guardian, 23 December 2008.
  9. ↑ Jack Grimston, ALF infiltrator speaks on UK arrests, Sunday Times, 1 March 2009.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 Kadhim Shubber and Tom Burgis, Black Cube executive says UK austerity helped business, Financial Times, 5 February 2021.
  11. ↑ Western World Must Brace Itself for 9/11 of Cyber Attacks, Haaretz, 10 September 2013.
  12. ↑ World Summit on Counter-Terrorism programme, ICT, 2013.
  13. ↑ Adrian Allen Leppard Q.P.M., The Gazette.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Adrian Leppard’s business interests flourish as Black Cube’s picks up too, Intelligence Online, 14 December 2021.
  15. ↑ Adrian Leppard, New Statesman.
  16. ↑ Adrian Leppard, Gresham College.
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