International firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan UK LLP has been ordered to identify the ‘middleman’ presumed to know the identify of the alleged forger of a document ‘designed to deceive the court and arbitral tribunal’ in a £229m (US$300m) case.
Russian oligarch Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska and his company Filatona Trading Limited sought a court order that the firm disclose the identify of ‘an apparently well-known London based business intelligence consultancy which obtained a Russian language report from an alleged wrongdoer said by the Deripaska parties to be a forgery’.
The report was used against the Deripaska parties by fellow oligarch Vladimir Chernukhin and his company Navigator Equities Ltd in arbitration proceedings which concerned the ‘true ultimate beneficial owner’ of Navop Holding Limited, a holding company of a Russian textiles manufacturer called OJSC Trekhgornaya Manufaktura, and a joint venture.
Quinn Emanuel said it did not know the identity of the ‘ultimate source’ of the report and that the information sought was covered by litigation privilege which has not been waived.
Mr Justice Calver, in Filatona Trading Limited & Anor v Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, said the threshold conditions for Norwich Pharmacal relief, a disclosure order which can order the disclosure of information from a party ‘mixed up’ in wrongdoing, had been satisfied.
He said it was ‘strongly arguable’ that the report was a forgery. He added: ‘There is also a good arguable case that a crime or criminal contempt has been committed in this case by reason of the forgery; and that the Deripaska parties wish to seek relief not via a civil claim but by way of disciplinary redress against the wrongdoer in so far as they are a “mole” within the Deripaska parties’ organisation.’
He found that Quinn Emanuel had ‘become involved in the wrongdoing in this case and…unwittingly facilitated it’. The judge added: ‘The arguable wrongdoing was the utilisation of the report to seek to pervert the course of justice and QE became unwittingly involved in that wrongdoing.
‘QE were not a mere onlooker or witness, advising on a document. They were actively involved in the (unwitting) verification and deployment of that document in legal proceedings, which it is strongly arguable was a forgery. They were accordingly mixed up in the alleged wrongdoing and enabled the purpose of that wrongdoing to be furthered.’
The judgment said there was a ‘realistic prospect’ the information sought from Quinn Emanuel would assist in identifying the wrongdoer. It added that the identity of the consultancy and those who procured the report was not ‘privileged information at all’.
Granting the claim, the judge said: ‘The Deripaska parties wish to discover the identity of the persons who, it is strongly arguable, forged a document designed to deceive this court and an arbitral tribunal, and to defraud them of some US$300m. I consider that the granting of the relief sought in this case is a necessary and proportionate response to this serious wrongdoing in all the circumstances.
‘I consider that the Deripaska parties are genuinely seeking lawful redress of a serious wrong for which they cannot otherwise obtain redress.’
Thomas Grant KC and James Sheehan KC, instructed by Quillon Law LLP, appeared for Filatona Trading Limited and Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska. Antony White KC, instructed by Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan UK LLP, represented the firm.
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