"A Limited was not to see anything which the bank had put before the court in support of the application nor the order itself, nor be informed of its existence, nor the claim form which the bank was to issue. Indeed the identity of the accounts to be frozen was itself to be kept secret. No application notice was to be issued."
"We have been instructed by (the bank) in connection with your accounts numbered . . . Our client is unhappy about certain aspects of the transactions which have taken place on the accounts. The Bank has therefore instructed us to investigate the matter and seek the advice of counsel before reporting. In the meantime, out client can allow no further transactions of any sort on the accounts. We apologise for any inconvenience or embarrassment that this may cause."
". . . the degree to which the applicant can be involved and the extent that it is possible for the issues to be resolved in open court, again will depend on the circumstances, but the general approach must be to comply with the ordinary principles to the extent that this is possible. If necessary the stratagems which were deployed in this case will have to be used. Where these sort of arrangements are necessary there should always be a transcript prepared and the institution should be required to provide a copy to the applicant when it is informed by the N.C.I.S. that there is no longer any requirement for secrecy." . . . (7) It will be for the N.C.I.S., or other investigating authority, to persuade the court that were disclosure to be made, there would be a real likelihood of the investigation being prejudiced. If the N.C.I.S. did not co-operate with the institution (and with any requirements of the court) in advancing such a case, the court could properly draw the inference that no such prejudice was likely to occur and could accordingly make the disclosure order sought without offending the principle in Rowell v Pratt [1938] A.C.101 and without putting the institution at risk of prosecution. (8) Especially when the applicant cannot be heard, it is important that the court recognises its responsibility to protect the applicant's interests. The court must have material on which to act if it is to deprive an applicant of his normal rights. The one criticism which can be made in this case of what occurred in the courts below is that they did not have that material. The court should bear in mind that a partial order may be better than no order. It should also consider the desirability of adjourning the issue in whole or in part since the expiry of a relatively short period of time may remove any risk of the investigation being prejudiced. The N.C.I.S. will no doubt wish to co-operate with the courts in achieving speedy progress as this will be the most productive way of avoiding prejudicing an investigation and protecting the interests of litigants."
"It seems to me imperative to grasp and keep constantly in mind that the second category of constructive trusteeship (which is the only category with which we are concerned) is nothing more than a formula for equitable relief. The court of equity says that the defendant shall be liable in equity, as though he were a trustee. He is made liable in equity as trustee by the imposition or construction of the court of equity. This is done because in accordance with equitable principles applied by the court of equity it is equitable that he should be held liable as though he were a trustee."
"The knowledge required to hold a stranger liable as constructive trustee in a dishonest and fraudulent design, is knowledge of circumstances which would indicate to an honest, reasonable man that such a design was being committed or would put him on inquiry, which the stranger failed to make, whether it was being committed."
"The analysis of the position of the accessory, such as the solicitor who carries through the transaction for [a trustee], does not lead to such a simple, clear-cut answer in every case. He is required to act honestly; but what is required of an honest person in these circumstances? An honest person knows there is doubt. What does honesty require him to do? The only answer to these questions lies in keeping in mind that honesty is an objective standard. The individual is expected to attain the standard which would be observed by an honest person placed in those circumstances. It is impossible to be more specific. Knox J captured the flavour of this, in a case with a commercial setting, when he referred to a person who is "guilty of commercially unacceptable conduct in the particular context involved:" see Cowan de Groot Properties Ltd v Eagle Trust Plc[1992] 4 All ER 700 , 761. Acting in reckless disregard of others' rights or possible rights can be a tell-tale sign of dishonesty."
"Some moneys are indeed held in the firm's client account but the bulk are held through complex chains, with all the trimmings often found in the more sophisticated tax avoidance schemes. The powers expressed to be conferred by the documents on one nominal party can only be exercised on the direction of another who in turn holds his power to give directions as bare trustee for a third and so on. The end result is that all assets are held to the order of Mr Stein on behalf of the defendant [Mr Miro]. The object of the exercise was unquestionably secrecy. The defendant did not want anyone to know who owned these various moneys and other assets, and he relied on the duty of confidentiality owed him by Mr Stein and the firm, and predecessor firms. There is no reason to doubt that when Mr Stein set up all these elaborate arrangements for the defendant he honestly believed that all the moneys and assets belonged to the defendant as a result of inheritance and success in business and that the defendant wanted to conceal his wealth from fear of political expropriation. There are, however, now grounds for suspecting that very much of this wealth may have been achieved by the defendant by fraud on [an American] insurance company."
" . . . if there has been fraud, the corollary must be that the schemes set up by Mr Stein were, although he did not know it, set up to conceal the traces of fraud, and in such circumstances there is no difficulty in piercing the corporate veil. The plaintiffs have fiduciary powers in respect of the underlying assets either directly or through their control of the scheme companies and trusts; they claim no interest for themselves in those assets or the scheme companies or trusts, save for the proper professional costs of the firm as solicitors acting for the defendant. In my judgment the court has jurisdiction under RSC, Ord.85, and should be prepared, to give directions in the dilemma in which the plaintiffs now find themselves, if there is indeed any basis on which such directions could serve a useful purpose."
"Executors who have an estate which is held to consist of nothing can have nothing out of which they could take their costs. However, in the parallel case of trustees the courts have tempered this icy logic. It has been held that where a settlement is set aside and so there is no property out of which the trustees can take their costs as of right, the court nevertheless has a discretion to allow the trustees to take their costs out of the fund before handing it over to the successful litigants. It has also been held that in exercising this discretion, trustees who have acted properly ought to be allowed their costs: see Merry v Pownall[1898] 1 Ch 306 , 310, 311. Furthermore, although the trustees may not be strictly trustees for the successful litigants (a point on which the views of Kekewich J in Merry v Pownall , at p. 312, and in Ideal Bedding Co Ltd v Holland[1907] 2 Ch 157 , 174, do not appear to be entirely in accord), they are sufficiently trustees of the fund for them not to be confined to party and party costs."