“The court may at any time order a party to- (a) clarify any matter which is in dispute in the proceedings; or (b) give additional information in relation to any such matter, whether or not the matter is contained or referred to in a statement of case.” whether or not the matter is contained or referred to in a statement of case.”
“The arrangement was (and remains) that I could draw on the loan receivable when required.”
“By 4pm on [date to be inserted], the Family Defendants shall disclose and provide the Claimants with copies of all documents (in native format in a manner which preserves metadata) representing or evidencing direct or indirect communications between any of the Family Defendants (on the one hand) and Mr Ahli (on the other) in connection with any of the Ahli Receivables (as defined in the sixth witness statement of Colin Diss) or the loan originally made to Eco Diamonds FZE on30 June 2016 .”
“In the hope that a line can now be drawn under this matter, and without prejudice to the contention that your clients are not entitled to this information, we have been further instructed to confirm that since our second letter dated4 November 2023 the First Defendant has obtained third party funding in respect of the Indian proceedings. As you will appreciate, the terms of the third-party litigation funding arrangement are confidential and commercially sensitive, and our client is under no obligation to disclose them to you. Having reviewed the terms of the third-party funding agreement, we consider that there is no basis on which it could be suggested that the arrangementfalls within the scope of the notification provisions of the WFO; our clients have no control over monies advanced for the purposes of the Indian proceedings and there is no basis on which it could be said that such monies are our clients' “assets” as defined in paragraph 7 of the WFO.”
“… I confirm that [GL] have reviewed this, and have written to the Claimants to confirm that …: (i) the terms are confidential and commercially sensitive; and(ii) under the terms of the funding agreement, [Jatin] does not have any control over the monies advanced for the purposes of funding the Indian proceedings and therefore the payments are not [the Family Defendants] “assets” requiring notification under the WFO.”
“A disclosure order invades a defendant’s privacy. Before judgment, a defendant is normally entitled to keep his financial affairs confidential. But this confidentiality may be overridden. Disclosure may be required if the information is relevant to the resolution of the issues in the case, or if it is needed to make Mareva relief effective. Confidentiality may have to give way to doing justice between the parties or to the advancement of the public interest.”
“The importance of disclosure in rendering freezing orders effective has often been emphasised. … Unless proper disclosure is given, it is impossible to police the freezing order, and if it cannot be policed, then fraudulent defendants are able to ignore the order and to breach it with impunity. Disclosure is, in almost all cases, essential in order to render effective a worldwide freezing order. The importance of disclosure is reinforced where a claimant has a proprietary claim and is seeking to recover specific sums or their traceable proceeds. Again, an order freezing such sums will be ineffective if the claimant cannot know what has happened to them. It is essential to the protection of the claimant's rights to pursue its proprietary claim that full disclosure is given of what has happened to the money so that the claimant may take steps to freeze the proceeds and then to establish its right to recover those traceable proceeds. That is all part of the substantive claim which has to be adjudicated on in the proceedings.”
"As it seems to me, the court must be persuaded that there is practical utility in requiring such evidence and that it is necessary to enable the freezing order properly to be policed. It will be vigilant to prevent the abuse of seeking further evidence for some other purpose: such as to expose further inconsistencies, unduly pressurise a defendant who has already been cross-examined, yield ammunition for an application for contempt, or provide further material which might be of assistance, even if not actually deployed, in the main (foreign) proceedings." 30. At [23] of Al Rajaan (above), Jacobs J noted a debate between the parties as to whether the test was that further disclosure was "necessary", as in Hildyard J's formulation in Pugachev (above) or "just and convenient", as in Christopher Clarke J's formulation in Ablyazov (above). In reality I do not think there is a material difference between requiring the claimant (to quote the full sentence from Hildyard J's judgment) to establish a "practical utility" in requiring the evidence "necessary" to police an injunction, and a requirement that it is just and convenient to order the further evidence to ensure that the injunction is effective. 31. As Hildyard J noted in the paragraph from Pugachev set out above, the court will not order further evidence if the purpose of obtaining it is to establish past breaches of the order so as to found an application for contempt: see Bhimji v Chatwan (No.2)[1992] 1 WLR 1158 , per Knox J at 1166 to 1169, citing Bekhor v Bilton[1981] QB 923 . In that case, Stephenson LJ, at p.955 said: "
“There is a fine line between a genuine scepticism about the veracity of asset disclosure and a refusal to accept the truth of any statements made by a mistrusted defendant. This case has epitomised that line. The claimants in this case have seemingly refused to accept the truth of anything the defendants have said, querying everything and demanding documents to support every point.”
“I do not think, however, that when set against the factors identified above, this disentitles the applicants from obtaining the orders sought in order effectively to police the WFO and the proprietary injunction of16 January 2020 .”