Pharaon v Bank of Credit and Commerce International SA ((in Liquidation)) (Price Waterhouse intervening)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 22 July 1998 |
| Date | 22 July 1998 |
| Court | Chancery Division |
Chancery Division
Before Mr Justice Rattee
Confidentiality - disclosure of documents to foreign litigants - public interest in exposing fraud
The public interest in making confidential documents relating to the alleged fraud of an international bank available to parties to private foreign litigation directed towards exposing such fraud outweighed the public interest in preserving the confidentiality in those documents.
The court could therefore permit a person who owed duties of confidentiality directly to the bank and vicariously to its customers to disclose such documents in order to enable him to comply with a subpoena issued in the course of those foreign proceedings, notwithstanding that to do so could entail not only breaches of confidentiality but also the terms of an interlocutory injunction granted by the domestic court to one of the customers of the bank restraining the disclosure of any documents relating to that customer's account and business, and involved the risk that the documents would become available to the world at large.
Disclosure should, however, be limited to what was reasonably necessary to achieve the purpose of the public interest in disclosure, and the court could accordingly order, inter alia, that the documents be suitably redacted.
Mr Justice Rattee so held in a judgment in the Chancery Division when granting the application of Price Waterhouse, intervener in the first action and plaintiff in the second, for leave to comply with a subpoena issued by First American Corporation and First American Bankshares Inc, plaintiffs in proceedings pending in the USA and second and third defendants to the second action, against Price Waterhouse requiring disclosure of documents relating to the customers and business of the
defendant, Bank of Credit and Commerce International, which had gone into liquidation.
In proceedings pending in the United States District Court, First American Corporation and First American Bankshares Incorporated alleged that BCCI fraudulently conspired to obtain control of First American by acquiring through nominees control of First American's holding company, Credit and Commerce American Holdings NV.
First American alleged that payments made by BCCI for the acquisition of CCAH shares...
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Table of cases
...O.J. No. 4329 (Div. Ct.) .....................................................................411 Table of Cases 481 Pharaon v. BCCI, [1998] 4 All E.R. 455 (Ch. D.) ................................................ 332 Phillip Collins Ltd. v. Davis, [2000] 3 All E.R. 808 (Ch. D.) .................