Tatiana Akhmedova v Farkhad Teimur Ogly Akhmedov
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mrs Justice Knowles |
| Judgment Date | 14 August 2020 |
| Neutral Citation | [2020] EWHC 2235 (Fam) |
| Court | Family Division |
| Docket Number | Case No: FD13D05340 |
| Date | 14 August 2020 |
[2020] EWHC 2235 (Fam)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
FAMILY DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Mrs Justice Knowles
Case No: FD13D05340
and
James Willan and Mark Belshaw (instructed by PCB Litigation) for the Applicant
Graham Brodie QC and Richard Eschwege (instructed by BCL Solicitors) for the Eighth and Ninth Respondents and First to Fifth Committal Respondents
Charles Howard QC (instructed by Hughes Fowler Carruthers) for the Tenth Respondent
Hearing dates: 15–18 June, 29–30 June, and 4 August 2020
Approved Judgment
I direct that pursuant to CPR PD 39A para 6.1 no official shorthand note shall be taken of this Judgment and that copies of this version as handed down may be treated as authentic.
This judgment was delivered following a remote hearing conducted on a video conferencing platform and attended by the press. The judge has given leave for this version of the judgment to be published.
There are three applications before the court for determination:
a) the Applicant Wife's [“the Wife”] application dated 15 November 2019 for disclosure from the Eighth and Ninth Respondents, Counselor and Sobaldo, in support of her claims under s.423 of the Insolvency Act 1986 [“the IA”] and s.37 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 [“the MCA”];
b) an application dated 28 November 2019 by the first five Committal Respondents (Qubo 1, Straight, Counselor, WalPart and Sobaldo) to be released from their obligations under the orders made by this court in December 2016, March 2018, and August 2019. In effect, they ask the court to set aside or vary those orders in their favour; and
c) an application dated 26 February 2020 by the Eighth and Ninth Respondents, Counselor and Sobaldo, for a case management stay of the proceedings pending the outcome of proceedings in Liechtenstein.
The Wife is Tatiana Akhmedova and her former Husband, Farkhad Akhmedov, [“the Husband”] is the First Respondent. He appears to play no visible role in the ongoing litigation by the Wife to recover monies which this court ordered he should pay her in December 2016. The Tenth Respondent is their son, Temur Akhmedov [“Temur”]. He has played no active role in this hearing. I will explain who the other various Respondents are shortly.
I am grateful to counsel who appeared before me during the course of the hearing which, once more, took place remotely in accordance with the President's Protocol for Remote Hearings in the Family Court and in the Family Division of the High Court dated 23 March 2020. Their written and oral submissions were of great assistance to me.
Background
It is necessary to set out the background in some detail. Some of the details will be very familiar from judgments given in 2016 and 2018 by Haddon-Cave J (as he then was) and from judgments given latterly by me.
The Parties
The present proceedings have their origins in matrimonial litigation between the Wife and the Husband. On 15 December 2016, Haddon-Cave J ordered the Husband to pay the Wife £453,576,512 by way of financial remedies consequent upon their divorce. The Husband has not voluntarily paid a penny of that award and, to date, enforcement has realised only about £5 million. The litigation between the Wife and the Husband (alongside the other Respondents) is now concerned with the enforcement of the debt owed to the Wife by the Husband. Temur is alleged by the Wife to have played a key role in assisting the Husband to evade payment.
The Husband's main identified assets are (i) a superyacht known as the M/Y Luna (“the Yacht”), (ii) modern art valued in January 2016 at US$145.2 million (“the Artwork”), and (iii) cash and securities worth around US$650 million which were previously held at UBS in Switzerland (“the Monetary Assets”). Collectively, these are the “Identified Assets”.
Qubo 1 and Straight are establishments (Anstalten) formed under Liechtenstein law. Qubo 1 owns the Artwork and Straight owns the Yacht. WalPart is the sole director of Qubo 1 and Counselor is the sole director of Straight. The founder's rights to Qubo 1 and Straight are held by the Simul Trust and the Navy Blue Trust respectively, which are Liechtenstein registered trusts. Counselor is the trustee of those trusts. The named beneficiaries of those trusts are the descendants of the Husband's late mother. The Navy Blue Trust has resolved to grant the use of the Yacht to the Husband and his family. It appears that the protector of the trusts is a Liechtenstein foundation named Neue Artemis Stiftung, the majority of whose board is made up of the Husband and his brothers.
WalPart and Counselor are licensed trust companies in Liechtenstein, which work in close cooperation with (and largely share the same principals as) the Liechtenstein law firm of Schurti Partners (formerly Walch & Schurti). WalPart and Counselor establish and manage trust and corporate structures, advertising themselves as specialists in asset protection. The directors of WalPart and Counselor are/were Dr Schurti, Dr Blasy, Mr Hanselmann, Dr Ernst Walch and Dr Barbara Walch (but Dr Ernst Walch and Dr Barbara Walch, ceased to be directors on 3 July and 26 June respectively). All but Mr Hanselmann are/were partners of Walch & Schurti. The individuals named are also Respondents to the Wife's committal applications.
Sobaldo is another WalPart-related entity which provides trust services. Its registered address is “ c/o WalPart Trust Registered” and its directors are Dr Schurti, Dr Ernst Walch and Mr Hanselmann. Both Counselor and Sobaldo conduct their business exclusively in Liechtenstein.
There are several further Liechtenstein trusts (including the Genus Trust, Arbaj Trust, Longlaster Trust, Ladybird Trust and Carnation Trust) which were established to receive and, the Wife alleges, launder the monetary assets. Counselor is the trustee of all those trusts, save for the Longlaster Trust whose trustee is Sobaldo.
It is important to note that, in December 2016, Haddon-Cave J found that Qubo 1 and Qubo 2 were no more than ciphers and the alter ego of the Husband. That finding has not been appealed and therefore stands. Further, in March 2018, Haddon-Cave J found that Avenger and Straight were mere ciphers of the Husband, being at the very least bare trustees for him. Likewise, that finding has not been appealed and therefore stands. The findings made on both occasions were incorporated into this court's orders. Those findings were premised on the basis that the Husband's instructions had caused the transfer of the relevant Identified Assets to Liechtenstein entities in an attempt to defeat the Wife's entitlement in the matrimonial litigation by making it more difficult to enforce the debt in her favour against those entities.
Previous judgments of this court have set out the circumstances in which the Identified Assets came to be held in Liechtenstein structures. I summarise what occurred as follows.
The Artwork was transferred from Cotor Investment SA (the Husband's nominee) to Qubo 1 in around mid-November 2016, that is shortly before the trial of the Wife's claim for ancillary relief in December 2016. The Artwork was also physically moved from a freeport in Switzerland to the “ Treasure House”, a secure storage facility in Liechtenstein. Haddon-Cave J concluded that the transfer “… was simply the latest part of H's attempts to avoid his liabilities by purporting to transfer his assets to new entities in a new jurisdiction and thereby making enforcement more difficult”.
The Yacht was transferred to Qubo 2 on the second day of trial, as part of what Haddon-Cave J described as “ a rapid series of further surreptitious steps to attempt to place his [the Husband's] yacht further beyond the reach of enforcement”. Neither the Wife nor the court were aware of the transfer at that time. After the Wife obtained a money judgment against Qubo 2 and had commenced enforcement proceedings in Liechtenstein on 28 December 2016, Qubo 2 transferred the Yacht to Straight to put it even further beyond the Wife's reach. Haddon-Cave J concluded that this was “ part of H's continuing campaign to defeat W by concealing his assets in a web of offshore companies”. This transfer was implemented by WalPart and Counselor (as directors of Qubo 2 and Straight) following a meeting with the Husband in Miami in February 2017. Dr Schurti admitted to the court in the Marshall Islands concerned with proceedings relating to the Yacht that he acted, in part, “ to shield the Yacht and The Simul Trust … from further efforts to enforce the judgment of the English court …”.
The Monetary Assets were held by Cotor (as nominee for the Husband) at UBS in Switzerland, before being transferred to LGT Bank in Liechtenstein on or about 5 December 2016, namely, during the hearing before Haddon-Cave J. It now appears, according to documents available to the Wife from a criminal investigation presently being conducted by the Liechtenstein State Prosecutor, that the Monetary Assets were initially...
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