Our Team

Notable Representations

Thomas v NBT [2025] EWHC 75

Neil successfully acted for his clients in securing the release of dividends that were due to them in UK bankruptcies, in one of the first cases to consider the scope of the Court of Appeal’s decision in Mints (see below).

NBT v Mints [2023] EWCA Civ 1132

Neil acted for NBT (a Russian bank) in relation to an alleged US$800 million fraud that involved the replacement of secured, short-term loans, with unsecured and unrated bonds. The Mints family – which was subject to wide ranging freezing orders - sought to have the proceedings stayed (and the freezing orders set aside) on the basis that one of the claimants was subject to UK asset freeze sanctions and that litigating the dispute was therefore prohibited under UK sanctions. At first instance, and on appeal, those applications were dismissed. This is one of the leading cases on the scope of UK sanctions.

Nori Holding v Bank Otkritie [2021]

Neil acted for the defendants in an LCIA arbitration who were the victims of a US$550 million fraud. The claimants had sought declarations as to the legitimacy of the impugned transactions, and the defendants brought counterclaims in fraud. After a 5-week remote trial in 2020, the LCIA tribunal dismissed the claims and found that Neil’s clients had been defrauded. Following a quantum hearing in 2023, damages of more than US$550 million were awarded.

London Partners Capital Management LLP v Utkan and others [2021] EWHC 1647

Neil acted for defendants in relation to an alleged fraud on an Albanian bank. When Neil was instructed, the defendants were subject to freezing orders and search orders and were struggling to develop any strategy to combat the barrage of orders made against them. Neil quickly navigated a strategic path that resulted in a settlement of the claims and the dismissal of the freezing and search orders, which was a significant outcome for his clients.

NBT v Yurov [2020] EWHC 100

Neil acted for the claimant against the three former owners of the bank, who had fled Russia after the bank collapsed with a US$1 billion black hole in its balance sheet. The defendants initially tried to set aside freezing orders that had been made against them, but failed in that application in 2016, and this is now a leading case on the requirements for setting aside freezing orders. After a 12-week trial, Mr Justice Bryan found that the defendants had participated in a massive and prolonged fraud of the bank, by causing a series of loans to be issued to companies they controlled for the purpose of concealing the hole in the bank’s balance sheet. The defendants had sought to argue that this was good management but their defences were rejected by the court with one judge commenting that the scheme was just a “Ponzi scheme with a fancy name.”

Otkritie Capital v Threadneedle Aset Management [2017] EWCA Civ 274

Neil successfully acted for claimants in pursuing a claim in fraud against a company whose employee had in separate proceedings been found to have been a co-conspirator in a fraud. The defendant argued that the claim was an abuse of process as it should have been joined to the original proceedings. The Court of Appeal dismissed the application saying that the claim could proceed to trial and there had not been any abuse. The claim settled promptly after that favourable decision.

OIML v Georgy Urumov [2014] EWHC 191

Neil successfully acted for the claimants in a case that the trial judge described as “extraordinary…and include alleged dishonesty, deceit, conspiracy, fraud, misrepresentation, bribery, forgery, blackmail, money-laundering, false impersonation, intimidation, entrapment, subterfuge, kidnap and even murder. Anyone sitting in court listening to the evidence and the parties' respective submissions might have been forgiven for supposing that they were in the Old Bailey rather than in the Commercial Court sitting in the Rolls Building.” The proceedings involved multiple applications to Court in an attempt to trace and freeze stole assets in multiple jurisdictions including Switzerland, Latvia, Israel, Russia and Hong Kong. There were also parallel criminal proceedings and in 2017, two of the fraudsters were jailed in the UK.