Credit Suisse Trust v Intesa San Paulo Spa
2014
CHANCERY DIVISION
United Kingdom
CORAM
- HIS HONOUR JUDGE WAKSMAN
Areas of Law
- Civil Procedure
- Property and Real Estate Law
- Banking and Finance Law
2014
CHANCERY DIVISION
United Kingdom
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
Credit Suisse Trust Ltd sought Norwich Pharmacal relief against BMP and Intesa banks to trace funds illicitly siphoned by Mr. Nemni. The Guernsey judgment against Nemni led to freezing his assets. English courts found a realistic prospect that the banks' London branches might provide relevant information despite Italian banking secrecy laws.
Judgment
HHJ WAKSMAN QC :
I have before me brought by way of Part 8 proceedings two applications for Norwich Pharmacal relief in two separate but connected actions. The first is brought by the Claimant (who is common to both actions), Credit Suisse Trust Ltd, against an Italian bank called Banca Monte Dei Pasche Di Siena SPA (“BMP”) and a second bank called Intesa San Paulo SPA (“Intesa”).
The applications arise in this way. The Trust of which Credit Suisse is a permanent trustee some years ago employed the services of a Mr Nemni as its fiduciary agent. It discovered that in clear breach of his fiduciary duties Mr Nemni had been arranging the affairs and the monies of the Trust in such a way as to siphon off substantial sums for his own benefit. Proceedings were brought against him in Guernsey and that resulted in a judgment against him for breach of fiduciary duty and, as the judgments make clear, that was a dishonest breach of fiduciary duty.
Just to give a flavour of the activities undertaken by Mr Nemni in breach of that duty – and here I am reading from the affidavits in support of the applications to be found in the BMP bundle at divider 5 – he caused the Trust to pay nearly one million Euros for accountancy work by Mr Badaracho which had, in fact, only cost 540,000 Euros. Mr Nemni he took for himself the balance of 458,000 Euros, as well as causing a further 112,000 Euros worth of expenditure after he had been told that that such work should stop. And there are a variety of other similar defalcations cited in the judgment of the Guernsey court. The upshot was that by that judgment Mr Nemni was ordered to pay a total sum of 3,288,518.76 Euros, as can be seen in the order which is contained in divider 7.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, a worldwide freezing order was then granted by the Guernsey court to attempt to assist in the enforcement of that and that froze his assets worldwide in the total sum of 4.5 million Euros. That of course was in general terms, but it included in particular certain properties and assets in Italy among other places.
There was also a costs liability which was ascertained in the amount of £468,000.
In seeking to enforce that judgment steps were taken to discover the identity and location of any relevant bank accounts and so, for example, an application was made which was heard by Henderson J on 12 June 2013 for Norwich Pharmacal relief along the same lines as that sought here, but in relation to Amex; it being known that Amex