GB - JSC Mezhdunarodniy Promyshlenniy Bank & Anor v Pugachev & Ors

Judgment

Mr Justice David Richards:

This is an application by the trustees of five discretionary trusts to discharge or vary an order for disclosure of information relating to the trusts made against one of the discretionary beneficiaries of the trusts as part of a worldwide freezing order against him.

On 11 July 2014, Henderson J made the freezing order against Sergei Pugachev together with an order for disclosure of assets. Pursuant to that order, as varied by a further order dated 18 July 2014, Mr Pugachev served a schedule of assets on 23 July 2014. The schedule included information that Mr Pugachev is one of a class of discretionary beneficiaries of five named New Zealand-based trusts.

On 25 July 2014, the return date of the order made without notice on 11 July 2014, the claimants applied for and obtained from Henderson J an order that Mr Pugachev disclose to the best of his ability:

the identity of the trustee(s), settlor(s), any protector(s) and the beneficiaries of the trusts; and

details of the trust assets on 14 July 2014, including their value and location.

He is also required to produce copies of the trust deeds in his control. This order (the trust disclosure order) contains the following liberty to apply:

“7. Anyone who is served with or notified of this order may apply to the court to vary or discharge this order (or so much of it as affects that person), but they must first inform the Applicants’ solicitors. If any evidence is to be relied upon in support of the application, the substance of it must be communicated in writing to the Applicants’ solicitors in advance.”

Only very short notice of the intention to apply for the trust disclosure order was given to Mr Pugachev. The claimants, of course, only learned of the existence of the discretionary trusts when they received Mr Pugachev’s schedule of assets on 23 July 2014. Their solicitors raised questions about the trusts in a letter to Mr Pugachev’s solicitors on 24 July 2014 to which his solicitors replied on the same day. Later in the day counsel for the claimants supplied to Mr Pugachev’s counsel their skeleton argument for the return date hearing on the following day. The intention to seek disclosure in relation to the trusts was referred to in the skeleton, without in any sense being fully argued. Counsel for Mr Pugachev did not have the opportunity of dealing with this in their skeleton argument, but the matter was argued before Henderson J on 25 July 2014.

The present appl