In a judgment handed down by Mr Justice Simon on 13 February 2014, the Court granted summary judgment to the claimant, a substantial Russian bank, permitting it to enforce in this jurisdiction the principal elements of 16 judgments that it obtained in the Russian Courts against the defendant, Mr Skurikhin, pursuant to commercial guarantees governed by Russian law.
Mr Skurikhin’s primary defence to these claims was that he should be permitted to raise allegations, which he did not raise before the Russian courts, as defences in this jurisdiction to the effect that the claimant bank was engaged in a deliberate and dishonest ‘systema raid’ on the assets of his companies; that the claimant had deliberately misled the Russian courts by failing to disclose its dishonest and unlawful scheme and that the defendant could not have obtained a fair trial of these issues before the Russian courts. The defendant contended that his defences engaged the fraud, natural justice and public policy exceptions to the conflict of laws rule that a defendant may not raise as a defence to a claim for enforcement of a foreign judgment defences that could have been but were not raised and argued before the original courts.
Stephen Auld QC appeared for the claimant, leading Tim Penny and instructed by PCB Litigation LLP.
A copy of the Judgment is available here.