Costs defeat for Tchenguiz after ‘overblown’ documents battle

Robert Tchenguiz has lost an appeal against an order that he must pay indemnity costs on his failed bid to use 22 documents, disclosed during his settled claim against the Serious Fraud Office, in separate litigation in Guernsey. At the end of October, the Court of Appeal backed Eder J’s ruling refusing Tchenguiz permission for the 22 documents to be provided to counsel in Guernsey to be admitted in evidence in the ongoing case of Investec and another v Glenalla Properties Ltd and others. Today, Vos LJ gave a separate judgment, rejecting Tchenguiz’s appeal against the indemnity costs order made by Eder J in respect of the application. He said: “In my judgment, the judge had ample grounds for awarding indemnity costs in this case. In this case, the application was one that was extraneous to the extant proceedings, and required a huge amount of effort from the SFO in terms of liaison, checking and legal consideration. It was, as the SFO submitted, fully entitled to resist the application as it did successfully in the public interest, and these factors took the case outside the norm.” Adding that the judge had a wide discretion, he said: “I rather think from the way he expressed his judgment that, in the result, he considered the application overblown and inappropriate. If that was his view, I agree with it.” Tchenguiz was refused permission to appeal the indemnity costs ruling to the Supreme Court. In the earlier ruling on the substantive issue, Jackson LJ said that Eder J had correctly weighed the conflicting public interests which were in play and reached an appropriate decision to refuse the application. Tchenguiz and ors v The Director of the Serious Fraud Office Court of Appeal (Jackson, Sharp and Vos LJJ) 13 November 2014 Catherine Newman QC and John Robb (instructed by Stephenson Harwood LLP) for the claimants Pushpinder Saini QC and James Segan (instructed by The Treasury Solicitor) for the defendant Khawar Qureshi QC (instructed by Law Officers of The Crown, Guernsey) for the first intervening party