Wills & Trusts Law Reports | January/February 2017 #166The representor was the trustee (T) of a Jersey law governed discretionary trust (R) established in 1999 and valued at £402,000. The first respondent was the settlor (S). The class of beneficiaries included S’s wife and three children.
When R was established, S described himself as a civil engineer and informed T that the funds settled were proceeds of engineering consultancy contracts which he had worked on over the last 20 years. He did not disclose that he held public office in Mozambique.
In 2010, T discovered that a company had been convicted in England of paying bribe...
Wills & Trusts Law Reports | November 2015 #154The claimants, who were a group of companies engaged in the business of exploration and exploitation of gas reserves in Ukraine, brought claims against, inter alia, the fourth and fifth defendants (Vivcharyk defendants), respectively the former chief operating officer and the company controlled by him, in relation to alleged bribes or secret commissions which, directly or indirectly, they received in connection with commercial contracts for the supply or acquisition by the Cadogan Group of drilling equipment and services, two gas plants and a company. Proceedings were issued on ...
Wills & Trusts Law Reports | September 2014 #142The claimants engaged Cedar Capital Partners LLC (Cedar) to act as their agent in negotiating the purchase by FHR European Ventures LLP of the issued share capital of Monte Carlo Grand Hotel SAM (which owned a long leasehold interest in the Monte Carlo Grand Hotel) from Monte Carlo Grand Hotel Ltd (vendor). As such an agent, Cedar owed a fiduciary duty to the claimants, notwithstanding which it entered into an exclusive brokerage agreement with the vendor to provide for the payment of a €10m fee following completion – the vendor was paid €211.5m when the purchase was completed on 2...
Mark Pawlowski looks at a landmark ruling on how an agent who has taken advantage of a bribe or received a secret commission in breach of their fiduciary duties holds the amount received ‘So, what has been the subject of judicial and academic controversy for over two centuries has now, at last, been authoritatively put …
Continue reading "Secret Commissions: Unauthorised profits – an update"
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Lloyds Trust Co (CI) Ltd v Fragoso [2013] provides clarification for Jersey on how trustees hold assets derived from bribes in a trust. Alexa Saunders gives the lowdown ‘In Fragoso [2013], the Royal Court of Jersey was in a position to make its own decision as to whether to follow Reid [1993] or Sinclair [2011].’ …
Continue reading "Bribery And Constructive Trusts: Channelling dirty money"
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Wills & Trusts Law Reports | May 2013 #129The claimants (Investor Group) appealed from the decision of Simon J ([2011] EWHC 2308 (Ch)) that the Investor Group was entitled to a personal, but not a proprietary, remedy against Cedar Capital Partners LLC (Cedar). There was no appeal from Simon J’s decision that Cedar was liable to account in equity to the Investor Group.
Monte Carlo Grand Hotel in Monaco was owned by Monte Carlo Hotel SAM, a Monegasque company. The company’s share capital was owned by Monte Carlo Grand Hotel Ltd, a BVI company. In September 2004, the BVI company was interested in selling the hotel, either by...
Mark Pawlowski and James Brown consider a recent ruling on proprietary relief for a secret commission acquired by an agent for securing the purchase of a property The difficulty confronting future courts will be to identify which situations fall within the opportunity category identified in Sinclair and which fall outside it. It is trite law …
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In his concluding article Sukhninder Panesar examines the impact of Sinclair Investments Holdings SA v Versailles Trade Finance Ltd & ors ‘Despite the decision of the Privy Council in Reid, there was a considerable body of academic opinion that suggested that a claimant’s right to trace property in equity depended not only on the finding …
Continue reading "Equitable Tracing: A change in English law"
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In the first of two articles, Sukhninder Panesar discusses different approaches to equitable tracing in light of the Court of Appeal decision in Sinclair ‘Until the decision of the Privy Council in AG for Hong Kong v Reid [1994], English law had argued that the right to assert equitable ownership over unauthorised gains in the …
Continue reading "Equitable Tracing: Proprietary base needed?"
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