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The intelligence arm of Sir Lynton Crosby’s CT Group is to be named as the consultancy that provided an allegedly forged document used in a protracted legal battle involving sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
A spokesperson for CT Solutions & Private Advisory confirmed to the Financial Times that intelligence gathering in the case during which the document was obtained had been conducted by CTF Solutions, which later became CT Solutions & Private Advisory. The firm provides business intelligence to CT Group, which on its website touts its ability to provide “hard-to-access intelligence” to help clients resolve issues.
A London High Court judge last week ordered high-profile US litigation firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan to reveal the identity of the business intelligence consultancy from which it had obtained the contested document. Quillon, the law firm representing Deripaska, said they expected to receive the disclosure as early as Monday.
The document was deployed as a core piece of evidence in legal proceedings brought by former Russian deputy finance minister Vladimir Chernukhin against his former business partner Deripaska, in which Chernukhin challenged the amount of compensation awarded to him as part of an arbitration agreement.
The disclosure comes as CT Group — which was co-founded by former Tory election adviser Sir Lynton Crosby — was previously separately named in court as having provided allegedly forged documents in two other unrelated legal battles. In one of the cases the firm was also accused of unlawful information gathering.
The revelations will pile further pressure on the CT Group which has sought to expand its intelligence business, but also highlights the role of top London law firms which have used the allegedly forged materials as evidence in court proceedings.
The document at the centre of the most recent case is a Russian language report which included extensive information on property valuations. An arbitration tribunal in 2017 ordered Deripaska to pay Chernukhin $95mn to buy him out of a joint venture. However, Chernukhin’s side subsequently alleged that Deripaska’s side had suppressed the report, claiming that, if it had been put into evidence at the time of arbitration, Deripaska would have been ordered to pay Chernukhin $300mn more for his interest in the joint venture.
CT in September 2019 sent a hard copy of the report to Quinn Emanuel, which advised the Chernukhin parties, while his solicitors — Clifford Chance — used it to challenge the arbitration award in the spring of 2020. The legal challenge was later withdrawn.
In last week’s order the judge said that the evidence pointed to the document being a forgery “designed to cause very considerable loss to the Deripaska Parties”. He added that there was a “good arguable case that a crime or criminal contempt has been committed in this case by reason of the forgery”.
The judge found that Quinn Emanuel had “unwittingly facilitated” the wrongdoing in the case and the firm’s involvement in passing on the report for use in litigation “gave it the imprimatur of authenticity”. However, he stopped short of issuing the “serious finding” that Quinn Emanuel should have known that they were doing so.
Quinn Emanuel failed to make the “urgent inquiries” to satisfy themselves about the authenticity of the document which contained errors, such as an incorrect logo and dates as well as misspellings of the name of the purported author, according to the judgment.
The judge rejected Quinn Emanuel’s suggestion that the report had been “deliberately leaked” to the consultancy “in an attempt to sabotage” the Chernukhin parties.
Deripaska sought to identify the business consultancy with a view to unmasking the ultimate source, according to last week’s judgment, which noted that there was “insufficient evidence” to infer that this would cause risk of harm to the consultancy or its sources.
The Financial Times has previously reported that CT Group was accused of supplying forged banking transaction records in two unrelated legal battles. CT Group claimed the banking records had been gathered from a “specialised database that aggregates banking data for statistical purposes [and] law enforcement purposes for the European Central Bank.” The ECB has said no such database exists.
In both these cases top city law firm Mishcon de Reya had hired CT Group and used the documents in court.
A spokesman for CT Solutions & Private Advisory said that through “hundreds of cases” the “quality, authenticity and procurement” of the intelligence that the firm had provided had never been questioned.
He added that the firm “relied on sources and whistleblowers in good faith” and that the “companies and their personnel acted lawfully and appropriately and clearly instructed . . . and believed sources and whistleblowers to do likewise.”
The spokesman said that, in light of the court challenges, the firm had undertaken internal steps earlier this year “relevant to how law firms employ the litigation support that it provides”.
Quinn Emanuel declined to comment. Clifford Chance, which no longer represents Chernukhin, declined to comment.
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