A City firm being accused of jointly masterminding a conspiracy with its Russian businessman client has failed to have part of the proceedings struck out.

Judge Keyser KC, sitting in East-West United Bank SA v Gusinski & Ors, said the claims against Vladimir Gusinski, London-based GSC Solicitors LLP and its solicitor Barry Samuels should continue in their entirety.

The case arises from an arbitration award in the claimant’s favour which was never paid, and the claimant now alleges that the client and his legal representatives combined in an unlawful means conspiracy to prevent payment and that the lawyers had a proprietary interest in monies held in the client account.

The firm and solicitor, named as defendants in the claim, had applied for striking out orders on the proprietary interest point as there was no real prospect the claimant could establish the existence of such an interest. The unlawful means conspiracy was not subject to any application, although the particulars of that claim were said to rest on the existence of the proprietary interest.

The judge said that summary judgment of one issue would not dispose of the entirety of the case but only of one aspect of it. Leaving the case as it was would not materially affect its development and not add much to the length of the trial. He added that there was a risk that a substantive decision on the strike-out application would cause the case to get further ‘bogged down’ in preliminary stages and ‘deflect attention from the areas where it would best be directed’.

The claimant, a bank incorporated in Luxembourg, had offered a loan facility worth around $9.6m to one of the companies in Gusinski’s media group, and had commenced arbitration proceedings for payment under certain guarantees. GSC acted for the guarantors in those proceedings, with Samuels having day-to-day conduct of the matter.

The court heard that Gusinski caused the debtor company to be put into voluntary winding up and the moneys held by the firm were paid to the liquidators.

The bank alleges that Gusinski took the deliberate decision not to pay the arbitration award and that he worked with his long-standing lawyers to implement this strategy.

It is alleged in the particulars of claim that Samuels, an experienced commercial litigation, caused or allowed counsel to make misleading representations and that he and the firm were aware at all times that Gusinski intended to wind up the company if payments to the bank could not be avoided. The allegations are contested.