International firm Dechert’s former head of white-collar crime communicated with the ruler of one of the United Arab Emirates using a ‘self-destructing messaging platform’, the High Court heard today.

The ‘alarming revelation’ that Neil Gerrard, who retired at the end of last year, used the encrypted messaging app Confide in communications with Ras Al Khaimah’s ruler, the ruler’s adviser and the now-collapsed PR firm Bell Pottinger emerged in evidence filed last month, the court was told.

Jordanian lawyer Karam Al Sadeq is suing Dechert and Gerrard, as well as former partner David Hughes and current partner Caroline Black, for alleged responsibility for his arrest and abduction, and for allegedly orchestrating his unlawful detention in Ras Al Khaimah (RAK).

The defendants ‘vehemently deny the claims against them’ and do not admit that Al Sadeq has been unlawfully detained or denied legal representation, issues they say will need to be proved at trial, which is due to take place next year.

Al Sadeq has been imprisoned since 2014 in RAK, where he is said to have been ‘interrogated’ by Gerrard, Hughes and Black while being allegedly held in conditions amounting to inhuman and degrading treatment. The court heard today that Al Sadeq arrived for an interview with Black and a Dechert associate ‘blindfolded’, and that he was also sometimes held ‘in shackles’.

Al Sadeq is challenging the defendants’ claims to privilege on various grounds in respect of documents he says should be disclosed, including under the ‘crime fraud/iniquity exception’. His barrister Tamara Oppenheimer QC argued that the defendants are not permitted to claim privilege over documents ‘generated by or reporting on’ her client’s detention and the conditions in which he was held.

However, Philip Edey QC, for the defendants, described as 'novel and radical' the argument that any document ‘generated by or reporting on’ Al Sadeq’s detention, prison conditions and access to lawyers was not privileged.

Edey said in written submissions: ‘This is not a case where the defendants themselves have any discretion as to whether to claim privilege or not. Rather … in almost every respect the relevant privilege belongs to the defendants’ clients, not the defendants, and the defendants are therefore legally bound to uphold that privilege unless it is waived by their clients, which it has not been.’

He also stated that Al Sadeq ‘has been convicted of various offences involving embezzlement of public funds and other dishonest conduct … in four sets of criminal proceedings in RAK’.

Judgment in the hearing before Mr Justice Murray is expected to be reserved.

At a hearing last month, Gerrard was ordered to provide a witness statement giving details of the theft of a mobile phone he used at the time Al Sadeq was allegedly kidnapped in Dubai. In his statement, Gerrard said his Dechert-issued Blackberry was stolen after his car was broken into using a ‘key jammer’ device.

Al Sadeq’s solicitor Haralambos Tsiattalou of Stokoe Partnership Solicitors – which is bringing separate proceedings against Gerrard and Dechert for alleged involvement in hacking and data theft attacks – said in a witness statement that ‘there are various features of that explanation which Mr Al Sadeq finds incredible’.