International firm Dechert and its former co-head of white-collar crime Neil Gerrard are facing another High Court claim, this time from a Georgian businessman who is also suing international firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman.

Gela Mikadze – a politician and former head of Ras Al Khaimah Investment Authority’s operations in Georgia – filed a claim last week against Dechert, Gerrard and David Hughes, formerly a partner at Dechert and later litigation firm Stewarts. The case is also being brought against Pillsbury and two of its partners, Georgian practice MG Law and seven other individuals, according to court records.

No details of the claim are currently publicly available, but Mikadze briefly featured in a separate claim involving aviation tycoon Farhad Azima, who alleges his emails were hacked and published online ahead of the trial of a multi-million pound fraud claim brought against him by RAKIA.

The High Court heard allegations at that trial that Dechert and Pillsbury lawyers attempted to ‘influence the judicial process’ by ‘trying to place certain Ras Al Khaimah cases in front of certain members of the Georgian judiciary’. But Andrew Lenon QC, sitting as a High Court judge, found that this was a simply a proposal by a lawyer at Pillsbury to ‘speed up the disposal of two cases by persuading a judge to hear them before his retirement’.

NEIL-GERRARD

The claim was filed last week against Dechert, Gerrard (pictured) and David Hughes

It was also alleged that, while he was involved in litigation with RAKIA Georgia, Mikadze’s confidential documents were sent to RAKIA’s then-lawyers Dechert ‘marked for the attention of Mr Gerrard’. However, Lenon said: ‘I am not in any position to draw any conclusions as to whether documents confidential to Mr Mikadze were obtained illicitly. There is, in any event, no suggestion that the documents were obtained by email hacking.’

Azima was ultimately found to have engaged in ‘seriously fraudulent conduct’ against RAKIA and his counterclaim, alleging involvement by RAKIA, Gerrard and Dechert in the hacking and publication of his emails, was dismissed.

His application for permission to appeal against the fraud judgment was dismissed and later rejected by the Supreme Court, but his counterclaim was revived by the Court of Appeal, which found there were grounds to consider whether RAKIA’s defence was ‘dishonestly advanced’.

Azima – whose counterclaim now names Gerrard and Dechert as defendants – is also seeking permission to bring an additional counterclaim against RAKIA to set aside the High Court’s judgment as having been ‘procured by fraud’.

Gerrard and Dechert ‘strenuously’ deny any part in the hacking or dissemination of Azima’s data and RAKIA said when it abandoned its defence to Azima’s original counterclaim that it ‘did not authorise or procure any hacking of Mr Azima’s data and does not know who carried out this hacking’.

A spokesperson for Dechert told the Gazette that the firm has not yet seen the details of Mikadze’s claim, which was filed on Friday, and was therefore unable to comment. A representatives for Gerrard declined to comment, while representatives for Pillsbury and MG Law did not immediately respond to a request for comment.