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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales High Court (Chancery Division) Decisions >> Ecology Support Services Ltd v Hellard & Anor (As Joint Liquidators of Saff One LLP) [2017] EWHC 160 (Ch) (30 January 2017) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2017/160.html Cite as: [2017] EWHC 160 (Ch) |
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CHANCERY DIVISION
COMPANIES COURT
IN THE MATTER OF THE INSOLVENCY ACT 1986
Fetter Lane, London, EC4A 1NL |
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B e f o r e :
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ECOLOGY SUPPORT SERVICES LIMITED |
Applicant |
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- and - |
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(1) KEVIN HELLARD (2)MICHAEL LEEDS (As Joint Liquidators of SAFF ONE LLP) |
Respondents |
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Mr. Daniel Lewis (instructed by Rosenblatt Solicitors) for the Respondents
Hearing dates: 15 & 16 December 2016
& by further written submissions in January 2017
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Crown Copyright ©
Mr Registrar Briggs:
Introduction
Background to the debt
"…..as part of the contract of agency between [CRD] and [LLP] we hereby request you to transfer the following amount which shall be attributable to [LLP] to our bank account held with Kensington Bank Limited….".
"In my experience of circular loans from tax structures, a lender will either want to be familiar with each of the parties to the circle, or if there is a third party (CRD in this case) they will want it to be in a jurisdiction where it is comfortable conducting due diligence in. They will also insist on it opening a bank account at a bank of their choosing (in this case CRD's account at Kensington Bank). This would explain why CRD is also a Mauritius company."
Demand for payment, liquidation and rejection of proof of debt
"As you have previously been advised, these loans were transferred to [ESS]. Your failure to continue your environmental trade is an Event of Default under clauses 13.1(k) of the Loan Agreement. In consequence of these and other Events of Default and Potential Events of Default, these loans are immediately repayable." (sic)
"This letter is a formal request to the Joint Liquidators to requisition a meeting of creditors for the purpose of replacing the current Joint Liquidators with Michael Solomons and Richard Keley of BM Advisory. The Joint Liquidators are encouraged to give an early indication as to whether they will (i) requisition the requested meeting and (ii) admit the claim of ESS for voting purposes in the sum of £1,362,694."
"There appear to be some common characteristics shared by [AIK], [ESS] and [CRD]. For instance AIK, ESS and CRD are registered off shore in Mauritius, and that ESS and CRD share the same registered agent, [Fideco]. We also note that AIK and CRD have accounts in the same offshore bank, Kensington Bank of the Commonwealth of Dominica. It appears from the redacted bank statements that the transfer was made from AIK to a bank account in the CRD at the same bank. We also note that Kensington Bank has virtually no presence on the internet and is not a bank of which we are familiar. You will appreciate that our key concern with the alleged transfer of £1,125,000 is whether it is circular in nature, in that the funds apparently transferred to CRD have later transferred back to AIK or other entities with associated beneficiaries, and therefore whether any loss has actually been suffered. For these reasons, we require further information before we consider whether we are in a position to accept or reject your claim."
"From the information provided to us, your client has failed to convince us otherwise that this is anything other than a scheme designed to defraud investors and it appears that there was no possibility of it ever making the investments that had been marketed to investors."
The arguments
Legal analysis
"(1) (a) any debt or liability to which the company is subject at the date on which it goes into liquidation; and
(b) any debt or liability to which the company may become subject after that date by reason of any obligation incurred before that date."
"In this case there was a loan but there was not, in any meaningful sense, an incurring of expenditure of the borrowed money in the acquisition of software rights. It went into a loop in order to enable the LLPs to indulge in a tax avoidance scheme."
"One of the lessons of the Barclays Mercantile Business Finance case is that it is not enough for HMRC, in attacking a scheme of this sort, to point to the money going round in a circle. Closer analysis is required. In Barclays the whole £91m was borrowed by Barclays Finance from Barclays Bank on fully commercial terms (though they were companies in the same group) and Barclays Finance's acquisition of the pipeline was on fully commercial terms. BGE had the whole £91m at its disposal, and though it was disposed of at once under further pre-arranged transactions, those transactions were entirely for the benefit of BGE."
'Income tax is mitigated by a taxpayer who reduces his income or incurs expenditure in circumstances which reduce his assessable income or entitle him to reduction in his tax liability … Income tax is avoided … when the taxpayer reduces his liability to tax without involving him in the loss or expenditure which entitles him to that reduction.'
"To make a defendant personally liable to account to the beneficiaries for misdirected trust property on the ground that he has behaved unconscionably by receiving the property with knowledge of the breach of trust, the following things must all be established:
(1) Misapplication of property held on trust or subject to some other fiduciary duty;
(2) Receipt of the property or its traceable proceeds by the defendant;
(3) Beneficial receipt by the defendant;
(4) A causal link between the defendant's beneficial receipt and the breach of duty; and
(5) Knowledge by the defendant that the property has been transferred in a breach of trust or fiduciary duty, either at the time of receipt or at some later time prior to his dealing with the property for his own benefit."
"What then, in the context of knowing receipt, is the purpose to be served by a categorisation of knowledge? It can only be to enable the court to determine whether, in the words of Buckley LJ in Belmont Finance Corpn Ltd v Williams Furniture Ltd (No 2) [1980] 1 All ER 393 , 405, the recipient can "conscientiously retain [the] funds against the company" or, in the words of Sir Robert Megarry V-C in In re Montagu's Settlement Trusts [1987] Ch 264 , 273, "[the recipient's] conscience is sufficiently affected for it to be right to bind him by the obligations of a constructive trustee". But, if that is the purpose, there is no need for categorisation. All that is necessary is that the recipient's state of knowledge should be such as to make it unconscionable for him to retain the benefit of the receipt. For these reasons I have come to the view that, just as there is now a single test of dishonesty for knowing assistance, so ought there to be a single test of knowledge for knowing receipt. The recipient's state of knowledge must be such as to make it unconscionable for him to retain the benefit of the receipt. A test in that form, though it cannot, any more than any other, avoid difficulties of application, ought to avoid those of definition and allocation to which the previous categorisations have led. Moreover, it should better enable the courts to give common sense decisions in the commercial context in which claims in knowing receipt are now frequently made, paying equal regard to the wisdom of Lindley LJ on the one hand and of Richardson J on the other".
Conclusion