ENRC lawyer dragged into £15m scandal
THE top City lawyer at the heart of the ENRC fraud case has also been named in court papers involving an alleged £15m state-sponsored hack.
Neil Gerrard, a partner at the City firm Dechert, has been named as a ‘key participant’ in events which led to one of the emirates in UAE allegedly stealing and publishing a businessman’s documents.
Dechert were acting for a UAE sovereign investment fund and, in court papers filed in the US, Gerrard is accused of threatening to make businessman Farhad Azima ‘collateral damage’ as a heated investment deal fell apart.
Azima claims in the document seen by the Mail that shortly after Gerrard made the threat on behalf of emirate state Ras Al-Khaimah (RAK), he suffered the theft and online publication of his documents and emails.
Aviation tycoon Azima was working for the sovereign wealth fund of RAK when a commercial ‘ war’ erupted within the company after a hotel deal fell apart.
The state investment authority has accused Azima of bribery and corruption after the hotel deal collapsed in 2016 – claims he denies.
It was during negotiations on behalf of RAK that Gerrard ‘ominously’ threatened Azima, the court complaint alleged.
Gerrard’s alleged role has been referred to in a court case against RAK, filed in Washington, which accuses RAK of repeatedly ‘hacking’ and ‘laundering’ his stolen data in an attempt to blackmail him for millions of pounds. RAK is resisting the claims in the US courts and Dechert denies Gerrard ever threatened Azima, an Iranian-American, who is demanding £15m in damages.
It is the second high-profile international court case Gerrard is embroiled with. The Kazakh mining group European Natural Resources Company (ENRC) is suing the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) for £70m alleging Gerrard passed legally privileged information to officials at the agency.
Dechert was acting for ENRC who were under investigation by the SFO for fraud and corruption.
ENRC denies all the allegations against it. Gerrard has also been accused by ENRC of leaking details of an internal probe to The Times newspaper in 2011 which gave the SFO a pretext to investigate it.
Gerrard had been hired by ENRC to probe claims by a whistleblower of alleged fraud at a subsidiary in Kazakhstan. He is called a ‘ master tactician’ and ‘ incredibly smart and tough’, and has been named in the Legal 500 Hall of Fame.
A Dechert spokesman said: ‘Neil Gerrard did not make the threat alleged by Farhad Azima. The allegations are baseless, as are the allegations that the government of Ras Al-Khaimah hacked Mr Azima’s computer.’
Dechert and Gerrard also deny there was ‘unauthorised disclosure’ to or from the SFO.