Ex-Leeds Utd chief must repay millions

COURT: A High Court judge has upheld a previous court ruling ordering former Leeds United boss David Haigh to repay millions he was convicted of taking from his previous employer.

Mr Justice Henshaw found Mr Haigh had ‘no real prospect’ of successfully defending the order to repay money.

A HIGH Court judge has upheld a previous court ruling ordering former Leeds United boss David Haigh to repay millions he was convicted of taking from his previous employer.

Mr Justice Henshaw found that Mr Haigh had ‘no real prospect’ of successfully defending the order to repay money he was found to have stolen from GFH Capital Ltd, a Middle East-based private equity company, and threw out his claims there was a ‘compelling case’ for the matter to be taken to a trial.

Mr Haigh was convicted by the Dubai International Finance Centre (DIFC) courts in 2015 of breach of trust, after it was found he had embezzled £3.8m in funds from GFH, which owned the club at the time.

The former managing director spent more than two years in prison as a result, after his employer brought him to Dubai.

Upon his release and return to England in 2016, Mr Haigh has repeatedly claimed his human rights were breached before and during his incarceration.

In July 2018 a subsequent Dubai court ruling ordered Mr Haigh to repay the money to GFH, a ruling that Mr Haigh continues to contest.

Sums of £2,039,793.70, 8,735,340 Dubai Dirham and $50,000 were awarded in damages to GFH, after Mr Justice Cook ruled Mr Haigh had caused the sums to be paid into the bank accounts of himself and a close friend.

GFH has since brought proceedings in the High Court to enforce the 2018 ruling, which was upheld by Mr Justice Henshaw at a hearing last Tuesday.

In the ruling, previous judge Mr Justice Cook is quoted as saying: “No one has ever come forward with a coherent explanation for the fact that large sums of money found their way into the bank accounts of (Mr Haigh) and that false invoices were created with payment instructions which disguised the receipt of those sums by (him).”

The ruling, which was handed out remotely on May 19, added: “Mr Haigh makes a number of contentions about the jurisdiction of the DIFC Court under the law of Dubai and/or the UAE. He argues that the DIFC Court did not have jurisdiction to make findings of fraud, and that it did not have jurisdiction when there

No one has ever come forward with a coherent explanation.

Mr Justice Cook on how large sums of money ended in Mr Haigh’s bank account. were proceedings before the ‘onshore’ Dubai court at the same time.”

It continues: “In any event, however, the evidence before me provides no good reason to doubt the conclusions as to jurisdiction reached by the DIFC Court of Appeal and Justice Sir Jeremy Cooke, and on that basis I am satisfied that the DIFC Court had jurisdiction according to its ownlaw. The general position is that a foreign judgment is final and conclusive as to any matter adjudicated by it, regardless of any error of fact or law.”

Following the ruling, Mr Haigh – who has previously tried and failed to stop proceedings, citing medical grounds – said in a statement: “It’s clear that a judge that was appointed only in December 2019 has played safe in this first instance and kept all avenues open.”

Mr Haigh said he was “disappointed” by GFH’s “attempt to claim the nonsensical sum”, adding he was “not surprised”.

He added: “Britain cannot recognise the unsafe nature of the Dubai justice system and then use British enforcement mechanisms to enact Dubai court judgments – it would be a form of lawlessness; of legal thuggery.

“As such, I am irritated by (the) judgment but very confident that British justice will triumph over Dubai’s corrupt regime in the long run.”