(Bloomberg) -- A private intelligence and lobbying firm has landed in the middle of a dramatic legal dispute over a late Russian tycoon’s $3.7 billion fortune.
The case centers on cement and oil baron Oleg Bourlakov, whose death in 2021 triggered a messy inheritance battle between different parts of his family, with each side accusing the other of using forged documents to bolster their claim.
Enlisting ex-military and intelligence consultants to win legal cases is a common tactic among ultra-wealthy litigants in the UK. In 2020, during a bitter legal battle between the billionaire twins Frederick and David Barclay, it was revealed that David’s sons had hired private investigative firm Quest Global Ltd. to eavesdrop on Frederick’s private discussions. The year prior, BGC Partners Inc. installed pinhole cameras above the desks of two of its brokers to catch them leaking information to a rival firm.
In this instance, Vera and Nikolai Kazakov, Bourlakov’s sister and brother-in-law, have accused the CT Group of hacking into their private email accounts and falsifying correspondence and bank transfers to benefit their clients, Bourlakov’s widow and daughter.
A spokesperson for CT, which was until January run by Tory election adviser Lynton Crosby, denied any wrongdoing. “We are confident the intelligence sourced in this case is genuine and accurate and that this attack is an attempt to distract from the merits of the substantive case,” they said, adding that “Lynton had absolutely nothing to do with the project.” The spokesperson also noted that the accusations were filed without prior notice, so the group didn’t have time to represent itself in court.
“This attack was deliberately launched without giving prior notice to CT and with the full knowledge that CT could not be represented in court to defend itself and rebut such serious allegations,” the spokesman wrote. “This is an abuse of the English courts.”
The conflict arose when Bourlakov’s widow, Loudmila Bourlakova, alleged that the Kazakovs prevented her from claiming a chunk of her husband’s estate. In January, Bourlakova and her daughter presented a London court with a report prepared by CT Group as part of an petition to persuade the court to freeze the Kazakovs’ assets. According to the CT report, the materials, which included bank transactions supposedly conducted by the Kazakovs and their associates, had been gathered by private investigators.
However, the Kazakovs’ court filings allege that many of the transactions and emails cited in that report were fake. “Of the 148 transactions identified in the CT report,” wrote Elizabeth Seborg, one of the Kazakovs’ lawyers, in a witness statement, “143 transfers simply did not occur.” Seborg said that whoever had accessed her clients’ email accounts may have used the sensitive data they found “to enable the production of forged banking documents, forged emails and forged invoices.”
Lawyers from the Mishcon de Reya firm, which is representing the Bourlakovas, wrote in a letter to the Kazakovs’ lawyers that it was aware as far back as August 2023 that the CT group had obtained potentially privileged documents belonging to the Kazakovs. Mishcon de Reya is not suspected of any wrongdoing in connection with the situation.
Mishcon de Reya also disclosed in the letter that it had hired another private intelligence group founded by an ex-CT group employee to secretly record meetings that the Kazakovs held while in London in January. Law firms often hire external investigators to assist on their cases.
After the Kazakovs’ accusations against CT Group were raised in court, the hearing was adjourned so the Bourlakovas and Kazakovs could try to find a way forward. However, Judge Richard Smith expressed disappointment the next day over the fact that little “progress had been made to reach common ground” and expressed concern that the CT group had received so little notice about the allegations that would be raised against them.
“This litigation is extraordinary,” Smith wrote in a judgment issued on July 29. “Not merely in terms of the value of the assets being argued over, but also the intensity of that litigation activity and the parties’ efforts on all sides to secure litigation advantage. In short, everything it seems is fair game.”
(This story has been corrected to remove language implying that the case originated as a dispute over inheritance. A claim was first filed while Bourlakov was alive.)
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