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Sir Lynton Crosby’s CT Group has been accused of unlawfully gathering privileged information in a legal battle in London’s High Court over a multibillion-dollar estate linked to a deceased Russian billionaire.
The claim was made by the defendants in the dispute, who on Tuesday asked the court to compel the other side, including CT Group, to disclose how they had handled their confidential and privileged information.
They alleged the company, which did business intelligence work for the claimants, had engaged in “industrial-scale forgery”, as well as “apparent criminality” in relation to genuine documents.
“The genuine documents could only have been obtained by hacking or subterfuge or bribery or burglary or some other form of criminality,” a barrister for the defendants’ side, Graham Dunning KC, told the High Court.
CT Group, which is primarily known for its lobbying and election campaign work, told the Financial Times that the circumstances in which the allegations were made constituted an “abuse of the English courts”.
The judge in the case, Mr Justice Richard Smith, said CT Group did not have “proper notice of the allegations” and so could not respond in court to what he described as “serious allegations of unlawful behaviour”.
The company was co-founded in 2002 by Crosby, who was knighted for his role in David Cameron’s Conservative 2015 election victory. He is executive chair at the company, which in recent months has sought to promote its corporate intelligence work.
CT Group has previously been accused in the Bourlakov case, and another unrelated High Court case, of forging banking transaction records, the FT reported in February.
The Bourlakov case centres on a family dispute over more than $3bn of assets linked to the cement and oil tycoon Oleg Bourlakov, who died in 2021.
The litigation pits his widow Loudmila and their daughter — the claimants — against Bourlakov’s sister, brother-in-law Nikolai Kazakov and another relative.
In January, the claimants, who are represented by Mishcon de Reya, sought a worldwide freezing order over $900mn of assets against the Kazakov side but in March withdrew the request in respect of two of the parties.
Over two days of hearings starting on Tuesday, the Kazakov side’s counsel said they were aware of 56 documents that were confidential, privileged or likely deemed privileged and that had been handled by the claimants.
Kazakov’s side claimed that the documents and information were “mostly likely” obtained from the inboxes of email accounts of Nikolai Kazakov, which had extensively been used to communicate with lawyers.
Some of the information, the defendants further claimed, was used to create forged documentation to support the claimant’s case.
Dunning added that the thrust of their criticism about the unknown extent of the access to contested information was not directed against Mishcon de Reya, but against the Loudmila parties.
CT Group said the Kazakov side had “used the UK courts to launch an unprecedented and unfounded attack on CT and its integrity”.
The company added it was confident that “the intelligence sourced in this case is genuine and accurate” and that the claims were an attempt to “distract from the merits of the substantive case”.
“CT is committed to and complies with all laws and regulations in all jurisdictions in which it works and is confident it has done so in this matter,” the company said.
Lawyers for both sides declined to comment.
The claimant’s barrister, Neil Kitchener KC, told the court on Tuesday that they had not relied on the disputed materials provided by CT Group.
“We accept, on the basis of evidence produced by the defendants, . . . it appears that a large amount of that material is fictitious,” he said.
A spokesperson for Mishcon said it had “conducted itself in accordance with its legal and regulatory obligations. We have always required that any activities carried out by private investigators acting on our clients’ behalf are done so lawfully.”
Mr Justice Smith adjourned his decision on the disclosure application.