The Representative (with the process having been recognised in the UK in 2017) applied for an order against the director for delivery up of documents he held in respect of the company.
The director is serving a twelve year jail sentence for fraud in respect of the company and argued that most of the documents sought were either privileged or personal to him and therefore did not relate to the company’s affairs.
The Representative proposed various protections through word searches to weed out those documents that were either privileged in favour of other parties or personal to the director and not relating to the company’s affairs.
The Judge was convinced by the Representative that an order should be made for delivery up of the documents, in light of the lack of information that the Representative had been able to obtain in respect of the company’s business.
The Judge was also satisfied that the protections suggested by the Representative and its advisors would ensure that the Representative only got sight of those documents held on various servers relating to the company’s affairs.
This decision will assist office holders in their quest for information from parties who claim that they cannot identify and separate out documents held in both hard and electronic form, which relate to a both a company’s affairs and other matters, in an effort to prevent office holders from obtaining information to assist recoveries in insolvent estates.
Glasgow v Ames [2022] EWHC 2834 (Ch)
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