Lawfare and UK Court System

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important and persuasive point, but I suspect there are other people in this room at the moment—I am looking to my left here—who have stronger authority on this me. What I am trying to argue today is that this issue requires Government action that will involve a whole series of things from reorganising how civil cases are dealt with, through how we license private investigation to the sort of reporting arrangements for foreign agents that the hon. Gentleman is talking about. This is a whole area that the Government will have to take on in toto.

The assault faced by Burgis, HarperCollins, the Financial Times, the Serious Fraud Office and others has been described by a coalition of organisations as

“a form of legal harassment used by those with deep pockets to silence journalists”.

That same coalition is

“deeply troubled by the chilling effect this wave of legal action has on legitimate investigative and anti-corruption work by journalists, law enforcement officials, and others”.

This is not just about the financial costs; these actions take an emotional toll on those who are targeted.

Sometimes it does not stop there. Lawfare is often buttressed by other methods of harassment and intimidation. John Gibson, a former Serious Fraud Office case controller, was sued by ENRC for allegedly leaking information to Tom Burgis, the journalist. Why did ENRC suspect that? In cross-examination, ENRC’s lawyer described in detail a meeting between Burgis and Gibson—a meeting that both had gone to extreme lengths to keep secret. It was organised over an encrypted messaging service and held in an underground car park with no telephone signal. So the only explanation for how ENRC’s lawyer had details of this clandestine meeting would be if Burgis, Gibson or both were being actively watched.

This is a private company putting a journalist under aggressive surveillance. It is a private company putting a Serious Fraud Office employee under aggressive surveillance. It is a private company, in essence attempting to undermine the freedom of the press and frustrate the legitimate workings of the state. It is immoral, it is intimidating and it is unethical. Frankly, the entire industry needs to be looked at, and powers need to be put in place to tame the wild west of private intelligence work.

It is not just journalists who are targets for this kind of bullying, and it does not just involve international billionaires. Our former colleague Charlotte Leslie, the director of the Conservative Middle East Council, is facing legal challenges from the multi-millionaire Mohamed Amersi. The court documents outline how Mr Amersi tried to pressurise his way to becoming the chair of the Conservative Middle East Council. It has been suggested that that was because he saw it as a route to a knighthood or other honour, and that Ms Leslie rejects his attempts. In response, he tried to form his own group, the Conservative Friends of the Middle East and North Africa. Ms Leslie then compiled a due diligence note on his background, and it was sent to Conservative headquarters by Sir Nicholas Soames. That memo outlined details about Amersi’s past, his associates and his dealings with Russia. As far as I can see, it was compiled from open source research.

Mr Amersi got hold of this memo. In response, he had his lawyers send demanding letters to both Soames and Leslie. He claimed that the memorandum was defamatory and inaccurate. However, despite the issue rumbling on for over a year, he filed his defamation case only last month. In the meantime, he used data law to take Ms Leslie to court. This is a growing tactic for those using SLAPPs to silence their critics. In November, Ms Leslie appeared in the Royal Courts of Justice. The contention was that she had not responded properly to a data subject access request from Amersi. Usually, the Information Commissioner deals with such disagreements, but when a rich man wants to silence and destroy someone, they go to the courts. The claim was dismissed and Charlotte and CMEC were awarded 65% of the costs, but Amersi is bringing the claim back and a four-day trial has been scheduled for the spring, further ramping up enormous costs.

So, who is Mohamed Amersi? On his website, he describes himself as

“driven by a desire to create a world that’s better for everybody”.

Let’s test that against public domain facts, shall we? In 2005, he made £4 million helping a Luxembourg company to buy a Russian telecoms business. The following year, a Swiss judge concluded that that company was secretly owned by a top crony of Vladimir Putin, Leonid Reiman. In 2006, Amersi was accused in a separate lawsuit of trying to extort a $2 billion payment, not on behalf of himself but on behalf of a Russian oligarch.

Four years later, in 2010, Amersi advised on a transaction in Uzbekistan that was found to be a $220 million bribe to the daughter of the country’s brutal dictator. When he was embroiled in a dispute in the early 1990s, a UK High Court judge described his conduct as “lamentable” and his evidence as “unreliable”, “unconvincing” and “unsatisfactory”.

All that information is available in public court records. I cannot make an authoritative judgment on the matter, so I will leave it to the House to decide for itself whether that served to create a world “better for everybody”. In the latest instance, Amersi has used his wealth and influence to try to bully Charlotte Leslie into silence.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

As a former colleague of Charlotte Leslie, I think she has been treated appallingly just for doing her job efficiently and in good faith. I am glad that my right hon. Friend has exposed the appalling tactics that have been used against her.

Is there no way to stop repeated legal actions, or the threats of legal actions, being brought? It is the attrition effect of clearly vexatious complaints that intimidates people into submission or silence or, effectively, bankruptcy. Surely there should be some measure that says, “You have one shot at it, at best, and then there is no further recourse to the courts or such legal action.” Would that be a way to stop the appalling actions that my right hon. Friend has been describing?

[Mr Davis]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. The way that it happens is that there are legal firms that now specialise in making that sort of intimidating tactic work, and it is based on multiple different laws—as I said earlier, on everything from defamation to data protection and privacy. Therefore, we have to find a way to govern how the courts work to ensure that exactly what he says does not happen and that there are not multiple attempts. After all, someone can be charged only once for a crime, so why can someone be sued multiple times for another sort of misbehaviour?

It is not only Amersi who is engaged in bullying and egregious behaviour, and it is not just law. For instance, Mr Carl Hunter was in contact by phone with Ms Leslie to attempt to informally broker peace between her and Mr Amersi and to urge her to apologise. He told her:

“You need to consider your position—being able to walk the dog at night, being able to sleep well at night.”

He said that she was looking at a “world of pain” on it. Those are clear and unacceptable threats, of which recordings are available, made in an attempt to intimidate. Those recordings contain other rather sinister comments as well.