N & CJ Horton Property v Ivan Norman & Conjoined Appeals

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2. N & CJ Horton Property v Ivan Norman & Conjoined Appeals

N & CJ Horton Property v Ivan Norman & Conjoined Appeals

[2026] EWHC 959 (Ch)

N & CJ Horton Property v Ivan Norman & Conjoined Appeals

[2026] EWHC 959 (Ch)

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Mr Justice Leech:

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I. Introduction

1. On 29 November 2024 Master Clark (the “ Judge ”) handed down a reserved judgment ([2024] EWHC 2994 (Ch)) (the “ Judgment ”) dismissing two applications for permission to amend made by the Appellants in Appeal No. Ch 2025 000052 (the “ Ivan Appeal ”) and Appeal No. Ch 2025 000054 (the “ Dean Appeal ”). She also granted summary judgment on the application of the Respondents in Appeal No. Ch 2025 000055 (the “ Crump Appeal ”) striking out or dismissing part of the Appellants’ Defence. On all three applications the same issue arose, namely, whether the Appellants had a real prospect of persuading the Court at trial that the Respondents in all three Appeals were parties to a money-laundering scheme or schemes, and the Judge found that they had no real prospect of doing so. The Appellants in all three Appeals now appeal against her decision.

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A. The Appeals

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(1) The Ivan Appeal

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1. The Appellant in the Ivan Appeal is a partnership between Mr Nicholas Horton and Mrs Christine Horton, his wife. Mr Horton is a trained nurse and in his first witness statement dated 14 April 2022 (“ Horton 1 ”) he gave evidence that in 2006 he and his wife founded Select Lifestyles Ltd (“ Select ”) which was incorporated on 13 June 2007 and carried on business providing care to people with learning difficulties in the West Midlands. The Appellant in the Ivan Appeal is known both as “N&CJ Horton Property” (which is how it is styled in the title to the Ivan Appeal) and also “N&C Horton” (which is how it was styled in the titles to the Dean Appeal and the Crump Appeals). But there was no dispute between the parties that it was the same entity and that it held a portfolio of commercial, residential and care home properties (including a number which are leased to Select). I will refer to it as the “ Partnership ”.

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1. The Respondent in the Ivan Appeal is Mr Ivan Norman (“ Ivan ”), who is the father of Mr Dean Norman (“ Dean ”), the Respondent in the Dean Appeal. Ivan’s case was that in or about February 2018 he agreed to advance £100,000 to the Partnership pursuant to an oral agreement between Dean and himself and that between 30 April 2018 and 4 June 2019 he advanced further sums of £400,000 at the express request of Dean. In his Amended Particulars of Claim dated 19 May 2022 (the “ Ivan POC ”) Ivan claimed repayment of £500,000 from the Partnership together with interest either in debt or as damages for breach of the loan agreement or, in the alternative, as money had and received. The Partnership denies that it is liable to pay these sums in its Re-Amended Defence and Counterclaim dated 19 February 2025 (the “ Ivan Defence ”).

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1. Mr Matthew Parker KC and Mr James Gardner appeared on behalf of the Partnership instructed by Peters & Peters Solicitors LLP (“ Peters & Peters ”) and Mr David Lewis KC appeared on behalf of Ivan instructed by Ingram Winter Green LLP (“ IWG ”) at the hearing of the Ivan Appeal.

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(2) The Dean Appeal

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1. The Appellants in the Dean Appeal are Select, the Partnership and Hortons Motorcycles Ltd (“ Motorcycles ”) which was incorporated on 18 December 2013. Mr Horton’s evidence in Horton 1 was that Motorcycles was co-founded by himself and his son, Jacob Horton, to carry on a motorcycle and repair business but that by the time of the hearing before the Judge the company was no longer trading. Dean is the Respondent in the Dean Appeal. Mr Horton gave the following evidence about Dean’s role in Horton 1 (references excluded):

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“10. The Defendant ("Dean Norman") is a qualified accountant. He formerly supplied accountancy services through a company called DSN Accountants Limited ("DSN"), which was incorporated in 2010 with him and his wife, Sarah Norman, as directors and joint owners. On 22 October 2020, DSN entered voluntary liquidation. Dean Norman and Sarah Norman also own and manage a company called DSN Accountancy and Tax Services Limited (formerly Normtax Limited), which was incorporated shortly after DSN entered liquidation, on 21 December 2020.

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1. In around January 2013, Select appointed DSN as its accountant. The services provided by DSN following this appointment (including preparation of Select's management and statutory accounts) were provided through Dean Norman.

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1. Dean Norman's role in the business of Select gradually grew and I became increasingly reliant upon his expertise. On 1 June 2016, he was appointed as the Finance Director of Select and around this time he was also given access to and control over Select's bank accounts. Also in around 2016, he was given access to and control over the Property Partnership's bank account with a view to overseeing its finances. On 10 December 2016, he was appointed as Finance Director of Hortons Motorcycles and gained access to and control over its bank accounts at around the same time.

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1. In his capacity as Select's Finance Director, Dean Norman's duties included those of managing the company's finances and financial position generally; reporting to the other directors on the company's profit, loss and cashflow; producing management accounts and overseeing the company's ledgers; and organising payments to suppliers and creditors.

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1. Dean Norman remained a director of Select until 29 June 2019, when he unexpectedly resigned. When resigning, Dean Norman cited his wife's unfortunate illness with cancer, stating that he needed to look after her. On the same date, he also resigned as a director of Hortons Motorcycles.

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1. Dean Norman was reappointed as a director of Select on 15 July 2019 at my request. I wanted him to resume his role because Select was in a period of financial difficulty and I believed its creditors would be unhappy if the Finance Director resigned without a replacement. Also, Dean Norman was involved in Select's refinancing negotiations with its banks at the time, and I thought it might harm the company's prospects of refinancing on favourable terms if he did not remain involved.

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1. Dean Norman eventually resigned as a director of Select for the second time on 17 August 2020.”

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1. In the Re-Amended Particulars of Claim (the “ Dean POC ”) the Appellants alleged that in the period following Dean’s resignation on 29 June 2019 Mr and Mrs Horton became aware of transactions involving the bank accounts of Select, the Partnership and Motorcycles which must have been effected by Dean and whose purpose they were unable to understand. They then pleaded:

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“15…However, in late-2019 and early-2020, Mr and Mrs Horton further examined the historical transactions on the Controlled Bank Accounts by reference to the available bank statements. These examinations revealed that large sums had been paid into and out of the Controlled Bank Accounts with payment references which referred to companies or transactions that neither Mr Horton nor Mrs Horton recognised and which did not apparently relate to either the Approved Select Loans or the Approved Partnership Loan, or to the ordinary operations of any of the relevant businesses including its bank loans. Further, it was not possible satisfactorily to reconcile or understand those transactions from the available documentary records.

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1. In the light of the discovery of these unexplained transactions, in about March to April 2020, Mr and Mrs Horton (and/or Select and/or Hortons Motorcycles) removed Dean Norman’s access to and control of each of the Controlled Bank Accounts and terminated his role in relation to the Property Partnership. On 25 June 2020, Mr Horton reported the unexplained transactions to the West Midlands Police. As aforesaid, Dean Norman resigned as a director of Select on 17 August 2020.”

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1. The Appellants in the Dean Appeal claimed from Dean a full account of his dealings in connection with the various bank accounts and damages or equitable compensation for various breaches of duty. By his Re-Amended Defence and Counterclaim dated 7 April 2025 (the “ Dean DC ”) Dean provided the following outline summary of his defence in paragraph 7:

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“(1) Dean Norman provided accountancy services to each of the Claimants.

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(2) Each of the Claimants Select, N&C Horton and Hortons Motorcycles were in continuous cashflow difficulties and required funding in addition to facilities offered by their banks. Nicholas Horton who was the driving force behind each of the Claimants was fully aware of the cashflow difficulties and in particular in respect of Select and N&C Horton those cashflow difficulties arose prior to Dean Norman’s involvement; and incentivised Dean Norman to obtain borrowing from Dean Norman’s close friend and family, with a promise of growth shares in Select.

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(3) Dean Norman procured loans from a family friend and his father; Nicholas Horton was fully aware of the same.

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(4) When it became clear that the loans were still not enough and other funding would have to be obtained, and following a meeting between Nicholas Horton and the lenders at which proposals were requested for repayment, Nicholas Horton falsely reported Dean Norman to the police for fraud; that allegation of fraud was investigated by the police and Dean Norman was cleared.

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(5) Despite the false report to the police no allegation of fraud has been made in this claim.

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(6) It is correct that lenders have indicated claims against Select and N&C Horton for repayment of loans. That is not a breach of fiduciary duty by Dean Norman; and nor is it asserted in the Re-Amended Particulars of Claim that any loans made by third party lenders to Select or Dean Norman amount to a breach of duty.”

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1. Dean also made counterclaims against Select and Mr Horton personally. He alleged that in or about January 2020 he met Mr and Mrs Horton at Select’s offices and offered to use his and his wife’s own savings of £75,000 to fund some of Select’s PAYE liabilities to HMRC and that these savings were derived from “a recent pay-out from critical illness insurance policy for his wife’s cancer treatment”. He also alleged that on 3 February 2020 he made a payment of £75,000 to HMRC on behalf of Select. Finally, Dean claimed an indemnity or contribution from Mr Horton under section 1(1) of the Civil Liability (Contribution) Act 1978 for any liability for which he was found due to Select or the Partnership. In their Amended Reply and Defence to Counterclaim dated 4 April 2025 (the “ Dean RDC ”) Select and Mr Horton deny this claim.

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1. Mr Parker and Mr Gardner appeared on behalf of all of the Appellants in the Dean Appeal instructed by Peters & Peters. Dean had been represented by solicitors and counsel before the Judge. But he was not represented on the Appeal and played no part (although he attended the hearing of the Appeals remotely).

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(3) The Crump Appeal

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1. The Appellants in the Crump Appeal are Select and the Partnership. The Respondents were Mr Steven Crump, Access Products (Midlands) Ltd (“ APL ”) and APL Formwork Ltd (“ APL Formwork ”). Mr Crump was a director of both companies and a longstanding friend of Dean. Sadly, between the hearing of the three Appeals and the handing down of this judgment, Mr Crump passed away. However, I adjourned any issues arising out of Mr Crump’s sad death until any hearing to consider consequential matters. For the purposes of this judgment, therefore, I will treat Mr Crump (rather than his estate) as a party to the Crump Appeal. When I refer to the Respondents to the Crump Appeal, I intend to refer to Mr Crump and both of the companies.

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1. In their Particulars of Claim dated 22 June 2023 (the “ Crump POC ”) the Respondents in the Crump Appeal alleged as follows:

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“10. Mr Crump and Mr Norman are longstanding friends. In October 2016 they were on holiday together with their respective families in Egypt. During that trip, Mr Norman discussed the Defendants’ financial difficulties and need for short­term funding with Mr Crump in person. Mr Crump orally made an offer to Mr Norman that he, APL and/or APL Formwork lend money on a short­term basis to meet the funding needs that Mr Norman had explained. Mr Norman (acting on behalf of Select, the Property Partnership and Hortons Motorcycles) orally accepted the offer by APL, APL Formwork and Mr Crump to periodically advance short­term loans to the Defendants.”

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1. The Respondents also alleged that Mr Crump and Dean agreed that the sums advanced by them would be paid into a range of different bank accounts although they were repayable by the Appellants jointly and severally, that there were various different interest rates agreed but that they later agreed that all of the loans would be repaid by June 2020 and, if not repaid, would carry interest at 3.5% per annum. They then alleged as follows:

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“13. Between 29 November 2016 and 1 November 2019, the Claimants advanced Loans totalling £3,088,522.42 to the Defendants under the Lending Arrangement. These Loans are set out in Appendix 1 to these Particulars of Claim.

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1. Between 30 November 2016 and 10 January 2020, and pursuant to their obligation to repay the sums advanced by the Claimants, the Defendants made repayments to the Claimants in relation to the Loans totalling £1,663,573.38. The individual repayments made are set out in Appendix 2 to these Particulars of Claim.

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1. Applying the sums received wholly to the principal sums advanced (and not as to interest), the Defendants have received Loans in a total amount of £1,424,949.04, which they have failed to repay (‘the Outstanding Principal Amount’).”

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1. The Appellants denied that Dean and Mr Crump agreed that Mr Crump, APL or APL Formwork would lend money to them on a short-term basis to meet their funding needs in their Re-Amended Defence dated 26 February 2025 (the “ Crump Defence ”). (Footnote: 1) They also denied that Dean had actual or ostensible authority to act on their behalf. They admit that payments totalling £1,807,300.69 were made to them and that payments totalling £1,123,330.76 were made by one of them to the Respondents but deny that they made payments of £447,000 and are unable to identify payments totalling £97,242.62.

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1. Mr Parker and Mr Gardner appeared on behalf of all of the Appellants in the Crump Appeal instructed by Peters & Peters. Mr Alexander Cook KC and Mr Josh O’Neill appeared on behalf of all three Respondents instructed by Fieldfisher LLP (“ Fieldfisher ”).

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1. The Appellants in all three Appeals allege that many of the payments made from or to Ivan, Mr Crump or his companies were routed through two intermediate companies, CDS Holdings Ltd (“ CDS ”) and HFR (UK) Ltd (“ HFR ”). Mr Horton gave the following evidence in Horton 1 about the two companies (again references removed):

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“21.3. CDS and HFR are both entities connected with Dean Norman:

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21.3.1. CDS was incorporated on 15 February 2016 and dissolved on 30 May 2017. At the date of its dissolution, its co-equal shareholders were Dean Norman, Carl Norman (who is Dean Norman's brother) and Steven Crump ("Mr Crump"), who is a business associate of Dean Norman.

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21.3.2. HFR was incorporated on 22 October 2015 with two shareholders, namely Dean Norman and a John Psaras. According to Companies House filings, it was dormant for the years ended 31 October 2017 and 31 October 2018 and was dissolved on 3 December 2019.”

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B. The Account

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1. By Application Notice dated 14 April 2022 Select and the Partnership applied for summary judgment on their claim for an account against Dean. On 13 July 2022 Deputy Master Collaço Moraes granted that application and ordered Dean to provide an account explaining in excess of 700 payments set out in a spreadsheet which was annexed as Schedule 2 to the Order (the “ Account Payments ”). Dean complied with that Order and on 17 August 2022 he provided an account of those payments. I will use the term the “ Account ” to describe the process by which Dean provided these various documents and also the documents themselves (which he produced).

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II. The Statements of Case

C. The Amendment Applications

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1. By Application Notices dated 28 February 2023 the Partnership applied for permission to amend the Ivan Defence and Select, the Partnership and Motorcycles applied to amend the Dean POC to allege that Ivan and Dean were involved in a money laundering scheme. I will refer to the applications together as the “ Amendment Applications ”. I will also refer to the money laundering scheme which was primarily set out in the proposed amendments to the Dean POC as the “ Money Laundering Scheme ”.

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(1) The Dean POC

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1. The first key amendment which the Appellants applied for permission to make to the Dean POC described the Account which Dean had provided the previous summer in the following terms:

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“18A. Following a contested application heard on 13 July 2022, Deputy Master Collaço Moraes granted summary judgment on the Claimants’ account claim and ordered Dean Norman to account for the transactions specified in Schedule 2 to his order of that date (the “Account Payments”). The Account Payments were those transfers which the Claimants were unable to understand and mostly comprised those set out in Peters & Peters’ letter of 10 February 2021.

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18B. On 17 August 2022, Dean Norman purported to provide that account by way of an affidavit dated 15 August 2022 which exhibited more than 4,000 pages of documents, including large spreadsheets labelled “DN1” and “DN3”. In paragraph 16 of his affidavit, Dean Norman maintained that the Account Payments were made pursuant to ‘loans’ to the Claimants from “Steve Crump and my father”. DN3 purported to record that, pursuant to the ‘loans’, the Claimants owed: (i) £613,224.09 to “BCP/IPN”, (ii) £423,806.95 to “D&S”, which is understood to be a reference to a personal account in the name of Dean Norman, (iii) £572,765.99 to APL Formwork Ltd, (iv) £678,183.05 to “AP Midlands Ltd”, which is understood to be a reference to Access Products (Midlands) Ltd, and (v) £221,000.00 to Steve Crump.”

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1. The Appellants also applied to amend to allege that Dean had committed the following breaches of his duties as a director of Select and of his fiduciary duties as an agent of the Partnership and Motorcycles and also a number of offences under sections 327, 328 and 329 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (“ POCA ”):

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“23A. Moreover, in breach of the duties pleaded in paragraphs 19 to 21 above, Dean Norman dishonestly used his control over the Claimants’ bank accounts and/or (direct or indirect) control over the accounts which transacted with them (including the accounts of the purported creditors) to operate a money laundering scheme by means of (among other things) the Account Payments, which were therefore not made pursuant to any legitimate loan transactions. The existence of Dean Norman’s money laundering scheme is to be inferred from the following facts and circumstances:

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a. As his account shows, Dean Norman routed the purported loan ‘advances’ and ‘repayments’ through the accounts of many different entities which were not themselves said to be party to the relevant ‘agreements’, including (but not limited to) various accounts belonging to the Claimants, Dean Norman’s personal account, and the accounts of companies controlled by or otherwise relevantly connected to Dean Norman (including at least HFR, CDS, Access Products (Midlands) Ltd and APL Formwork Ltd). There is no legitimate explanation for such circuitous payments, which are characteristic of money laundering.

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b. The inference of money laundering is supported by the nature of the accounts through which Dean Norman transferred the purported ‘loan monies’. As set out in paragraph 17.c above, CDS was dissolved before ever filing accounts, while HFR was dormant until December 2019 and dissolved thereafter. APL Formwork Ltd was, to the best of the Claimant’s knowledge, owned by Dean Norman from (at least) 1 December 2018 until 1 June 2021. As an accredited professional accountant, Dean Norman must have known that it was not justifiable to use such accounts, or indeed his own personal accounts, to hold or transfer ‘loan monies’ due to or from the Claimants. It is to be inferred that Dean Norman used these accounts because he knew that, by reason of the account holders’ corporate status and/or ownership, they would be subject to minimal scrutiny by the Claimants and third parties.

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c. Moreover, the purported ‘loan monies’ were often (i) broken down into multiple smaller payments, and (ii) transferred into and out of the Claimants’ accounts in a very short time period bringing them no apparent financial benefit. These fragmented and revolving transactions are inconsistent with the payments having been made pursuant to legitimate loans required by the Claimants.

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d. Even taking Dean Norman’s account at face value, the ‘loans’ were undocumented, unsecured and on uncommercial terms. It is inherently unlikely that anyone acting legitimately would advance hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of pounds to the Claimants on the strength of an oral agreement, still less without any meaningful interest or any security of any kind. It is therefore probable that, if (contrary to the Claimants’ case) the purported creditors did transfer the relevant sums to the Claimants by way of loan, they did so for an illegitimate reason, namely as part of a money laundering scheme.

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e. Since February 2021 at the latest, Dean Norman has given various inconsistent accounts of the sums said to be due from the Claimants and the identities of the purported creditors. There can be no legitimate reason for an experienced accountant like Dean Norman to have failed to keep adequate contemporaneous records of the sums transferred and owed as between each of the Claimants and the purported creditors. In these circumstances, Dean Norman’s failure to account promptly and accurately can only reasonably be explained by the fact that the relevant transfers (including the Account Payments) were not made pursuant to legitimate loan transactions and were instead made in furtherance of a money laundering scheme.

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f. Indeed, contemporaneous records which do exist contradict Dean Norman’s account. The purported loan documents dated 14 June and 17 July 2019 which were exhibited to Dean Norman’s witness statement dated 5 July 2022 are inconsistent with the terms of the ‘loans’ which have subsequently been said to exist. Moreover, the accounts for Access Products (Midlands) Ltd and APL Formwork Ltd in the periods up to and including 31 July 2019 do not reflect the significant debts said to have been owed by the Claimants at those times.

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g. In (among other places) paragraph 16 of his affidavit, Dean Norman has advanced a false case that Mr Horton was aware of the ‘loans’ at all times and intimately involved in their operation. If the ‘loans’ were legitimate, Dean Norman would have had no need to advance this false case.

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h. Dean Norman has provided apparently false evidence about companies which he used to circulate purported ‘loan monies’. In particular, while paragraphs 17 and 18 of Dean Norman’s affidavit state that HFR and CDS were only used to hold loan monies for the Claimants and “did not carry out any transactions of [their] own”, the redacted bank statements for those entities provided by Dean Norman indicate that they were both engaged in transactions which did not involve the Claimants. Dean Norman’s desire to conceal the existence of those other transactions suggests that Dean Norman was using HFR and CDS to launder money.

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i. From the time the Claimants raised their concerns about Dean Norman’s conduct in correspondence, Dean Norman persistently sought to avoid justifying his dealings with respect to the Controlled Bank Accounts, forcing the Claimants to issue these proceedings and obtain an order for an account. Dean Norman’s obstructiveness must properly be understood as an attempt to conceal his money laundering. It is likely that, if the ‘loans’ were legitimate, Dean Norman would instead have complied with his duties to the Claimants by accounting for the relevant payments in an open and timely manner.

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j. The Claimants reserve the right to plead further in this regard following disclosure and expert evidence.

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23B. By reason of the aforesaid, Dean Norman:

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23B.1 concealed, disguised, converted and/or transferred property which he knew, alternatively suspected, constituted or represented a person’s benefit from criminal conduct, in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, and thereby committed an offence under section 327 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

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23B.2 further or alternatively, entered into or became concerned in an arrangement which he knew, alternatively suspected, facilitated the acquisition, retention, use or control of property by or on behalf of another person which property he knew, alternatively suspected, constituted or represented a person’s benefit from criminal conduct, in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, and thereby committed an offence under section 328 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

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23B.3 further or alternatively still, acquired, used or had possession of property which he knew, alternatively suspected, constituted or represented a person’s benefit from criminal conduct, in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, and thereby committed an offence under section 329 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

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23B.4 otherwise, attempted, conspired, incited, aided, abetted, counselled or procured the commission of the offences set out in the preceding paragraphs.”

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(2) The Ivan Defence

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1. The Partnership applied to amend the Ivan Defence to adopt the Dean POC, ¶18A, ¶18B and ¶23A (above) and to allege that Ivan knew or suspected that the payments totalling £500,000 which he had made to the Partnership were part of the Money Laundering Scheme:

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“15B. As the Claimant knew and/or knows or suspected, the transfers set out in T17 and T68 of DN1 and App F of DN3, which include the payments in paragraphs 6 and 7, were part of the dishonest money laundering scheme pleaded in paragraph 23A of the Re-Re-Amended Particulars of Claim in the Account Claim. The Claimant’s knowledge or suspicion is to be inferred from the following facts and circumstances:

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15B.1 To the best of the Partnership’s knowledge pending disclosure, as set out in T17 of DN1 and App F of DN3, (i) at a time when BCP was under the Claimant’s control, it (a) transferred purported ‘loan monies’ to CDS rather than the purported ‘borrower’, Select, and (b) received purported ‘repayments’ from HFR, CDS and Dean Norman’s personal accounts, (ii) purported ‘repayments’ of a ‘loan’ to the Partnership were made to the Claimant or for his benefit from HFR’s accounts (as particularised in paragraph 1.1A27.1A below), and (iii) purported ‘repayments’ of a ‘loan’ from BCP were transferred to the Claimant’s personal account. Both BCP’s accounts and the Claimant’s personal accounts were controlled by the Claimant at the material times and so it is to be inferred that the Claimant knew about these circuitous payments, which are characteristic of money laundering.

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15B.2 The purported ‘loan advances’ pleaded at paragraphs 6 and 7 were broken down into multiple smaller payments sent on the same or consecutive days. These fragmented payments are inconsistent with the transfers having been made pursuant to legitimate loans required by the Claimants and rather indicate that the transactions formed part of a money laundering scheme.

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15B.3 Even taking the Claimant’s claim at face value, the ‘loans’ to the Partnership were undocumented, unsecured and on uncommercial terms. It is inherently unlikely that the Claimant would legitimately advance hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Partnership or the other Claimants in the Account Claim on the strength of oral agreements, still less without any meaningful interest or any security of any kind. It is therefore probable that, if the Claimant did transfer the relevant sums by way of loan as alleged (whether on his own behalf or on behalf of BCP), he did so for an illegitimate reason, namely participating in a money laundering scheme.

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15B.4 The Claimant has made various inconsistent assertions about the purported ‘loans’ said to have been agreed variously between BCP (acting by the Claimant) or the Claimant on the one hand and the Partnership or Select (acting by Dean Norman) on the other. In particular, at a time when BCP was owned and managed by the Claimant, it instructed Thursfields to make the demands set out in paragraph 13.1 above on behalf of BCP against Select. Then, after the Claimant ceased to be a person of significant control over BCP in March 2021, he instructed IWG to demand an alleged debt derived from the same purported ‘loan monies’ on behalf of the Claimant against the Partnership (as set out in paragraph 13.5 above). After issuing these proceedings, the Claimant amended and re-amended the Particulars of Claim of his own motion, varying both the sums claimed under, and the terms of, the alleged ‘loans’. These changes in the Claimant’s account of his purported dealings indicate that, as the Claimant knew, the transfers from BCP and the Claimant were not made pursuant to legitimate loan transactions and were instead made in furtherance of the money laundering scheme. 15B.5 The purported loan document dated 14 June 2019 signed by the Claimant and relied upon in Thursfields’ letter referenced in paragraph 13.1 above is inconsistent with the Claimant’s claim in that it (i) refers to a loan from “BCP Ltd” to Select Lifestyles Limited, (ii) is a heads of terms rather than a loan contract, (iii) states a “Facility Amount” of £675,166.20 rather than £500,000, and (iv) provides for no interest to be payable until June 2020. The purported loan document dated 31 December 2018, also signed by the Claimant, is inconsistent with both the loan document dated 14 June 2019 and the present claim.

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15B.6 In all the circumstances, it is inherently improbable that the Claimant became involved in the money laundering scheme being operated by his son without knowing or suspecting that was the case.

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15B.7 The Partnership reserves the right to plead further in this regard following disclosure and expert evidence.”

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1. The Partnership then alleged that Ivan had committed the same (or very similar) breaches of sections 327, 328 and 329 as it had alleged against Dean: see the Ivan Defence, ¶15C. The Partnership also relied on the allegations which I have set out immediately above to deny that Dean had authority to accept loans which formed part of a money laundering operation and to deny that Ivan and Dean intended to create legal relations: see the Ivan Defence, ¶18.4 and ¶19.2. They also contended that Ivan’s claims were unenforceable for the following reasons:

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“29.5D. Further or alternatively, the Claimant’s claims are unenforceable by reason of illegality because:

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a. The purpose of the statutory provisions pleaded above is to prevent money laundering.

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b. By enforcing the Claimants’ claims, the Court would be placing the parties in precisely the position they would have been in if the alleged loan contracts had been performed.

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c. Such enforcement would stultify the purpose of the money laundering statutes by facilitating (rather than preventing) money laundering.

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d. Denying the Claimants’ claims would be a proportionate response to the illegality.

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e. In those circumstances, it would be harmful to the integrity of the legal

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system to enforce the Claimant’s claim in restitution.”

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D. The Strike Out Application

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(1) The Crump Defence

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1. On 23 June 2023 the Claim Form and Crump POC were served on Select, the Partnership and Motorcycles and on 21 August 2023 they served the original Crump Defence. They incorporated the allegations about the Account in the Dean POC, ¶18A and ¶18B (above) and they alleged that Mr Crump, APL and APL Formwork were parties to the Money Laundering Scheme and that there was no intention to create legal relations (mirroring the allegations in the draft Ivan Defence):

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“29…(2) Rather, it is to be inferred, for the reasons set out below, that (i) Dean Norman and Mr Crump agreed that the Defendants’ accounts would be used for the money laundering operation pleaded below, (ii) the Claimants were therefore indifferent to and did not intend to create any contractual or other binding legal relations with the Defendants (because they were not required for the money laundering scheme), so that (iii) the subsequent payments were not purported to be made under any loan contracts.”

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“30.. (2) Instead, the alleged loan payments were part of a dishonest money laundering scheme operated by Dean Norman, as set out in paragraph 23A of the draft Re-Amended Particulars of Claim in the Account Claim, which the Defendants repeat and adopt (the ‘Money Laundering Scheme’). As set out further below, the Claimants knew and/or know and/or suspected that the alleged payments in the Appendices to the Particulars of Claim, if made, were part of that dishonest money laundering scheme.

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(3) Accordingly, it is to be inferred that the Claimants were therefore indifferent to and did not intend to create any contractual or other binding legal relations with the Defendants (because they were not required for the money laundering scheme).”

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1. It was also the Appellants’ case that Mr Horton was unaware of the loans which Mr Crump, APL and APL Formwork claimed to have made until about December 2018 when Dean revealed their existence after Select’s bank, AIB Group (UK) plc (“ AIB ”), had put the company into special measures. The Appellants then alleged that Mr Crump was a party to the Money Laundering Scheme:

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“43. As Mr Crump knew and/or knows and/or suspected, the alleged payments in the Appendices to the Particulars of Claim, if made, were part of the Money Laundering Scheme. Mr Crump’s knowledge and dishonesty is to be inferred from the following facts and circumstances:

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(1) To the best of the Defendants’ knowledge pending disclosure, as recorded in App C, App G, App H and App I of DN3, the purported loan ‘advances’ and ‘repayments’ were routed through the accounts of many different entities which were not themselves said to be the relevant ‘borrower’, including (but not limited to) various accounts belonging to the Defendants and the accounts of companies controlled by or otherwise relevantly connected to Dean Norman, including at least HFR and CDS. The Claimants’ own case in paragraphs 11.1 to 11.6 is that Mr Crump knew about these circuitous payments, which are characteristic of money laundering.

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(2) The inference is supported by the nature of the accounts through which Dean Norman transferred the purported ‘loan monies’. CDS was dissolved before ever filing accounts, while HFR was dormant until December 2019 and dissolved thereafter. APL Formwork was, to the best of the Defendants’ knowledge, owned by Dean Norman from (at least) 1 December 2018 until 1 June 2021. As an accredited professional accountant, Dean Norman must have known that it was not justifiable to use such accounts, or indeed his own personal accounts, to hold or transfer ‘loan monies’ due to or from the Defendants. It is to be inferred that (i) Dean Norman used these accounts because he knew that, by reason of the account holders’ corporate status and/or ownership, they would be subject to minimal scrutiny by the Defendants and third parties, and (ii) Mr Crump had the same knowledge as Dean Norman, not least in circumstances where, at the material times, Mr Crump was himself a director of APL Formwork and a shareholder in CDS.

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(3) The purported ‘loan advances’ and ‘repayments’ in the Appendices to the Particulars of Claim were broken down into multiple smaller payments sent on the same or consecutive days. These fragmented payments are inconsistent with the transfers having been made pursuant to legitimate loans required by the Defendants and rather indicate that the transactions formed part of a money laundering scheme.

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(4) Even taking the Claimants’ claims at face value, as set out in paragraph 30(1) above, the alleged agreements with the Defendants have many features which are inconsistent with their having been legitimate loans. It is inherently unlikely that the Claimants would legitimately advance millions of pounds to the Defendants on the strength of oral agreements, still less without any meaningful interest or any security of any kind. It is therefore probable that, if Mr Crump did pay or procure the payment of the relevant sums by way of loan as alleged, he did so for an illegitimate reason, namely participating in a money laundering scheme.

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(5) The Claimants have made various inconsistent assertions about the purported ‘loans’ said to have been agreed variously between Mr Crump, APL and APL Formwork (acting by Mr Crump) on the one hand and the Defendants (acting by Dean Norman) on the other. In particular:

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(a) In the letter referenced in paragraph 19(2) above, the Claimants’ then solicitors Tenet alleged that (i) Select borrowed the sum of £417,951.30 from Access Products (Midlands) Limited of which £46,048.70 (excluding interest) was outstanding, and (ii) Select borrowed the sum of £1,209,000 from one or more of Mr Crump, Access Products (Midlands) Limited and Dean Norman (Tenet’s letter did not specify) of which £1,034,000 and/or £1,008,048.70 (it is not clear on the face of Tenet’s letter) (excluding interest) was outstanding.

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(b) In the FAR Report, produced pursuant to instructions from Mr Crump’s solicitors, Tenet, and sent to the Defendants’ solicitors on Mr Crump’s behalf, it was said that:

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(i) Mr Crump advanced £186,000 to HFR, principally to enable HFR to make payments to HMRC on behalf of Select, of which £165,000 had been repaid by HFR;

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(ii) Select borrowed sums amounting to £464,000 from “APL” and had repaid £402,951.30 of that sum;

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(iii) The Property Partnership had borrowed sums amounting to £875,000 from “APL” and had repaid £190,000 of that sum;

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(iv) Select borrowed sums amounting to £1,176,438.73 from “APL Formwork”, and had repaid £382,153.12 of those sums; and

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(v) The Property Partnership borrowed sums amounting to £93,340 from “APL Formwork” and has repaid £247,642.63.

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(c) By a letter of 9 December 2021 from the Claimants’ solicitors (who remain on the record), the Claimants alleged that Mr Crump and/or APL (it is not specified which one or what amounts from each) loaned the sum of £1,959,000 to Select and/or the Property Partnership (again, it is not specified which one or what amounts to each) of which £1,011,777.92 (plus interest) was outstanding.

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(d) In the present claim, the Claimants allege that the Defendants (jointly and severally) borrowed sums amounting to £3,088,522.42 from the Claimants (without specifying what amounts for each Claimant) and sums amounting to £1,424,949.04 are outstanding.

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(6) These changes in the Claimants’ account of their purported dealings indicate that, as the Claimants knew, the transfers in Appendix 1 and Appendix 2 were not made pursuant to legitimate loan transactions and were instead made in furtherance of Dean Norman’s money laundering scheme.

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(7) The purported loan documents dated December 2018 and 14 June 2019 signed by Mr Crump and apparently relied upon by the Claimants are (as the Claimants appear to acknowledge) inconsistent with the Claimants’ claims in that they do not (i) refer to any joint and several loans, (ii) refer to any loan balance in excess of £749,062.74 (to APL) and £200,000 (to Mr Crump), and (iii) in the case of the APL HOT and Crump HOT, evidence any concluded agreement at all.

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(8) In all the circumstances, it is inherently improbable that Mr Crump became involved in the money laundering scheme being operated by his business associate, said in paragraph 10 to be his “longstanding friend”, without knowing or realising that that was the case.

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1. Mr Crump’s knowledge and dishonesty falls to be attributed to APL and APL Formwork on the basis that, at all material times, he was a director of those companies and/or their directing mind and will relative to the transactions set out in the Appendices to the Particulars of Claim.”

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1. The Appellants went on to allege that Mr Crump, APL and APL Formwork had committed the same (or very similar) breaches of sections 327, 328 and 329 of POCA as it had made against both Dean and Ivan: see the Crump Defence, ¶45. As in the Ivan Defence, they also relied on the defence of illegality: see the Crump Defence, ¶54(2). They also pleaded as follows:

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“58.(1) If and insofar as the Defendants received monies from the Claimants as alleged, the Defendants changed their position as a result of the receipt of those monies so that it would be inequitable now to require them to make repayment. In the period from 2016 until about December 2018, the Defendants were unaware of any purported loan agreements with the Claimants. As a result of the receipt of the payments in Appendix 1 to the Particulars of Claim, the Defendants ran their businesses, issued dividends and made investment decisions on the basis that the sums received were not loan monies, but rather the Defendants’ own money to treat as they wished. It would therefore be inequitable to require the Defendants to repay that money (or make repayment in full), particularly in circumstances where an order for repayment would threaten the Defendants’ solvency and, in any event, pose enormous disruption to the Defendants’ business.

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(2) Further or alternatively, the Claimants’ claims are unenforceable by reason of illegality because:

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(a) The purpose of the statutory provisions pleaded above is to prevent money laundering.

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(b) By enforcing the Claimants’ claims, the Court would be placing the parties in precisely the position they would have been in if the alleged loan contracts had been performed.

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(c) Such enforcement would stultify the purpose of the money laundering

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statutes by facilitating (rather than preventing) money laundering.

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(d) Denying the Claimants’ claims would be a proportionate response to the illegality.

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(e) In those circumstances, it would be harmful to the integrity of the legal

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system to enforce the Claimants’ claims in restitution.”

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(2) The Strike Out Application

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1. By Application Notice dated 27 March 2024 (the “ Strike Out Application ”) the Respondents in the Crump Appeal applied to strike out the allegations against them in the Crump Defence relating to the Money Laundering Scheme or, alternatively, for reverse summary judgment. The Strike Out Application mirrored the two Amendment Applications in the sense that if the Appellants in Dean and Ivan Appeals were unable to persuade the Court that the amendments had a real prospect of success, then it followed that the same, or very similar, allegations in the Crump Defence were liable to be struck out.

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III. The Evidence

1. The evidence before the Judge consisted of the factual evidence which the parties had given in relation to the application for summary judgment on the claim for the Account and then the evidence produced by Dean on the taking of the Account. It also included both expert and factual evidence given by the parties in relation to the three Applications themselves.

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E. The Account

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1. Mr Horton made Horton 1 in support of the application for summary judgment on the claim for the Account. He did not deny in terms that advances were made by Ivan, Dean or Mr Crump and his companies. He stated his position as follows in the following passage:

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“22. The Claimants are being asked to acknowledge debts in circumstances where there is inconsistency, a lack of clarity and, at times, contradiction in the allegations as to the amounts claimed, who they are owed to and who they are owed by. The only consistent aspect of the various allegations is that the purported debts were orchestrated by Dean Norman and/or arise following oral agreements with him. More fundamentally, the alleged debts emerge in the context of a large number of unexplained transactions arranged unilaterally by Dean Norman to and from the Claimants' accounts and himself and/or entities controlled by him and/or entities connected to him without any satisfactory documentation or explanations to justify them.

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1. It is so that the Claimants can determine their legal rights and obligations in connection with the unexplained payments and the various allegations made against them that I regard it as paramount that Dean Norman provides a full account of his actions and a full and coherent reconciliation of the unexplained payments to and from the relevant accounts.”

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1. Dean opposed the application and made a witness statement dated 5 July 2022 in answer (“ Dean 1 ”), primarily on the basis that it was not appropriate to order an interim account and that he had already provided the necessary explanations in pre-action correspondence. In relation to the loan which he claimed to have made himself, he gave the following evidence in Dean 1:

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“43. In response to paragraph 13, I did make payments until 2018, but Linn Goodwin and Les Trumpeter also made payments. If AIB were to provide the information, it would show that a large proportion of payments were authorised by Linn and Les and not by me. From 2019 onwards when cash flow was at its worst, payments had to be approved by Mr Horton or by Duff & Phelps. Mr Horton would receive a list of payments that were due from Les and/or Linn and he would approve them. Les also sent a daily bank screen shot to me and Mr Horton every day from 2016 onwards. Mr Horton wanted to see the daily balance and what payments and receipts were in that day. Mr Horton therefore saw all payments including those from N&C, CDS, HFR, BCP, APL and myself. I exhibit copies of email exchanges with Mr Horton from May to September 2019 at DN5/1-14 that demonstrate his knowledge of payments via HFR and cash flow difficulties.”

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“46. In response to paragraph 17, as I have already said, I used to send Mr Horton bank statements for all accounts each month showing the transactions. These were always explained and never questioned. I also sent him emails when I made a transfer from my own funds. 47. In response to paragraph 18, notwithstanding what Mr Horton says, he borrowed £75,000 from me in February 2020 and told the bank that I had put the money in to cover PAYE liabilities.”

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“57. In answer to paragraph 19.3, it must be remembered that for many weeks each month all of Select’s and N&C Hortons’ accounts were over their overdraft limit. Produced to me marked “DN1” is a chart (based on the AIB account balances) showing the bank account balance compared with the authorised overdraft limit. It was therefore impossible to make payments out of these accounts, and if money were paid into them, it would be absorbed and incapable of use. Therefore, I had to manage it the best way we could and make the payments from the HFR account or from my personal accounts to pay HMRC and suppliers and then to pay APL and BCP their loans back. Nicholas Horton was fully aware and approving of this. The FAR report shows that I have not profited in any way from this and in fact I am owed £75,000 and am worse off to that extent due to the loan I made in February 2020 which has not been repaid.”

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1. The chart which Dean exhibited at DN1 showed that apart from one very short period Select’s overdraft at AIB was substantially in excess of its £500,000 limit for the period 14 September 2017 to 14 March 2018. It also showed that Select consistently exceeded its overdraft limit for the period between 14 August 2018 and 14 March 2020.

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1. On 15 August 2022 Dean swore an affidavit verifying the Account (“ Dean A1 ”). He produced eight bundles of documents or exhibits marked “ DN1 ” to “ DN8 ” and where I used this notation below, I intend to refer to the exhibits to Dean A1 (unless otherwise stated). The Appellants placed particular reliance upon DN1 and DN3 (which were both Excel spreadsheets) in the proposed amendments (above) and in their submissions and Dean gave the following explanations about DN1:

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“4. "DN1" is my Transaction Report. This consists of a spreadsheet with 9 tabs. The report addresses the various transactions which are the subject of the Order and explains the basis of the transfers between the Claimants' accounts. Some of the bank account entries relate to the same transaction. All bank accounts which received any of the Claimants' money are identified. There are no other recipients of the Claimants' money other than the Recipients (as defined in the Order). My report cross-references a series of documents. These documents are found behind the spreadsheet and are indexed with a "T" followed by a number in the top right-hand corner.

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1. Tab 1 is the original list of transactions identified in the FAR spreadsheet except for entries 31, 86, 91, 266, 267, 281, 282-6, 543, 746, 791 and 798. It has columns A-K and 795 lines.”

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1. Dean then gave some more detailed evidence about tabs 2 to 9 of DN1. He stated that DN2 was his “Documentary Evidence Report” which contained a further narrative statement. He then explained DN3 as follows:

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“"DN3" is my Reconciliation Report. This sets out a reconciliation of the total debt owed to the lenders referred to in the Transaction Report. This identifies which of the Claimants owes money to which of the lenders and in what amounts. I have not attempted to reconcile this with the amounts being claimed by Ivan Norman or Steve Crump and his companies. The first page is printed in colour on A3 double-sided. This summarises the overall position. This is followed by a series of appendices which provide the detail in the summary. There is an Appendix B (DSN Accounting Limited), an Appendix C (HFR UK Limited), an Appendix D (D&S Accounting Limited account 60873691), an Appendix E (D&S Accounting Limited account 73555291), an Appendix F (BCP I IPN), an Appendix G (APL Formwork Limited), an Appendix H (AP Midlands Limited) and finally an Appendix I (Steve Crump).

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1. As to the legal basis for the debts, I explained in my witness statement of 5 July 2022 that the debts arose whenever Nick Horton asked me to source a short-term loan for the Claimants to fund working capital or to make payments to third parties on behalf of the Claimants when the Claimants did not have the money to pay. I obtained the money from Steve Crump and my father and paid the money into bank accounts under my control. From these accounts I introduced the loan monies to the Claimants' bank accounts as directed by Nick or dictated by the working capital requirements I was aware of from my role as Finance Director. The reason for using bank accounts under my control was to allow me to advance the loans and to repay them in varying amounts on unplanned dates, in effect providing a revolving credit facility to meet Nick Horton' s demands, and paying as much of the loans back when free cash flow permitted.

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1. HFR UK Limited did not advance any loans to the Claimants and the Claimants do not owe it any money. I had control of and used its bank account to manage the loans as explained above. HFR UK Ltd did not carry out any transactions of its own which is why dormant accounts were prepared.

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1. Similarly, CDS Holdings Ltd did not lend any money to the Claimants and the Claimants do not owe it any money. I had control of its bank account and used it to manage the loans in the way explained above. CDS Holdings Ltd did not carry out any transactions of its own which is why dormant accounts were prepared.

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1. The intention was that the loans would be repaid when the Claimants could afford to do so. Repayments were made from time to time on an ad hoc basis whenever the Claimants' cash flow permitted. The arrangements were informal and undocumented until the Claimants' banks requested formal written agreements be prepared setting out the terms. Those agreements are at Exhibit "DN4" to my witness statement of 5 July 2022.

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1. The circumstances and events giving rise to the loans and their repayment are set out in the Notes section of Tab 5 (L-0) of Exhibit "DN1" to this witness statement.

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1. I have not made any money out of the loan transactions. Nobody else has to my knowledge made any profit or stands to make any profit either, other than through the interest provisions in the written loan agreements. However, the Claimants have not yet paid any interest that has fallen due. The Claimants have been the only ones to benefit from the arrangements described above.”

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F. The Applications

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(1) Care 1 and 2

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1. Both Application Notices dated 28 February 2023 were supported by the sixth witness statement of Mr Jonathan Tickner, a partner in Peters & Peters, which was also dated 28 February 2023 (“ Tickner 6 ”). Mr Tickner exhibited the expert report of Mr Tim Care dated 23 February 2023 (“ Care 1 ”) and in both Application Notices the Appellants also applied for permission to adduce Care 1 pursuant to CPR Part 35.4. Mr Care gave evidence about his expertise in the following passage:

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“1. My name is Tim Care and I have been heavily involved in investigating and prosecuting financial crime and money laundering for over 20 years. My full working history is set out in the copy of my Curriculum Vitae at Appendix l. In brief summary:

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(1) From 2001 to 2014 I was a Detective in the Metropolitan Police, where I specialised in the investigation of money laundering and terrorist financing.

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(2) From 2014 to 2018 I worked in the banking industry as a Financial Crime Policy and Advisory Manager.

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(3) From 2018 to 2019 I led the training institute of the Financial Action Task Force (the "FATF"), the global standard setter for combatting money laundering.

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(4) From 2019 to 2022 I worked at the UK financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, where (among other things) I was the dedicated financial crime specialist on the prosecution of NatWest Bank for money laundering offences, the first such prosecution in the UK.

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(5) Since 2022 I have been employed as an Associate Director in the Enforcement Department of the Qatar Financial Centre Regulatory Authority. My day-to-day role involves planning, conducting and leading financial crime and regulatory investigations.”

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1. Mr Care then gave evidence about money laundering in general before addressing a detailed question about “circuitous payments” and whether they are indicative of money laundering. I set out the question and his answer below:

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“ According to tab 'T17 - CDS Notes' of the DNJ spreadsheet exhibited to the Account, APL Formwork Limited, Access Products (Midlands) Ltd and Black Country Pressings Ltd, some of the Purported Creditors, transferred sums totalling £519,000 to "CDS" Holdings Ltd which CDS then transferred to Select, pursuant to what Dean Norman says were 'loans' from the relevant Purported Creditors to Select. According to rows 19 and 24 of the 'Overall reconciliation' tab of the DN3 spreadsheet exhibited to the Account, the Partnership and Hortons Motorcycles transferred £919,627.39 and £155,062.96 respectively to "HFR" (UK) Limited by way of repayment for loans allegedly advanced to those entities by third parties. As will be apparent from this description and the relevant parts of the Account, Dean Norman routed these purported loan 'advances' and 'repayments' through the accounts of entities which were not themselves said to be party to the relevant 'loan agreements'. Are such circuitous payments indicative of money laundering and, if so, why?

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1. Yes, in my opinion the circuitous payments in this case are indicative of money laundering. In my experience, there is not normally any proper commercial rationale to pass genuine loan advances or repayments through other companies as 'conduits', particularly where those companies are dormant at the time of the relevant transaction, which appears to have been the case in relation to the use of HFR and CDS as 'conduits' in these transactions. Such circuitous payments help to launder money because, unless a particular third party can see records of all the relevant transfers, it is not possible to connect the final destination of the funds with their original source. That is to say, when funds pass from accounts A to B to C to A, only those with access to all the relevant account statements can tell that the funds returned to A by C are those which were originally sent to B by A.

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1. I should mention that sometimes there is a commercial rationale for someone who owns multiple companies operating live businesses, say companies A and B, to arrange a series of loans whereby A loans money to B, and B loans the same money to C, rather than A lending directly to C. In such cases, the owner of A and B may wish B to be exposed to C's credit risk rather than A for legitimate commercial reasons, including general financial, accountancy and tax considerations. The loans would be recorded in written loan agreements and all payments/repayments would be properly recorded.

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1. However, that is not what happened on the facts of this case because: (i) the intermediary companies were said to be 'conduits' for the loan monies, rather than lenders in their own right, (ii) the intermediary companies often were not trading companies, (iii) the loans were not documented, and (iv) Dean Norman has claimed that the payments/repayments were not properly recorded.

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1. I understand that it has been suggested that some of the payments in this case cannot have been part of a money laundering scheme because monies were "paid out and returned to the same party under a loan agreement". I have addressed this issue in the abstract in paragraphs 9 to 11 above. In this particular case, the funds were typically not simply 'paid out and returned to the same party' i.e. Account A to Account B to Account A. Rather, as set out above, the 'payments' and 'repayments' were typically circuitous, passing through multiple different entities or multiple accounts belonging to the same entity and only then returning to the originating party, often into a different account from that which originally sent the funds, i.e. Account A to Account B to Account C to Account D, where both Account A and Account D belong to the originating party. As I have explained, this is indicative of money laundering.

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1. Moreover, the origin of the funds in this case is not entirely apparent, only that they were transferred to the Horton Parties' accounts through entities connected to Dean Norman. There is no visibility as to where the funds originated and they therefore could have already undergone several layers of transfers from the criminal source by the time they reached the Horton Parties' accounts. Equally, it might have been intended that, once repaid, the funds would be transferred on from, for example, Ivan Norman to other parties. Accordingly, even where funds were transferred directly from Account A to Account B and back again, that does not mean they were not being laundered. However, I cannot speculate about the possible sources of funds in the absence of further evidence.”

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1. Mr Care also gave evidence that the fact that CDS was dissolved before filing accounts and that HFR was dormant until 2019 and then dissolved soon after were also indicative of money laundering and that breaking down individual payments into smaller amounts or “fragmentation” was another indication of money laundering. He gave evidence about a number of individual transactions in the following passage:

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“ Please consider transactions 56-59 in the 'DN - Annotated Version' tab of the DNJ spreadsheet exhibited to the Account and transaction 17 in the 'Ti 7 - CDS Notes' tab of the DN1 spreadsheet exhibited to the Account. Those transactions comprise: (i) £25,000 from APL Formwork to CDS on 1 March 2017; (ii) £25,000 from CDS to Select's Santander account on 1 March 2017; (iii) £25,000 from Select's Santander account to Select's AIB

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account on 1 March 2017; and (iv) £25,000 from Select's AIB account to APL Formwork on 6 March 2017. The £25,000 initially transferred by APL Formwork was circulated through various accounts belonging to Select and CDS before returning to where it started 5 days later. Are such revolving money flows indicative of money laundering and, if so, why?

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1. Yes. There is again no apparent commercial rationale for the movement. If this was a legitimate loan agreement, the payment would go from the loan provider direct to the loan taker. It is also unlikely that the same sum would be repaid within 5 days pursuant to any legitimate loan and, if it were, it would be natural for it to be repaid to the first recipient account (i.e. CDS). The fact that the money has touched 4 different bank

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accounts is strongly indicative of a deliberate attempt to obfuscate the source and destination of the money. Anyone scrutinising APL Formwork's account would be unable to connect the outgoing £25k to CDS with the incoming £25k back to APL several days later. If originally derived from criminal sources, the money paid from APL Formwork to Select and then repaid has now effectively been cleaned.”

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1. Mr Care also gave evidence that the fact that there were no written loan agreements, that they were unsecured, that no interest rate was agreed, that Dean had given inconsistent explanations about the sums said to be due and that CDS and HFR were involved in transactions with third parties were all indicative of money laundering. He then expressed the view that Dean’s explanations “are not credible” and that Dean had committed money laundering offences:

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“ Considering all the materials you have reviewed in the round, do you consider there to be reasonable grounds to believe that Dean Norman committed one or more of the offences as alleged at paragraphs 23A to 23B of the RAPC and, if so why?

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1. Yes. Whilst the full picture cannot be seen without full access to the originating account statements and the statements for any accounts transferring those funds since their entry into the banking system, considering these factors in the round, and considering in particular the circuitous nature of the payments through dormant/dissolved companies and others unrelated to any documented 'loan agreements', I consider that it is more likely than not that some or all of these transactions were made using criminal property which Dean Norman was trying to launder.

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1. In my opinion, that conclusion is more likely than Dean Norman's explanation for the transfers, i.e. that they constituted the loaning and repayment of exclusively legitimately sourced funds. It is possible that some of the funds were legitimate but, in that case, they were likely being used to 'muddy the waters' by making it more difficult to identify the illegitimate funds, so that the legitimate funds were also part of the money laundering operation. This is a very common technique used in money laundering operations, known as 'co-mingling'.”

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1. Mr Care was, however, unable to answer the questions to whom the criminal property belonged, what crimes gave rise to that property or to explain the specific role of each payment. He then went through a similar exercise for Ivan:

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“ On Ivan Norman's case, his 'loan' to the Partnership was unsecured and bore interest of 3.5% per annum. Ivan Norman also signed a purported written loan agreement with Select on behalf of BCP where no interest was payable. Are the terms of these 'loans' indicative of money laundering and, if so, why?

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1. On their own, and pending further explanation from the parties, the existence of loans on these terms is not necessarily indicative of money laundering, although it may be one indication that the loans were part of a money laundering scheme. To determine whether the terms of a 'loan' give rise to suspicion when investigating suspected money laundering, all factors must be taken into consideration to give context. In this scenario, if interest was payable, it should first be considered whether, at the time, 3.5% was a reasonable return on the investment, taking into account the seemingly precarious nature of the business's cash flow situation (i.e. the loan is at higher risk of default) and whether it therefore made commercial sense to enter into it, particularly if the loan was undocumented at the time. This consideration is more acute when considering a loan made that is interest free. Analysed in this way, it does not currently appear that loans on these terms had any genuine commercial purpose, particularly when considering the interest free loan.

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1. As explained previously, criminal property is often mingled with legitimate funds before and during the laundering process to lower suspicion and 'muddy the waters'. Loans could be made with criminal funds in the same way they can be made with legitimate funds, or a combination of the two. So even if some of the funds advanced by Ivan Norman were legitimate, they would nonetheless have helped to launder the illegitimate monies, by mingling with the illegitimate funds and muddying the waters in any investigation. At this stage, I cannot comment further as to what parts (if any) of any funds 'lent' by Ivan Norman originated from legitimate funds.

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Ivan Norman has made various inconsistent assertions about the purported 'loans' said to have been agreed variously between BCP (acting by Ivan Norman) or Ivan Norman on the one hand and the Partnership or Select (acting by Dean Norman) on the other. In particular, at a time when BCP was owned and managed by Ivan Norman, it instructed Thursfields to make the demands referenced in paragraph 21.1 of Nicholas Horton 's witness statement on behalf of BCP against Select. Then, after Ivan Norman ceased to be a person of significant control over BCP in March 2021, he instructed IWG to demand an alleged debt derived from the same purported 'loan monies' on behalf of Ivan Norman against the Partnership (as set out in paragraph 21.11 of Nicholas Horton's witness statement). After issuing his proceedings, Ivan Norman amended and re-amended the Particulars of Claim of his own motion, varying both the sums claimed under, and the terms of, the alleged 'loans' (see the Re-Re-Amended Particulars of Claim). Are these changes in Ivan Norman's account indicative of money laundering and, if so, why?

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1. The changes in the accounts given are not, in and of themselves, necessarily indicative of money laundering. Whether loans made with legitimate funds, criminal funds, or a mixture of the two, Ivan Norman would be keen to get his money back if repayments had not been made. A laundering operation is only successful if the criminal property is ultimately integrated back into the legitimate economy or to the originating party.”

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1. Finally, Mr Care expressed the view that there were reasonable grounds to believe that Ivan had committed money laundering offences and set out the following summary of his conclusions:

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“47. Money laundering is committed in order to make funds acquired through illegal means appear legitimate, or to have come from a legitimate source. A laundering operation is successful if the criminal property is ultimately integrated back into the legitimate economy and/or returned to the originating party as apparently ' legitimate' property.

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1. In this case, there are numerous indications that both Dean Norman and Ivan Norman committed money laundering offences. In my view, based on my experience of investigating and detecting such offences, it is more likely than not that they both committed money laundering offences as alleged in the Horton Parties' draft amended cases.

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1. Based on the evidence before me, I am unable to provide further details of the money laundering operation or the relevant criminal property. It is commonly possible to conclude that there has been money laundering from the way funds have been treated without being able to establish any details about who it belonged to, what crimes gave rise to it, or which specific funds are criminal/legitimate.”

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1. Mr Care made a second expert report dated 2 June 2023 (“ Care 2 ”) which addressed certain criticisms of Care 1 made by Mr Benjamin Horack, a partner in IWG and Ivan’s solicitor, in a witness statement dated 28 April 2023 (“ Horack 1 ”). Mr Care also made a third expert report dated 5 June 2024 (“ Care 3 ”) to address the evidence given by the factual witnesses and I consider it below after setting out that evidence. By Application Notice dated 5 June 2024 the Appellants applied for permission to adduce both Care 2 and Care 3. I will refer to the applications in the Application Notices dated 28 February 2023 and 5 June 2024 to adduce expert evidence as the “ Expert Evidence Applications ”.

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(2) The Factual Witnesses

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1. The parties filed a large number of witness statements in relation to the Applications. They included a significant number of statements made by the parties’ solicitors. I was not taken to many of those statements and the primary purpose of a number of them was to exhibit or explain documents. Apart from one very substantial statement made by Mr Crump’s solicitor, I refer below only to the witness statements made by the parties and I deal with the specific documents to which I was taken in a separate section below.

(i) Ivan 1

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1. On 28 April 2023 Ivan made a witness statement in answer to the Amendment Applications (“ Ivan 1 ”). He explained how he had set up Black Country Pressings Ltd (“ BCP ”) and how it had achieved financial success. He also gave the following response to the allegations that he participated in the Money Laundering Scheme:

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“10. When Dean first approached me about lending money to Select and the Partnership, he thought that he was set for great things with the Hortons, so I believed by making the loans I would be helping him out and earning a modest return on the money. My personal assets derive entirely from what I have earned out of BCP and it was the ultimate source of the money that I lent to the Partnership.

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1. My understanding was that Nick Horton knew that Dean was arranging loans from friends and family, and that was confirmed by Mr Horton at the meeting I had with him and Steve Crump in March 2020.

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1. At no time did anyone suggest that there was anything funny going on with the loans or that I needed to keep them to myself.

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1. When the Covid pandemic took hold, BCP continued to operate. We were making parts for the Nightingale hospitals so we were considered a critical infrastructure business and we remained as busy as we ever had been. In October 2020 I was diagnosed with cancer and was operated on almost immediately. Having worked from the age of 16, I decided that it was time to pack it in and in about March 2021, I sold the company. However, the debt owed by the Partnership remained with me and I saw no reason for the Partnership not to pay what it owes.

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1. The idea being put forward now, years after the loans were made, that this was all part of some illegal money laundering scheme is ridiculous. I do not understand how someone can be allowed to make an allegation like that without anything to back it up. I keep asking what crime I am meant to have committed and no one is able to tell me. I do not understand how am I meant to defend myself when no one can tell me what I am meant to have done.

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1. I do not know what to say about these money laundering allegations, other than they are completely untrue. I have never had any criminal convictions, never been arrested. I do not even have any points on my driving licence.”

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(ii) Kenny 1

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1. On 27 March 2024 Mr Darren Kenny of DWF Law LLP (“ DWF ”), who were then acting for Mr Crump, made a witness statement in support of the Strike Out Application (“ Kenny 1 ”). In the first part of Kenny 1, Mr Kenny made a number of criticisms of the way in which the allegations were pleaded. In particular, he drew attention to the fact that the Appellants had alleged that Mr Crump “knew and/or knows and/or suspected” that the payments pleaded in the Crump POC were part of the Money Laundering Scheme and that this plea of knowledge or suspicion was equivocal. I return to these issues when I consider the Respondent’s Notices.

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1. Mr Kenny gave evidence based on the documents that Mr Horton was aware of the loans before December 2018. He relied on evidence that loans made by APL were mentioned in monthly management packs which Dean sent to Mr Horton from January 2017 onwards. He placed particular reliance upon an email dated 14 January 2020 to AIB in which Mr Horton acknowledged that the loans shown in the management accounts were “the short term loans which we have always shown on the accounts”.

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1. Mr Kenny also relied on email correspondence between Mr Horton and Dean before a meeting which took place at the Plough in Shenstone on 11 March 2020 in which Mr Horton was said to have acknowledged liability on behalf of Select. For example, by email dated 2 March 2020 Mr Horton wrote to Dean ahead of the meeting asking him to “let me know what Select owe your dad and Steve please?" Dean responded by attaching a pdf schedule showing the amounts due at that date and in the covering email he stated: "Loans attached, these are in the monthly packs also so you will see the history of them from there."

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1. Mr Kenny repeated Dean’s explanation for both the fragmentation of larger payments and circuitous payments and he identified specific examples of payments which had been broken up or fragmented but which he claimed Mr Horton had approved:

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“143. The reason for the fragmentation of payments made by the Claimants to the Defendants – which appears to be one of the principal matters relied upon by the Defendants to support the existence of the alleged money laundering scheme – is simple: banks limit what amounts can be individually transferred so that the payments clear the same day (e.g. in this case, at Lloyds it was £25,000) and also what can be transferred in total per day (e.g. in this case, at Lloyds it was £99,000).”

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1. Dean Norman did not hide this fragmentation and in fact mentioned it in writing with Select's bank.

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1. Moreover, Nick Horton was aware of – and in fact participated in – the fragmentation, which he now says is indicative of money laundering. There is, of course, nothing improper in Nick Horton's participation: large payments had to be broken down into multiple smaller payments because of these transaction limits.

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1. On 30 January 2018, Dean Norman emailed AIB (cc Nick Horton and Mr Trumpeter, another director of Select) stating: " The short of it is, we can only tfr the amount in short blocks so because I did 12 payments of £24k it has triggered a security check which has meant a call to nick to check the transactions and a delay in final tfr " [DPK1/16].

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1. Not only did Nick Horton see this email, it shows that he even approved the fragmentation over the telephone with the bank.

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1. On 31 January 2018, AIB responded stating, "I confirm receipt of 10 payments of £24k each. Thanks for that" [DPK1/17].”

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“152. Circuitous payments is another principal matter relied upon by the Defendants to support the alleged existence of the money laundering scheme. Again, the reason is simple: Select was frequently overdrawn, in excess of its overdraft limit. This meant that, when Select needed to make payments but was in excess of its overdraft limit, it would have to borrow

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money. However, if it borrowed money and that money was paid into its own bank account, the money would be applied by the bank to reduce the overdraft down to its agreed level (£500,000). Payments therefore needed to be made circuitously, so that they did not pass through Select's bank account and that third parties (e.g. employees, suppliers, HMRC, etc) could be paid.

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1. It is clear that the Defendants were constantly firefighting, and this overdraft issue is also why there was a fluid cash-flow arrangement between the Defendants (with money transfers between them, and payments to third parties by one Defendant on behalf of another Defendant) and why people other than the Defendants would pay liabilities on behalf of the Defendants.”

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(iii) Ivan 2 and 3

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1. On 18 April 2024 Ivan made a second witness statement (“ Ivan 2 ”) to address the evidence of Mr Tickner and Mr Care that he had not identified the source of the funds which he advanced to the Partnership. He stated that this was wrong and that he had made it clear that all of his personal assets were derived from BCP. He also gave the following evidence about the fragmentation of those funds:

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“7. This is the allegation that I deliberately broke the loan advances into smaller amounts to avoid detection and to avoid triggering banking alerts. In fact, the payments were made that way because there was a limit on the amount of money I could send online from my bank account. I am aware that these daily transaction limits have been raised previously but were dismissed by the Partnership’s expert as merely “one theoretical explanation for the fragmentation” (see paragraph 8 of Mr Care’s second report). I find that a surprising response, for the reasons set out below.

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1. I have banked with Barclays Bank for many years, for both business and personal banking. All of the loans that are the subject of these proceedings were made via its online banking service, either through the Barclays website or its mobile app, although I have come to realise recently that my understanding at the time of the daily transaction limits is actually slightly different from the true position.

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1. Currently, there is a daily transaction limit for Barclays Premier customers (of which I am one) of £100,000 and there is a “per transaction” limit of £50,000. This can be confirmed via the Barclays website…an extract of which is attached at page 1. I gather there is also a limit of £30,000 for payments made via the Barclays app.

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1. I have spoken to Dave Willis, who was my bank manager at Barclays for many years, and he has confirmed that the same limits that apply now were also effective back in 2018 and 2019 when I made the loan advances to the Partnership. He has also confirmed that my account was not subject to any special exemption that would have allowed me to send more money.”

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1. Ivan dealt with fragmentation by identifying the twelve payments which he had made and confirming that they were the maximum amounts which he understood that he was able to send at the time. He dealt with circuitous payments by saying that he trusted Dean to deal with the funds and made the payments at his direction. He also defended the lack of documentation and the terms on which the funds were lent. He also addressed the allegations that the loans were not properly documented and that the terms were uncommercial:

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“ The loans were not properly documented

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1. It is difficult to understand the complaint that is being made here. At paragraph 13 of his witness statement, Mr Tickner says that I have not provided any documentary evidence to deal with the fact that the loans were not fully documented. It is unclear to me what documents might be produced to answer an allegation about the lack of documentation.

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1. Mr Care is even more difficult to follow. In his first report at paragraph 24, he suggests that money launderers will commonly draw up apparently supporting documents to add legitimacy to the payments being made. In his second report at paragraph 11, he states that a lack of supporting documentation does not point to a transaction being legitimate. The only sensible conclusion is that there are any number of reasons why the parties to a transaction might or might not draw up a comprehensive set of documents and, overall, the presence or absence of transaction documents sheds little light on whether the parties were involved in money laundering.

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1. In this situation, there is a very mundane explanation for the limited state of the loan documents. When I entered into these loan arrangements, I never for a moment expected that I would have to sue to recover my money or that I would have to rely on any written loan agreement. My primary assurance as to repayment was that Dean was arranging the loans on behalf of someone he knew and trusted. I was aware that Nick Horton did sign loan agreements, which I took as his acknowledgement of the existence of the debt, and I was not concerned as to the detail of those agreements.

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Terms of the loan

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1. The suggestion here is that the terms of the loan were not commercial and therefore the loans did not have any genuine commercial purpose. Specifically it is suggested that the loans were uncommercial because no security was provided and interest was charged at 3.5 per cent per annum. This is dealt with at paragraphs 41 and 42 of Mr Care’s first statement.

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1. As regards the lack of any security, and as explained above, I never thought when I entered into these loans that I would need to take enforcement action to recover my money. I agreed to make the loans because I wanted to help my son and because I believed he would not have asked me to lend the money unless he thought it would be repaid.

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1. Regarding the rate of interest, I explained in my first witness statement that the ultimate source of the money that I lent to the Partnership was BCP (see paragraph 10). For many years, whenever BCP had any surplus money, it paid that money into its savings account and over the years, that built up into a substantial sum (paragraph 8). 3.5 per cent per annum may not be a vast amount of interest but the money would otherwise have continued to sit in the savings account, earning bank interest at a low rate. From my point of view, these loans served the twin purposes of helping Dean and earning a slightly better rate of return. There were therefore perfectly legitimate reasons for the terms of the loans which had nothing to do with laundering money.”

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1. In a third witness statement dated 24 July 2024 (“ Ivan 3 ”) Ivan identified the bank accounts from which the funds were advanced as a mortgage current account in his own name, BCP’s savings account and an everyday saver account in the names of his wife and himself:

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“3. The loan advances I made to the Partnership, and which are the subject of this claim, were paid from an account in the name of my wife and me, with account number 70675571. The Partnership refers to this as the “Ivan Personal Account” in its skeleton argument. The skeleton notes (correctly) that at roughly the same time as I made the loan advances, there were payments into the Ivan Personal Account from the following three accounts (see paragraphs 56(4) and (5) of the skeleton):

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a. Account no. 4364 7897, sort code 20-93-15;

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b. Account no. 1011 9334, sort code 20-93-15; and

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c. Account no. 9309 3786, sort code 20-93-15.

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1. The Partnership goes on to complain that “neither Ivan nor anyone else has disclosed ownership of these accounts, still less any statements for the same”. The reason this information has not been provided is that it is none of the Partnership’s business. It is ridiculous that I am being asked to justify individual banking transactions in order to recover money I lent to the Partnership and which it admits to receiving.

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1. However, and for the avoidance of doubt, I confirm that the accounts are held as follows:

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a. Account no. 4364 7897. This is a Mortgage Current Account in the name of “Mr Ivan Norman”.

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b. Account no. 1011 9334. This is (or was at the time) BCP’s savings account.

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c. Account no. 9309 3786. This is an Everyday Saver Account in the name of “Mr Ivan Norman and Mrs Dawn Norman.”

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1. As I have stated previously, I sold BCP some years ago but I exhibit sample bank statements for the other two accounts.”

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(iv) Dean 2

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1. On 19 April 2024 Dean made a second witness statement (“ Dean 2 ”) in answer to the Amendment Applications in which he categorically denied laundering money and confirmed Mr Kenny’s evidence in answer to the Appellants’ application to amend the Dean POC. His evidence was as follows:

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“4. I categorically deny laundering money. The period since starting work for the Horton Parties' has been the most stressful time of my life. The Hortons' businesses were chaotic and Nick was constantly overreaching with his development plans meaning that cash was very tight/non-existent. We were constantly having to shift money around and prioritising payments so that critical payments could be made (e.g. to staff and HMRC). I note that Mr Kenny refers to this as a constant firefight. That is absolutely correct. As soon as cash came in, it would be used immediately to pay the most business critical payments. I was introduced to Nick by Pat Moore. Pat was senior partner in Birmingham at BDO Stoy Hayward, where I used to work. She was also a minority shareholder in Select. When I first started working for Nick, I would prepare the monthly accounts for Pat to review and she would lead on conversations with banks. She retired in around 2015/2016 (I cannot remember the exact date). Pat would warn me about the way that Nick was running the businesses and his management of finances. Some examples are exhibited to this witness statement as "DN 4" (the highlighting is mine).

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1. Were it not for the loans from my dad, Steve and me (and my management of the bank accounts, to ensure that funds were not kept in Select's account which the bank would otherwise have used to clear the constant excess overdrafts), the Hortons' businesses would undoubtedly have gone insolvent.

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1. Over time I had grown to think of Nick as one of my best friends. I do not understand how he now considers that it is morally acceptable to keep my wife's critical illness payment (which is the sum that I am claiming in my counterclaim). I used that money because Nick was desperate and I thought that I was helping a friend. My wife and I still have the 'get well soon' card that Nick and Christine sent, but, with the benefit of hindsight, it appears that he was simply using me for money.

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1. This litigation and the allegation of money laundering has had a deleterious effect on my mental health. I have also been interviewed by the Police and reported to the ACCA (my professional body). It is a life- changing allegation.”

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(v) Horton 2

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1. On 17 May 2024 Mr Horton made a second witness statement in support of the Amendment Applications and in answer to the Strike Out Application (“ Horton 2 ”). He confirmed that he was aware that “on a handful of occasions” Dean had used intermediary companies to work around the limits on Select’s bank accounts to pay suppliers. But he stated that he was not aware that Dean was using the accounts of HFR and CDS or Motorcycles until the winter of 2019 and 2020 respectively. He accepted that HFR was mentioned in emails during 2019 but gave evidence that he did not notice the references to HFR or appreciate its significance. Mr Horton also confirmed that he only became aware of the loans from Ivan and Mr Crump in December 2018. He gave the following evidence about his developing knowledge:

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“67. I have explained above that I had no knowledge of any purported loans until after the problems with AIB began in the winter of 2018. After that revelation, my doubts about what I had been told by Dean developed very gradually. Any references to repayment or payment plans in 2019-2020 have to be understood in light of my knowledge as it developed from time to time.

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1. When Dean first told me about the loans, I was both grateful and annoyed. Essentially, my reaction was ‘thank you for doing this, but you should have told me about it’. I was grateful because Dean had apparently acquired funding for Select which, at least according to Dean, it had needed. I was annoyed because I had not authorised Dean to obtain loans from his friends and family. I was taken by surprise.

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1. At that time, it was my intention to repay what Dean told me were debts owed by Select. My wife and I have always paid our debts. I had no reason to doubt what Dean was telling me. I still trusted him implicitly. However, we all knew that it would not be possible to make any repayments while the business was in special measures with its bank and unable to make any payments which were not (in AIB’s view) business critical. The plan I agreed with Dean (and which I referenced in the email at DPK1/9) was that we would deal with the loans after the business had stabilised and was in a position to make repayments. My beliefs and intentions are reflected in a number of the emails which refer to those loans in 2019.

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1. During this period, I would have agreed that any refinancing should include repayment of what Dean said were the debts owed by Select. I can see that this is reflected in, for example, the email quoted at Kenny-1/115. Again, this simply reflected my blind faith in what I had been told by Dean.

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1. I have seen various written loan agreements between Select on the one hand and BCP/APL on the other. I don’t remember these agreements clearly but, as stated previously, I trusted Dean and believed that we were all doing whatever we could to ensure that Select’s business survived and recovered. Generally speaking, I was willing to sign whatever agreements or documents Dean put in front of me on the basis that I trusted him: (1) only to invite me to sign legitimate documents that were in the business’s

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best interests, and (2) to specifically point out and explain anything that I needed to consider before signing.”

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(vi) Crump 1 and 2

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1. On 11 July 2024 Mr Crump made a witness statement (“ Crump 1 ”) in reply to Horton 2. He briefly explained the business of APL and APL Formwork. He denied that he was involved in the Money Laundering Scheme and he asserted that the funds which he advanced kept the Appellants’ businesses afloat and enabled them to pay dividends of £1,358,189 from 2016 to 2022. He gave the following explanation for agreeing to the loans in Crump 1:

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“23. It is also said by the Defendants' lawyers that, "It is inherently unlikely that the Claimants would legitimately advance millions of pounds to the Defendants on the strength of oral agreements, still less without any meaningful interest or any security of any kind".

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1. I don’t think it is unlikely. Dean talked about the Defendants' financial difficulties and how he felt it was his responsibility to find funding to help it through its liquidity issues. Dean is my best friend and I trusted (and trust) him completely; he needed help and I was in a position to help.”

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1. Mr Crump also complained that the Appellants’ solicitors had never asked him to produce an audit trail to demonstrate that the loans were genuine and he produced a series of emails and spreadsheets for the period recording the state of the account between 2 June 2017 and 26 May 2020. For example, on 16 January 2018 Mr Crump sent an email to Dean attaching an Excel spreadsheet which recorded the amounts lent and repaid and on 18 January 2018 he sent Dean an updated version. Mr Crump also exhibited a series of emails in which the terms of the loan were discussed. For example, on 30 October 2017 Dean and Mr Crump exchanged the following emails:

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“As agreed these are the outlines of the proposed loan. Loan value – up to £200k (may not take all in first week) Repayment terms 3 months - £228k 3 years - £245k 5 years - £268k” “3 month options good for me” “Sound I’ll get moved over ASAP Thanks x”

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1. Mr Crump also gave evidence about the source of the funds which were paid over to the Appellants. In particular, he gave evidence that the funds were paid out of trading receipts received by APL and APL Formwork and which passed through their bank accounts and also out of sums which he received personally either from the two companies or from personal receipts from personal investments, a personal loan to a friend, family members and refunds. In a second witness statement dated 23 July 2024 (“ Crump 2 ”) Mr Crump dealt with certain missing bank statements and further statements which he had been able to obtain since making Crump 1.

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(3) The Account Spreadsheets

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1. Mr Parker took me in his oral submissions to a selection of tabs or pages from the Excel spreadsheets which Dean had produced for the Account and, in particular, to those tabs or pages which had been pleaded in the proposed amendment to the Ivan Defence at ¶15B and the Crump Defence, ¶43 (the “ Account Spreadsheets ”). Although it is not easy to summarise or describe spreadsheets for the purposes of a written judgment, I briefly attempt to summarise them below and the submissions which were made in relation to them.

(i) DN1, Tab 17

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1. DN1, Tab 17 was headed “CDS Bank Transactions” and consisted of two tables headed “Payments into CDS” and “Payments out of CDS”. The first table contained six payments made by APL Formwork, APL and BCP totalling £519,000 cross-referred to the bank statements of CDS. The second table consisted of twenty payments to Select of £25,000 or less and two payments of £25,000 and £3,000 to APL Formwork. Dean also provided the following notes embedded in the spreadsheet itself:

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“Transactions 39-41 was loan 1 as per the agreement on T17.21, as we couldn't trf £100k from the account to Select as the daily limit £25k in one transaction and no more than £99k in total, this is why it was transferred in these increments. The loan agreement states £100k loan on T17.21 BUT in fact it was only for £99k as per the monthly loan summary on T 17.23 that was sent to management each month. The repayments and interest on this loan was also shown each month on the short term monthly loan summary included in the monthly management accounts. The loan agreement was compiled for the bank when requested for the Dec 2018 accounts (see T17.26) so was compiled retrospectively BUT signed by NICK and emailed to the bank with nick copied in (T17.26). there are some errors on the agreement as I have now marked. The funds were transferred to CDS an account I had access to for a dormant company account that never traded. I asked for the funds to be transferred here so myself and Nick could then decide which account to transfer for select (AIB or Santander). It was simply held in here whilst we agreed a plan of action.

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This was transferring the £99k as per Transactions 38-41 from Santander into AIB. AIB bank managers were getting wary of our debt levels so nick wanted it to go from Santander rather than CDS directly as it would not raise an alarm bells.

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Transactions 44-47 and 49 relates to loan 2 as per the agreement on T17.21 for £109k in total. The loan agreement states £175k loan as further loans were added at a later date - see TRANS 152 for notes. The repayments and interest on this loan was also shown each month on the short term monthly loan summary included in the monthly management accounts. The loan agreement was compiled for the bank when requested for the Dec 2018 accounts so was complied retrospectively BUT signed by NICK and emailed to the bank with nick copied in (T17.26).The funds were transferred to CDS as per previously commented.

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In transactions 48, 56, 62-68, 71,72 totals £250k loan from BCP to Select lifestyles (this was paid via CDS) see CDS notes as per transition 44 above. This loan relates to the loan agreement dated 31.12.18 (T17.19) that was drawn up post the loans for the benefits of the bank. The loan was agreed to be repaid in 28 instalments of £9,677.78 totalling £270,977.84 (£20,977.84 interest). The loan repayments were sent directly to I Norman private account and not BCP as the company owed I Norman funds due a credit directors loan account so these funds were used to repay this loan. During late 2016 after AIB had originally promised to fund future developments they subsequently rejected our proposals to finance the development of All Saints and Hawbush (St Aidan's). We purchase St Aidan's in Dec 2016 and between Dec 2016 and June 2017 spent £655k on developing this site See T27. As AIB would not fund this development Nick and I met and discussed the requirement for a loan of around £500k to finish the development and start All Saints the next development. In total at this stage I agreed to borrow in total £250k from BCP and further funds from APL and would remit funds asap. Nick was told of the loans and was grateful for the support and cheap debt!!. The funds were transferred to Santander bank from CDS and then sent from Santander to AIB. The funds were used to also keep AIB bank balance within £400k facility as much as possible.”

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1. Mr Parker submitted that the last sentence of the first paragraph of these notes was false and he drew my attention to Horton 2, ¶46(1) in which Mr Horton stated that Dean and he had no such conversation. He also submitted that the second paragraph was false and drew my attention to Horton 2, ¶46(3) in which Mr Horton also challenged this account. He stated that Select had recently changed bank from Santander UK plc (“ Santander ”) **** to AIB and that he could not recall any concerns about debt levels. Finally, Mr Parker submitted that the fourth paragraph was also wrong and that payments were not made to Ivan’s private account but to BCP and he relied on DN3, Appendix F (below). He submitted that if the Court accepted that the explanations which Dean had given in the notes to DN1, Tab 17 were false or incorrect, then the only inference to draw was that those statements were deliberately false and untrue.

(ii) DN1, Tab 68

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1. DN1, Tab 68 was headed “IPN Loan” and recorded in a table highlighted in yellow twelve payments totalling £500,000. Dean had annotated the first seven payments: “As per Loan agreement T17.19 this was the loan 2 - for £300K. This is part of a second loan from my father to N&C Horton which totalled £300k”. He had also annotated the final five payments: “As per Loan agreement T68.1 this was then all rolled into one loan balance inc all previous loans. This is a loan from my father IPN to N&C Horton which totalled £200k”. Finally, at the foot of the table he had stated:

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“This was loaned into N&C and then subsequently sent directly to Select. See above the bank balance in Select AIB at each respective month end. The loan as per the source were from IPN directly NOT BCP.”

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(iii) DN3, Appendix F

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1. DN3, Appendix F was headed “Summary of BCP/IPN Loan” and it contained a table showing the destination of the sums which Ivan claimed that BCP and he had advanced and also the source of the repayments. It showed that between 17 February 2017 and 21 March 2017 £260,000 was paid by CDS to Select and that between 20 April 2017 and 15 February 2019 seventeen payments of £9,677.78 were made by Select to BCP. Mr Lewis told me that this was not quite correct and that they were actually paid into Ivan’s personal account. The table also showed that between 28 March 2018 and 4 June 2019 £500,000 was paid by Ivan to the Partnership and that further sums were paid by BCP to both Select and Motorcycles. DN3, Appendix F also contained a second table highlighted in red which showed certain additional payments made to HMRC or through HFR which had not been the subject matter of the Account.

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1. Mr Parker relied on the opaqueness of DN3, Appendix F and the number of circuitous payments which it recorded. He also relied on the fact that there was some uncertainty about the original source of the payments and also that the repayments appeared to have been routed back to Ivan himself rather than to BCP. In particular, he relied on a letter dated 4 January 2021 sent to Select by Thursfields Solicitors on behalf of BCP in which they claimed that BCP had made payments totalling £480,000 to Select via CDS and that BCP had made payments totalling £570,000 to the Partnership rather than Ivan himself. He submitted that the proper inference to draw was that Ivan was laundering these funds from BCP through CDS, Select and the Partnership to himself.

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1. Mr Lewis strongly disputed this explanation on behalf of Ivan. He pointed out that Ivan’s pleaded case was that he transferred £500,000 directly to the Partnership: see the Ivan POC, ¶8. He also submitted that this was clear on the documents and, in particular, from DN3, Appendix F and the Appellants did not deny it. Indeed, the Appellants did not advance a positive case to the contrary and simply put Ivan to proof even in the proposed amended Ivan Defence: see ¶22.

(iv) DN3, Appendix G

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1. DN3, Appendix G consisted of a table headed “Summary of APL Formwork loan” and it set out a running account of payments to and from APL or APL Formwork to Select and the Partnership. It also contained a number of payments described as “Car payments”. The payments to and from Select were headed “Select loan ect suppliers” and were either described as “sale”, “loan” or “rep”. The payments to and from Select totalled £471,396.88 and the car payments totalled £6,572.80. All of the payments were less than £50,000.

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1. Again, Dean had added a second table of payments highlighted in red which were not the subject matter of the Account. This was also headed “Summary of APL Formwork loan” and contained payments to and from APL to the Partnership and Motorcycles. It also contained a substantial number of payments to third parties. For example, it contained a payment of £18,783 by APL Formwork to Quadzilla and the notes stated: “Quadzilla paid by APL Formwork and [then] refunded by Horton Motorcycles”. Many of the third party payments were made by APL or APL Formwork to HMRC. But it also contained payments to other suppliers. The column relating to Motorcycles was headed “HFR Horton Motor” which suggests that the payments were made via HFR.

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1. Mr Parker described the payments in the second or red schedule as the “ Invisible Payments ”. He submitted that there was no obvious explanation why payments should be made in the way set out in both tables and that they called out for an explanation. He also submitted that the unnecessary use of intermediaries and the fragmentation of payments were not the way in which a legitimate loan transaction would be carried out. Again, he submitted that the proper inference to draw was that Mr Crump and Dean were laundering money through Select and the Partnership.

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1. Mr Cook drew my attention to the fact that the Appellants admitted that most of the payments made by Mr Crump, APL and APL Formwork were made directly to Select or the Partnership as highlighted in green in the Crump Defence, Appendix 1. The total number of payments which fell into this category was 49 (out of 93) and totalled £1,807,300.69 (out of £3,088,522.42). He also pointed out that although the Appellants pleaded that payments totalling £753,671.73 were alleged to have been made to “a third party over which the Defendants have no control and to whose bank accounts the Defendants have no access”, the total number of payments was only 19 out of 93 and of those five were payments made to CDS or HFR totalling £432,000 and 11% were to HMRC. Mr Cook submitted that Respondents were hardly likely to be engaged in money laundering if so many payments were made by them to HMRC on behalf of Select.

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(4) Other Documents

(i) Loan Agreements

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1. Mr Lewis and Mr Cook took me to two loan agreements which Dean had produced and annotated to support DN1, tab 17. The first was an undated loan agreement between APL and Mr Horton which recorded that sums of £710,000 had been lent by APL, that a single sum of £928,680 was repayable on the fifth anniversary of the loan and that monthly instalments of £3,722 were payable. The second was also an undated loan agreement this time made between BCP and Mr Horton. It recorded that loans of £550,000 had been made and that monthly instalments of £9,677.78 were payable. But it also recorded that the same sum of £928,680 was repayable on the fifth anniversary of the loan. Both loan agreements had been signed by Mr Horton.

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1. Mr Horton accepted that he had signed these loan agreements although his evidence was that he was willing “to sign whatever agreements or documents Dean put in front of me on the basis that I trusted him”: see Horton 2, ¶71 (above). Mr Horton did not go so far as to suggest that he did not read or understand them at the time although he stated that he could not remember them clearly. On the other hand, it is unclear when they were prepared and signed and it is clear on their face that they were intended to record loans which had already been made.

(ii) Select’s management accounts

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1. Mr Cook also took me to Select’s management accounts for June 2018 and to a single page headed “Select Lifestyles Ltd Short Term Funding Loans”. This recorded a series of loans by APL and BCP from 31 January 2017 and the repayments which were being made broken down month by month. Mr Horton accepted that he received these management accounts but stated that he did not read them cover to cover and that Dean did not go through them page by page: see Horton 2, ¶62 (above). However, he did not go so far as to suggest that he never read or saw references in the management accounts to the short term loans made by APL or BCP.

(iii) APL’s financial information

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1. Mr Cook also took me to APL’s audited accounts for the years ended 31 July 2017 and 31 July 2018 to demonstrate that it fully accounted for the loans made to the Appellants. For example, the balance sheet for the year ended 31 July 2018 recorded debtors of £1,592,762 and note 3 included trade debtors of £1,476,585. Mr Cook submitted that these included the loans made to the Appellants. He also took me to APL’s ledger which showed that an account for the debt due from Select had been set up in its books and that the balance due from Select as at 31 July 2020 was £1,129,062.74. Mr Parker pointed out that even on the Respondents’ case APL’s books and records were not fully accurate because the accounts contained no reference to a director’s loan account.

(iv) Bank statements

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1. I was taken to the bank statements of CDS which recorded the various receipts and payments to which the parties referred. They were, however, redacted and it was not possible to draw any conclusions from the statements alone. I was also taken to bank statements for Ivan’s joint account with his wife. Mr Lewis showed me that the source of the funds which he advanced to the Partnership were either from BCP or from a savings account or a mortgage account in each case in his own name.

(v) Company information

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1. I was also taken by the parties to various items of company information relating to CDS, HFR, APL and BCP. Since the relevant information was set out in an agreed chronology, I need not recite it here.

(vi) Emails

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1. The Respondents relied on a number of additional emails in support of their case that Mr Horton knew about the loans before the date on which he admitted becoming aware of them and also in support of their case that he acknowledged liability. I have set out extracts from some of those emails above but I repeat them in their full context below. The relevant emails were as follows (and Mr Andy Morris was an officer of AIB):

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“We need to talk about work and I am prepared to meet anywhere at your convenience or I am happy to work by phone and email if that suits you. Regarding the loans I agree we need to talk but I agree we have a plan in place and I would like to progress with this I am truly sorry this has happened and I could never hate you”

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(Horton to Dean, 1 July 2019)

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"Hi mate what is you opinion of the best way i can raise £100 to £200k i think Lloyds will do it next month or maybe this when we can speak to Mark any other ideas?"

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"I know the debt with Steve mate I’m doing everything i can i honestly believe we will be in administration by the end of the month. I dont know how it has gone so wrong so quickly, we seem to have lost income, never been a social landlord, loosing cash hand over fist, massively over committed to staff and contractural agreements we cant afford. How did we not see this coming."

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(Horton to Dean, 7 August 2019)

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“Can you tell me exactly which short term loans are proposed to be repaid.”

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(Morris to Horton, 12 January 2020)

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“Hi Andy Dean will reply to this but they are the short term loans we have always shown on the accounts”

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(Horton to Morris, 14 January 2020)

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“Good morning Andy please see attached the letter from HMRC Dean has paid £75k today could the bank please assist with a further payment of £25k today we are expecting in £355k this week some on Thursday but mostly Friday I am so sorry to ask but obviously this is business critical and is in the cashflow for next week.”

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(Horton to Morris, 3 February 2020)

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"Hi mate I hope you and Sarah are ok in preparation for the meeting next week could you let me know what Select owe your dad and Steve please?"

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(Horton to Dean, 2 March 2020)

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"Loans attached, these are in the monthly packs also so you will see the history of them from there."

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(Dean to Horton, 2 March 2020)

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“Hi everyone thankyou for todays meeting it was really good to meet you both after having heard so much about you. Steve thank you for lunch my treat next time. As promised I will keep you informed of all major developments and as soon as things are on a more secure footing I will present a payment plan. However in the meantime I could really do with Dean providing loan statements for APL, BCRS, HFRUK and D+S Norman so I can fully understand any debt owed by Select lifestyles and how it has been accrued, as after having a quick look at our statements I am struggling to understand them. I hope this is ok and I look forward to seeing you soon.”

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(Horton to Crump and Ivan, 11 March 2020)

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“MBJ have confirmed they will do the management accounts for July onwards. I am truly sorry we have reached the end of our journey together but I am sure we will remain in contact and friends. Please trust me that the debt to you and your family and friends weigh heavy on my mind and as soon as re financing is completed I will agree a payment plan that suits us all. Would you like me to ask MBJ to remove you as FD or is that something you would like to do yourself.”

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(Horton to Dean, 13 August 2020)

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(5) Care 3

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1. Mr Care had the benefit of seeing the factual evidence which I have set out above apart from Crump 1 and 2 and also considering the explanations given by Dean and Ivan. He expressed the opinion in Care 3 that none of the evidence which he had been asked to review had changed the opinions which he had expressed in Care 1 and Care 2. In relation to the issue of circuitous payments, his evidence was as follows:

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“7. It is alleged in Kenny 1 (SB3/135) that payments ‘needed’ to be made circuitously to avoid passing through Select’s bank account because it was frequently overdrawn and unable to make certain payments. Even if that is true, transfers could easily have been made direct from the ‘lender’ accounts (which it seems were under Dean Norman’s control) to either the party requiring payment by Select or to another account belonging to Nick Horton, such as the Partnership account, or Hortons Motorcycles, before being applied to its proper purpose. If an intermediary account was necessary, Dean Norman could have used one of those two accounts for this purpose, paying all loan monies into the same intermediary account under Nick Horton’s ultimate control. This would be the most simple and clear way of tracking loans, payments, loanees and payees. As an accountant, that is what Dean Norman would be expected to have done, yet he appears to have chosen an overly complicated method of dealing with these transfers, through a wide range of companies controlled by him that had no business operating in such a way, including dormant/dissolved companies (as I describe in the next section). The fact that, in order to account for those payments, Dean Norman had to produce over 4000 pages of documents (SB3/49 para 23) demonstrates just how convoluted they were. I have seen no legitimate explanation for this convolution.

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1. In any event, I can see that, according to Mr Horton, HFR and CDS made very few payments to suppliers of Select. If that is right, I don’t think the overdraft limit explanation works at all.

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1. I can also see that many ‘repayments’ were transferred to HFR rather than the alleged creditor. Overdraft limits cannot explain that circuity and I have seen no good explanation for it in the papers I have reviewed.

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1. The explanation given by Dean Norman in his witness statement dated 5 July 2022 regarding the use of CDS, is not reflective of the actual transactions. At paragraph 60, he stated that the “CDS account was used to slowly introduce funds into Select when the account was overdrawn”. App H details a number of transactions showing same day transfers from Access Products to CDS to Select, which cannot be described as slowly introducing funds and again highlights the lack of necessity for the circuity.”

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1. Mr Care also gave evidence that none of the material which he had seen in relation to the use of dormant or dissolved companies, fragmentation, the absence of documentation and the terms of the loans had changed his opinion. However, he went further in Care 3 and expressed the following opinion:

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“ Do you remain of the view (first expressed at Care-1/32-33) that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Dean Norman committed one or more of the offences as alleged at paragraphs 23A to 23B of the RAPC [SB2/6/57-59]? If so, why? ”

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1. Yes. My opinion is unchanged. The circumstances of circuitous payments through dormant and dissolved companies (itself illegal in the case of the latter and also in the case of the former if accounts are not later filed) originating from numerous connected individuals and companies, though ultimately controlled by Dean Norman, coupled with the further layering of the funds through the Select group of accounts and back out (via the similar circuitous routes) to the originators leads to an irresistible inference that they were done so in furtherance of a money laundering scheme. Such actions, conducted by an accredited and experienced accountant are, in my opinion, impossible to explain as part of the normal course of business operations and I again emphasise that Dean Norman needed to produce over 4000 pages of documents in order to attempt to explain the transfers made. This is not an indication of organised and efficient accounting practices, which (in combination with all other factors) leads me to conclude they were more than likely not legitimate accounting practices.”

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1. Mr Care also expressed the opinion that it was an irresistible inference that the payments made by Mr Crump, APL and APL Formwork formed part of a wider Money Laundering Scheme: see Care 3, ¶31 and ¶33. He did not suggest that it was an irresistible inference that the payments made by Ivan formed part of the Money Laundering Scheme but he confirmed that it remained his opinion that there were reasonable grounds to believe that Ivan had committed criminal offences under sections 327 to 329 of POCA: see Care 3, ¶23.

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IV. The Judgment

G. The Law

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1. The Judge set out the nature of the Applications, described the claims and the procedural background at [1] to [19]. In particular, she stated that the number of offences which the Appellants alleged that Dean had committed was 105: see [11]. The Judge set out next the relevant legal principles at [20] to [74]. The parties had helpfully prepared and agreed a Statement of Agreed Legal Principles (the “ Legal Statement ”) in which they agreed almost all of the principles which were relevant to the Applications and, perhaps equally importantly, the points on which they disagreed. This meant that most of the legal principles which the Judge set out in the Judgment were uncontroversial and the parties made her task considerably easier. I should record that they adopted the same constructive attitude before me.

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(1) Amendment, Strike Out and Summary Judgment

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1. The Judge set out the legal tests applicable to amendment, strike out and summary judgment at [21] to [34] and there is no dispute that she accurately summarised those tests or that they were derived from the Legal Statement. They are well-known and it is unnecessary for me to repeat them here. The Judge also cited Portland Stone Firms Ltd v Barclays Bank plc [2018] EWHC 2341 (QB) and Various Airfinance Leasing Companies v Saudi Arabian Airlines Corporation [2021] EWHC 2330 (Comm) in dealing with the standard applicable to amendments to plead fraud or dishonesty and the significance to be given to proper particulars. In the second of these cases Peter McDonald Eggars QC (sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge) stated as follows at 15:

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“As regards particularisation of a plea which is sought to be introduced by way of an amendment, it is the absence of any particulars which is a cause for concern. The other extreme is a fully particularised plea. However, many pleas are not fully particularised, but provide some particulars to varying degrees. Where a proposed amendment is particularised, but perhaps not to the extent a purist would wish, the Court must decide whether the particularisation is adequate to allow the amendment. Where the particularisation is just adequate, but the particulars of the plea could be further developed, the solution which the Court could opt for is to allow the amendment, but on condition that further particulars will be provided by the applicant, or to permit the respondent to request further information as to the plea and to require the applicant to provide the further information as requested insofar as the information can be provided.”

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(2) Money Laundering

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1. The Judge addressed the law applicable to money laundering at [35] to [56]. She set out sections 327 to 329 of POCA and the definition of criminal property in section 340(3). She then set out a series of propositions which were largely taken from the Legal Statement:

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“39. In criminal proceedings, the prosecution must prove that the property is or represents the proceeds of crime: R v Montilla [2005] 1 Cr App R 26 HL.

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1. Thus, under ss.327-329, an offence is only committed where the property in fact constitutes or represents a person’s benefit from criminal conduct, and the accused knows or suspects that it does.

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1. A person ‘suspects’ a state of affairs where they subjectively think there is a possibility, which is more than fanciful, that it exists: R v Da Silva [2007] 1 WLR 303 at [16]; see also K Ltd v National Westminster Bank Plc [2006] 4 All ER 907 at [16]. In an appropriate case, the suspicion so formed “should be of a settled nature”: K Ltd at [16].

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1. A prosecution will not be made out where the suspicion fails to coincide with the actus reus of the offence. If a person converts property which was in fact criminal and had at the time of the converting neither knowledge nor suspicion, they will not be guilty if at some future time they had the requisite mens rea: Smith, Owen and Bodnar on Asset Recovery, Criminal Confiscation and Civil Recovery (2nd ed., 2015) at [I.3.121].

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1. It is “of course” possible that an offence under s. 327 of POCA is also an offence under s.328, and vice versa: R v Fazal [2010] 1 WLR 694 at [17].

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1. While suspicion is enough to prove a substantive offence under ss.327-329, it is insufficient to prove the crimes of conspiracy or attempt to commit such offences: R v Saik [2007] 1 AC 18; R v Pace [2014] 1 WLR 2867. For those crimes, the defendant must either know or intend that the relevant property was or would be derived from crime.

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1. Criminal property is property which already has the quality of being criminal property by reason of criminal conduct distinct from the conduct alleged to constitute the actus reus of the money laundering offence itself: R v GH [2015] 2 Cr App R 12 at [30]-[37]. Sections 327-329 are ‘parasitic’ offences, because they are predicated on the commission of another offence which has yielded the proceeds which then become the subject of a money laundering offence: R v GH at [37]. For a s.328 offence, the criminal property need only exist when the arrangement operates on it: R v GH at [40].

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1. The definition of “criminal property” in s.340(3) does not embrace property which the accused intends to acquire by criminal conduct; property is not criminal property because the wrongdoer intends that it should be so: R v Akhtar [2011] 1 Cr. App. R. 37.

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1. Funds in a bank account are ‘converted’ within the meaning of s.327 when they are lodged, received, retained, withdrawn, or transferred between accounts: see R v Fazal [2010] 1 WLR 694 at [21]-[22].”

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1. The Judge then framed the central legal issue on all three Applications. She identified R v Anwoir [2008] EWCA Civ 1354, [2009] 1 WLR 980 as the leading case on the burden which the prosecution must discharge to prove that property is “criminal property” for the purposes of section 340(3). In that case five money laundering counts were laid against a number of defendants based on tape recorded conversations with an undercover police officer in which one of them had made general admissions that he was involved in carousel fraud and drug trafficking. The prosecution called no evidence on this issue but relied instead on the pattern of trading of their business. The defendants were all convicted and appealed on the basis that it was necessary for the prosecution to prove the nature of the specific criminal conduct involved before there could be a finding under sections 327 to 329. Latham LJ (giving the judgment of the Court) stated the relevant test at [21] to [23]:

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“21…We consider that in the present case the Crown are correct in their submission that there are two ways in which the Crown can prove the property derives from crime, (a) by showing that it derives from conduct of a specific kind or kinds and that conduct of that kind or those kinds is unlawful, or (b) by evidence of the circumstances in which the property is handled which are such as to give rise to the irresistible inference that it can only be derived from crime. This in our judgment gives proper effect to the decision in the Green case [2005] EWHC 3168 (Admin), and is consistent with the decisions of this court in R v Gabriel (Note) [2007] 1 WLR 2272, R v K (I) [2007] 1 WLR 2262 and, of course, R v Craig [2008] Lloyd’s Rep FC 358. We consider that it is also consistent with the approach of this court in R v El-Kurd [2001] Crim LR 234.

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1. The judge, directing the jury as to this aspect of the case said: “you will note from the definition of criminal conduct that you do not have to be satisfied what conduct it was that produced a financial benefit for the other person. While it could be the proceeds of theft or fraud it could equally be the proceeds of unlawful gambling, prostitution, revenue offences or any other kind of dishonesty. The useful test, you may think, is to ask yourselves whether the financial benefit was honestly derived from legitimate business or commercial activity.”

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1. It is submitted on behalf of the defendants that whatever the requirement may be in relation to particularising the criminal activity, this

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direction signally failed to give proper help to the jury. There is some force

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in that. But the fact of the matter in the present case was that there was clear evidence from which the jury could infer that the money in question came from drugs and/or VAT fraud. The only innocent explanation, namely that it came from legitimate trading by Meghrabi, in particular, was clearly roundly rejected by the jury. In our view, the only real issue was participation and knowledge. That question was fairly and squarely before the jury. We accordingly reject this first ground of appeal.”

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1. As is clear from this passage, the Court of Appeal distinguished between two categories of cases. In the first category, the prosecution relies on unlawful conduct of a specific kind or kinds (e.g. drug trafficking or carousel fraud) to prove that the property in question is criminal property. In the second category, the prosecution relies on evidence of the circumstances in which the property is handled to prove as a matter of irresistible inference that it is criminal property and derived from crime.

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1. The Judge recorded that it was common ground that Anwoir applied to civil proceedings although the standard of proof to be applied was the civil standard of proof, namely, the balance of probabilities. She also recorded that the issue between the parties (as identified in the Legal Statement) was whether it was necessary for a party asserting that a money laundering offence had been committed by relying on the way in which the property had been handled, to prove as a matter of irresistible inference that it could only be derived from crime. She framed the issue and decided it in favour of the Respondents at [50] to 56:

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“50. It is common ground between the parties that Anwoir applies in civil proceedings, and that the standard of proof is the civil standard of the balance of probabilities: SOCA v Namli [2013] EWHC 1200 (QB) at [45]-[49]; NCA v Khan and Others [2017] EWHC 27 (Admin) at [27]; and NCA v Baker [2020] EWHC 822 (Admin) at [98]-[99].

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1. There is however an issue between the parties as to how the Anwoir test is to be applied in civil proceedings. The Horton parties submitted that in civil proceedings, the words “irresistible” and “only” are not appropriate or essential elements of the test. They rely on the omission of these words in Namli at [45] –[49]. In those passages, Males J cites passages in SOCA v Gale [2009] EWHC 1015 (QB) at [14]-[16], Director of the Assets Recovery Agency v Olupitan [2008] EWCA Civ 104 at [30]-[31], Serious Organised Crime Agency v Pelekanos [2009] EWHC 2307 (QB) at [34]-37.

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1. In Namli, the judge’s conclusions as to the burden of proof are then summarised in [48] –[49]:

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“48. Whether an adverse inference is appropriate will inevitably depend on the detailed circumstances of each individual case. But, in an appropriate case, it is clear that such an inference can properly be drawn from a failure to provide an explanation of apparently suspicious dealings and that doing so does not involve an inadvertent reversal of the burden of proof, which remains on SOCA throughout: see also Olupitan v Director of the Assets Recovery Agency in the Court of Appeal [2008] EWCA Civ 104 at [30] and [31]. 49. Putting this in crude terms, and not forgetting SOCA's burden of proof, if a transaction looks like money laundering and has not been satisfactorily explained by a defendant who ought to be in a position to explain it if there is an innocent explanation, that is probably what it is.”

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1. In addition, at [194] and [195], the judge, in applying the law to the facts before him also refers several times to drawing an “inference” rather than an "irresistible inference”.

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1. I cannot accept that the judge in Namli intended to modify the test in Anwoir, to which he expressly referred by way of citation from Gale – particularly when there was no issue in Namli as to whether the test in civil cases differed from that in Anwoir (a criminal case). In any event, as to the cases referred to in Namli, I note that:

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(1) Gale cites the Anwoir test without suggesting that the civil test is different, and there was also no issue in that case as to whether the tests were different;

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(2) Olupitan both at first instance ([2007] EWHC 162 (QB)) and on appeal were decided before Anwoir, which clarified the test – Olupitan was cited in Anwoir;

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(3) Pelekanos, although it post-dates Anwoir, refers to Olupitan and Jackson (pre- Anwoir cases) and then Gale (which, as noted, cites Anwoir).

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1. In addition, Anwoir was cited and applied in Baker (at [98] to [99]) and Khan (at [26] to [28]). The test is not repeated in full in the later parts of the judgment in Khan ([57], [70], [73], [81]), but in my judgment, given its earlier citation in full, it is clear that the judge was applying that test.

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1. In my judgment, therefore, the test to be applied in civil cases alleging money laundering is the full test in Anwoir: the person alleging money laundering must show that the circumstances in which the property was handled were such as to give rise to an irresistible inference that it could only have been derived from crime.”

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(3) Expert Evidence

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1. The Judge set out the legal principles applicable to the admission of expert evidence at [62] to [74]. Again, there was no dispute between the parties and the Judge was able to take them principally from the Legal Statement. The Judge pointed out that section 3 of the Civil Evidence Act 1972 abolished the rule that an expert could not give evidence on the ultimate issue and she set out CPR Part 35.1 and cited a number of authorities about the way in which they are to be applied. For present purposes, it is enough to cite two critical paragraphs from the Judgment at [66] to [67] and [71]:

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“66. In Barings Plc v Coopers & Lybrand (No 2) [2001] EWHC 17 (Ch); [2001] PNLR 22 Evans-Lombe J reviewed the authorities, and extracted from them at [45] the following propositions:

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“expert evidence is admissible under section 3 of the Civil Evidence Act 1972 in any case where the Court accepts that there exists a recognised expertise governed by recognised standards and rules of conduct capable of influencing the Court’s decision on any of the issues which it has to decide and the witness to be called satisfies the Court that he has a sufficient familiarity with and knowledge of the expertise in question to render his opinion potentially of value in resolving any of those issues.”

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1. However, this is not entirely consistent with Bingham LJ (as he was) in R v Robb (1991) 93 Cr. App. R. 161, in which, after referring to Lord Russell’s judgment in R v Silverlock [1894] 2 QB 766, he said, at 165,

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“… the essential questions are whether study and experience will give a witness’s opinion an authority which the opinion of one not so qualified will lack, and (if so) whether the witness in question is peritus [skilled] in Lord Russell’s sense. If these conditions are met the evidence of the witness is in law admissible, although the weight to be attached to his opinion must of course be assessed by the tribunal of fact.””

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“71. In determining whether particular evidence is reasonably required a key question will be:

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“…whether the subject matter of the opinion is such that a person without instruction or experience in the area of knowledge or human experience would be able to form a sound judgment on the matter without the assistance of witnesses possessing special knowledge or experience in the area.”

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See R v Bonython (1984) 38 SASR 45 at 46, cited in JP Morgan v Springwell [2006] EWHC 2755 (Comm); [2007] 1 All ER (Comm) 549 at [20] and Barings at [38].”

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H. Application

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(1) Mr Care’s Evidence

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1. The Judge held that Mr Care’s evidence was not admissible because the question whether an inference of money laundering could be drawn from the facts was a question of law for the judge and he had no such knowledge and experience: see [80]. But she also held that even if Mr Care’s evidence was admissible, then it was neither necessary nor of assistance to the Court: see [81]. She gave the following reasons for this conclusion:

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“81. If I am wrong on whether Mr Care’s evidence is admissible, then nevertheless I consider that his evidence is neither necessary, nor of assistance to the court. My reasons for this conclusion are the same as those set out above. It is for the judge, once they have found the facts as to the detailed circumstances of the case, to decide whether the required irresistible inference can be drawn. Mr Care has no role to play in this process.

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1. This is highlighted by the fact that in Care 1 and Care 2, Mr Care does not apply the appropriate legal test. He only addresses whether certain facts are “indicative” of money laundering, and does not consider whether the test of “irresistible inference” would be met. It is only in Care 3, the stated purpose of which is to address the impact (if any) of the subsequent developments in these proceedings, that Mr Care amends the test applied by him, and then states that it is met in respect of 3 matters: circuitous payments ([22]), absence of commercial rationale ([31]) and the absence of the payments being recorded in the accounts of APL ([33]) (as to which see paragraph 145 below). None of the other factors are said to justify this irresistible inference.

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1. Finally, Mr Care was not provided with the evidence filed after he prepared Care 3, in particular, the 1st witness statement dated 11 July 2024 of Mr Crump (“Crump 1”) which addresses: (1) the trackable and auditable record of loans by and repayments to the Crump parties; (2) written requests for loans; and discussion of security and interest; (3) similar informal loans without security having been made by Select to Horton Motorcycles and to Select by a third party lender; (4) the facts that the loans were (contrary to Mr Care’s assumption) recorded in APL’s accounts; (5) the source of the Crump parties’ funds.

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1. I approach Mr Care’s evidence therefore on the basis that he puts forward arguments, albeit based on limited and incomplete materials, that could be put forward by the Horton parties, but that those arguments are no more than that, and are not matters of expert opinion.”

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(2) The Loans

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1. The Judge held that the Appellants in the Dean Appeal had no real prospect of proving that (1) Dean did not pay £75,000 to HMRC for Select’s benefit, (2) Dean did not make the payment from funds made available to him by his wife and (3) that the Appellants did not know both of these facts: see [92]. She also held that they had no real prospect of establishing that the £75,000 paid by Dean on Select’s behalf to HMRC was not a genuine loan for a legitimate business purpose, namely discharging Select’s liability to HMRC: see [93].

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1. The Judge recorded that the Appellants had admitted that Ivan paid £500,000 to the Partnership and that they had received £1.8 million from Mr Crump: see [94]. She also held that the Appellants were aware of these payments for the following reasons:

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“97. As to this: (1) The Horton parties admit (in para 38 of their Defence to the Crump claim) that they received at the material times monthly summaries of their indebtedness, and financial spreadsheets, both prepared by Dean; (2) Those monthly summaries and spreadsheets clearly record the Ivan and Crump loans on their face; (3) In an email dated 14 January 2020 to AIB, Mr Horton referred to “the short term loans we have always shown in our accounts”; (4) In an email dated 2 March 2020, Mr Horton wrote “in preparation for the meeting next week could you let me know what Select owe your dad and Steve please?" Dean Norman responded on the same day attaching a PDF document entitled “Short term loans” and stating “Loans attached, these are in the monthly packs also so you will see the history of them from there”.

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1. Although the latter two emails were sent after December 2018, they acknowledge Mr Horton’s knowledge of the loans before that date.

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1. The Horton parties also plead (in para 58(1) of their Defence) in response to the Crump parties’ unjust enrichment claim that they “ran their businesses, issued dividends and made investment decisions on the basis that the sums received were not loan monies, but rather the [Horton parties’] own money to treat as they wished". This is in my judgment, inconsistent with being unaware of the receipt of the monies: if the Horton parties believed that these were their monies (and they do not explain how

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and why they had this belief), they must have been aware of their receipt. This passage highlights the difficulties in the Horton parties’ case: they received the monies, they dealt with them as beneficial owners, and they do not allege that the monies were a gift. In those circumstances, they have in my judgment, no real prospect of showing that they are not (subject to the other matters that they rely upon as showing money laundering) under an obligation to repay them i.e. that the monies were lent to them.”

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1. The Judge then set out the dividends which Select had paid from 2016 to 2022 totalling £1,358,189: see [100]. She also referred to the emails dated 1 July 2019, 7 August 2019, 11 March 2020 and 13 August 2020 as an acknowledgment of the loans made by Ivan and Mr Crump: see [101] to [104]. She then turned to the question of the Appellants’ financial position and their need for the loans:

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“105. In the Crump claim, the Horton parties do not admit that from around 2013 Select encountered liquidity difficulties and frequently exceeded its overdraft limit.

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1. However, the evidence in this application establishes that:

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(1) In July 2015, Dean needed to seek approval from the Horton parties’ bank (Santander) to pay a relatively small amount (£450);

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(2) Emails from February 2015 to September 2016 show the Horton parties’ bank accounts frequently exceeding their overdraft limit;

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(3) In 2015, Select was put into corporate restructuring (special measures) by Santander and was thereafter subject to continuous close financial scrutiny, and as a result the bank was involved in sanctioning payments on an almost daily basis.

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(4) Various professional advisors were also appointed by Select's banks: (i) FRP Advisory was appointed by Santander, and emails with FRP were in evidence; (ii) Duff & Phelps was appointed by AIB. A report by them in July 2019 showed a similar picture regarding the overdraft and also referenced the 'friends & family loans'. Duff & Phelps even recommended seeking further funding from Ivan’s and Mr Crump’s companies: at page 26 of the report, they state:

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"In the event that the Bank is unwilling to extend facilities beyond current limits, we would recommend that this is communicated to management immediately to allow them to consider alternate funding options. This includes further short term loans, support from BCP1, APL or NH."

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(iii) Orbis was also appointed and a report by them dated 27 August 2019 showed a similar picture regarding the overdraft.

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1. The overwhelming evidential picture is of the Horton businesses lurching from financial crisis to financial crisis.

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1. In my judgment therefore, the Horton parties have no real prospect of showing that:

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(1) the funds were not received from Ivan and the Crump parties;

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(2) they did not know that they were received at the relevant time;

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(3) the Horton parties had no need of the funds.

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1. It follows from the above that the Horton parties have no real prospect of showing that the “alleged loans” or “purported loans” were not in fact loans. They therefore have no real prospect of establishing this element of their case as to money laundering.”

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(3) Money Laundering

(i) Ivan

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1. The Judge pointed out (as Mr Lewis did to me) that £500,000 was transferred directly from Ivan’s personal account to the Partnership Account and, although the Appellants in the Ivan Claim did not admit the payments, she held that they had no real prospect of proving otherwise: see [111]. She then continued at [112] to [114]:

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“112. The Horton parties do not (and could not) allege that these payments had most of the hallmarks of money laundering on which they otherwise rely. They rely on the fact that at a time when Black Country Pressings Limited (“BCP”) was under Ivan’s control, solicitors acting on its behalf (Thursfield Solicitors) wrote a letter dated 4 January 2021 claiming that BCP was owed £623,155 plus interest by Select. The payments made by BCP are said to have the hallmarks of money laundering, and the terms of the loan relied upon in Thursfield’s letter are said to be inconsistent with the claim now made.

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1. However, Mr Care accepts that this inconsistency is not, in and of itself, necessarily indicative of money laundering. In my judgment, none of these facts are relevant to or even begin to establish that the monies paid by Ivan, and now claimed, were paid as part of a money laundering scheme.

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1. The only hallmark of money laundering alleged to have any application to Ivan’s claim is that the loans were “undocumented, unsecured and on uncommercial terms”. As to this, the agreement for the loans is alleged to be oral, but the payments, as noted, were made by bank transfer, not in cash. The agreed rate of interest is alleged to be 3.5%, and

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the loans were not secured.”

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1. The Judge was referring to Care 1, ¶43 in [113]: see footnote 2. She also quoted Ivan 1, ¶10 and Ivan 2, ¶23 to ¶26 immediately below the passage above (and I have set out both passages in my summary of the evidence in section III). She set out her conclusion as follows at [115]:

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“115. At trial, the Horton parties would of course be entitled to cross-examine Ivan on this evidence. However, even if his explanations were rejected, and the court held that the terms of the loans were uncommercial, that would in my judgment fall far short of justifying an irresistible inference that money laundering had taken place.”

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(ii) Mr Crump, APL and APL Formwork

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1. The Judge recorded that the allegation of circuitous payments through CDS and HFR was the central plank of the Appellants’ case against Mr Crump and his companies. She set out the corporate history of both companies and referred to the explanation which Dean gave in Dean 1, ¶57. She also quoted Mr Kenny’s evidence in Kenny 1, ¶152 and ¶153 (and I have set out all three passages above). She then continued as follows:

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“123. Dean exhibits a chart setting out Select’s AIB bank account balance compared with its authorised overdraft limit (on a monthly basis, from July 2017 to June 2020) which shows that Select’s balance consistently exceeded its overdraft limit in the period. This chart is unchallenged in the evidence in response on behalf of the Horton parties. Mr Horton accepts that he was aware that Dean used intermediary companies to pay suppliers for this reason, but only on “a handful of occasions”, not routinely and not in connection with the loans which are the subject matter of these claims.

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1. Plainly, the court cannot resolve the issue of Mr Horton’s knowledge in these applications. However, an examination of the extent to which intermediary companies were used shows that the Horton parties’ case is vastly overstated.

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Payments to the Horton parties by the Crump parties

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1. These are listed in appendix 1 to the PoC. There are 93 payments totalling about £3 million. Only 5 of these payments were made to CDS or HFR, 3 to CDS (all before its dissolution) and 2 to HFR. 11% of the payments are described as being to “HMRC for the benefit of Select”. The Horton parties do not admit these payments, although it is difficult to see why they are unable to put forward a positive case as to them, when they could obtain the relevant information from HMRC. The remainder of the payments to third parties total 4, and are not plainly suspicious e.g. £18,783 to Quadzilla for the benefit of Horton Motorcycles.

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Repayments to the Crump parties

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1. These are listed in appendix 2 to the PoC. There are 131 payments in all, totalling about £1.66 million. Of these 22 (17%) were made by HFR totalling about £400,000; none were made by CDS. The remaining payments were made directly by the Horton parties.

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1. This limited use of intermediaries, in the context of the financial difficulties of the Horton parties, and the substantial majority of the payments being made directly to or from the Horton parties, means, in my judgment, that the Horton parties have no real prospect of establishing that this is a hallmark of money laundering which would justify the irresistible inference they need to show.

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Use of dormant/dissolved companies as intermediate transferees: Defence para 43(2)

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1. Mr Care’s evidence is that the use of dormant and dissolved companies as ‘conduits’ for ‘loan monies’ is indicative of money laundering because the “fact that such companies’ accounts and bank statements would never be subject to independent audit reduces the chances of the transaction being investigated or queried”

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1. As noted above, the use of CDS and HFR as intermediaries for payments was relatively small, and explicable by reference to the financial difficulties of the Horton parties. The use is insufficient in my judgment to provide the Horton parties with a real prospect of success in showing that this use was a hallmark of money laundering.

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Fragmentation: Defence para 43(3)

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1. The Horton parties plead reliance on the fragmentation of the payments in their claim against Dean - see draft re-am PoC in the Dean claim at para 23A(c). However, they did not rely on that factor for the purpose of these applications, so it is unnecessary to consider it further.

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Revolving transactions

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1. The Horton parties rely upon monies moving in and out of their accounts simultaneously, or within a very short period of time. These “revolving transactions”, it is said, tend to contradict the plea that the payments were made pursuant to legitimate loan agreements. This is pleaded against Dean Norman in the re-am PoC (in the Dean claim): para 23A(c). It is not pleaded against the Crump parties.”

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1. The Judge then dealt with an example of a revolving transaction upon which the Appellants in the Crump Appeal relied. This example involved the payment of £25,000 from APL Formwork to CDS, from CDS to Select’s Santander account and from that account to Select’s AIB account all on 1 March 2017 followed by the repayment of £25,000 to APL Formwork on 6 March 2017. The Judge dealt with this example as follows:

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“133. Mr Care’s comment on this, adopted by the Horton parties, is that it is unlikely that the same sum would be repaid within 5 days pursuant to any legitimate loan. However, the relevant bank statements show:

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(1) On 1 March 2017 Select’s debit balance on its AIB account was £393,829.29. It therefore had less than £8,000 available before it would exceed its £400,000 overdraft limit on that account.

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(2) Following receipt of £25,000 on 1 March, it made payments that day to trade creditors totalling £21,915.47, so that by the end of the day its debit balance was £390,744,76.

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(3) Further payments to trade creditors were made on 2 March 2017, bringing the debit balance to £394,415.39.

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(4) On 3 March 2017, a large payment (£48,633.09) was received from Wolverhampton County Council, one of Select’s customers.

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(5) On 3-6 March 2017, other payments were received and trade creditors paid. After repayment of £25,000 to APL Formwork, Select’s debit balance was £353,372.24 i.e. it had head room of about £47,000 before it would exceed its overdraft limit.

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1. In my judgment, there is nothing inherently suspicious or requiring explanation in the fact that the £25,000 was repaid within that time scale in the light of the bank statements themselves, which appear not to have been considered by Mr Care. Unless and until the Horton parties carry out this type of analysis on the “revolving transactions” by reference to their own bank statements, they have not in my judgment any real prospect of success in showing that they are suspicious or indicate money laundering.”

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1. The Judge dealt next with the allegation of uncommercial terms. She set out the Respondents’ case as pleaded in the Crump POC, ¶11.8, Mr Crump’s evidence in Crump 1, ¶24 and Mr Care’s evidence in Care 1, ¶41 (all of which I have set out above). The Judge concluded that even if the loans were on uncommercial terms, this would fall far short of justifying an irresistible inference of money laundering: see [135] to [139]. She then dealt with the source of funds and the absence of proper documentation:

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“ Source of the funds

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1. In this context, the relevant background facts include the source of the funds provided for the Crump loans. The evidence includes a summary of APL’s paid invoices for the period 30 November 2013 to 19 July 2018, showing its receipts at about £21 million net of VAT. The Crump parties submitted that during the relevant period, APL’s business was sufficiently substantial for there to be ample funds available to lend to the Horton parties. The notion that despite having these “clean” funds from an established and successful business, the Crump parties would nonetheless deal with “dirty” money by lending it to the Horton parties is in my judgment, wholly implausible, and has no real prospect of success.

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1. Similarly, it is, in my judgment, fanciful to suggest that the Crump parties nonetheless included their “clean” money in a money laundering scheme run by Dean to help him launder the money of others. There is no obvious benefit, and there would be substantial risks in doing so.

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Absence of proper documentation: Defence para 43(4), (7)

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1. This is relied upon in paras 43(4) and (7) of the Defence to the Crump claim. It appears to be based on para 27 of Care 1, which refers to a lack of supporting documentation and an absence of an auditable and trackable record of payments. However, Mr Care accepts that the absence of formal loan agreements does not, in and of itself, indicate money laundering.

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1. As to this, Mr Crump’s evidence (in para 21 of Crump 1) is first, that neither Mr Care nor the Horton parties’ lawyers have asked him if there was such a record; and secondly, that records were in fact kept; and he exhibits a spreadsheet showing the loans and repayments exchanged between him and Dean in the period 2 June 2017 to 26 May 2020.

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1. There are also in evidence a number of informal email exchanges between Dean and Mr Crump, in which they are negotiating the amount and terms of loans, and the payments and repayments to be made. On the Horton parties’ case, these emails would be a sham to cover up a scheme involving the proceeds of a criminal offence. As the Crump parties’ counsel submitted, there is an absence of reality to such a supposition.

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1. Finally, in Care 1 at para 33, Mr Care says that he has “not been presented with any information that suggests these payments were recorded on the business accounts of [APL]”. Mr Crump again confirms that he has not been asked for this information by Mr Care or the Horton parties’ lawyers. He exhibits documents showing that the loans were included in the “Trade Debtor” entry in the 2017-2019 accounts and in the “other Debtors” entry in the 2020 accounts onward.”

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1. Finally, the Judge addressed the fact that the Respondents in the Crump Appeal had originally alleged that the Appellants were jointly and severally liable but that this was inconsistent with the loan agreements which they had produced and concluded that this did not justify the irresistible inference of money laundering. She recorded the allegations that the Respondents had made inconsistent statements and that Dean had deliberately lied on the taking of the account at [146] to [149] but did not express any views about them beyond stating that the Appellants accepted that these matters would not justify an inference of money laundering by themselves: see [150]. On the basis of these conclusions, she dismissed the Amendment Applications and granted reverse summary judgment: see [151]. She did not determine the alternative basis for the Amendment and Strike Out Applications, namely, whether the money laundering allegations were adequately pleaded.

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I. The Order

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1. By Order dated 11 February 2025 (the “ Order ”) the Judge gave permission to the parties to amend their statements of case in all three actions in accordance with drafts which had been prepared and exchanged following the hand down of judgment. She dismissed all three applications to rely on the expert evidence of Mr Care and she granted summary judgment in relation to the paragraphs in the Crump Defence relating to the Money Laundering Scheme:

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“9. The Claimants in the Crump Claim do have judgment against the Defendants in respect of the following paragraphs or parts of paragraphs of the Defence in the Crump claim: the second sentence of 2(1)(a), 2(2), the second sentence of 2(4)(a), 2(4)(g) 29(2), 30(2), 30(3), 30(6), 32(1), the second sentence of 34(1), 43, 44, 45, 54(2), the words “pursuant to a money laundering scheme operated by Dean Norman” and “and, in any event, any such purported ‘loan agreements’ would be unenforceable by reason of illegality” in 55(1)(a), the words “and/or in furtherance of a money laundering scheme” in 55(1)(b), the words “in circumstances where those payments were part of a money laundering scheme, and in any event” and “legitimate” in 55(3) and 58(2).”

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V. The Grounds

1. The Appellants applied for permission to appeal on five Grounds of Appeal (the “ Grounds ”) which were intended to apply to all three Appeals and by Order dated 9 July 2025 Meade J granted permission to appeal. Each of the first four Grounds was broken down into a number of sub-grounds or sub-paragraphs. I set out the Grounds and then the relevant sub-paragraphs in bold and italics below before addressing their merits immediately below. It is convenient to deal with some of the Grounds in a different order from that set out in the Grounds of Appeal and, in particular, to deal with the admissibility of expert evidence (Ground 4) ahead of some of the detailed issues.

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1. There was some debate about the test which the Court should apply to “findings of fact” on a summary judgment application. I put those words in quotation marks because the findings with which I am principally concerned are findings by the relevant tribunal that one party had no real prospect of proving primary facts at trial whether by direct evidence or inference. Both parties cited different authorities on this point but by the end of the Appeals it was common ground that the applicable test was set out by the Court of Appeal in its recent decision Lorenz v Caruana [2025] EWCA Civ 606. Zacaroli LJ stated that test at [31]:

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“As this is a second appeal, the question for us is whether the Judge was correct to find that the Master’s decision was “plainly wrong”. Both the Master and the Judge viewed the question as requiring an exercise of discretion. That is not correct. The question, according to Easyair, is whether the claimant has a realistic prospect of success. That involves an evaluative judgment rather than an exercise of discretion. This makes no substantive difference in this case, however, an appeal court will only interfere with an evaluative judgment of that kind if it can be shown to be wrong “… by reason of some identifiable flaw in the treatment of the question to be decided, such as a gap in logic, a lack of consistency, or a failure to take account of some material factor, which undermined the cogency of the conclusion”: see, e.g., Re Sprintroom Ltd [2019] EWCA Civ 932, at §76.”

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Ground 1: The Judge erred in law and/or fact in deciding, on a summary basis, that the payments that form the subject of the claims against the Horton Parties in these proceedings were “a genuine loan” and “in fact loans” (J/93, 109)

(1) That decision does not “follow” from the Judge’s own summary findings on which it was based, and would be unjustified, even if such findings were to be correct (J/92, 108-109).

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(3) In making those findings, the Judge also: (a) failed to consider the Horton Parties’ other pleaded defences to the loan agreements alleged by the other parties, which defences were not themselves the subject of any summary judgment or strike out application or otherwise challenged on the applications before the Court; and (b) decided that the alleged loan agreements were genuine without first considering the Horton Parties’ pleaded case that the alleged loan payments formed part of a dishonest money laundering scheme.

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(1) Ground 1(3)(a)

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1. Grounds 1(1) and (3) raise three separate but closely related issues which I address together (although in a slightly different order). Mr Parker and Mr Gardner submitted first that the Judge rushed to judgment and held that the Appellants had no real prospect of contesting the claims by Dean, Ivan and Mr Crump (and his companies) that the sums which they claimed were genuine loans: see [93] and [109]. They also submitted that she took no account of the other defences which the Appellants raised based on Dean’s lack of authority.

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1. This ground requires an assessment of the Appellants’ statements of case. They denied that Dean had actual or ostensible authority to enter into loan agreements with Ivan and also relied on the fact that he was a connected party to set aside any loan agreement: see the Ivan Defence, ¶18.4 and ¶18.5. They also denied that he had actual or ostensible authority to enter into loan agreements with Mr Crump, APL and APL Formwork: see the Crump Defence, ¶36 and ¶39. I accept that these are separate defences which do not depend on proof that there was a Money Laundering Scheme. However, the Appellants also raised defences that the loan agreements were not intended to be binding or to create legal relations and that the loan agreements were unenforceable and these defences did depend on them establishing that there was a Money Laundering Scheme: see the Ivan Defence, ¶18 to ¶23 and the Crump Defence, ¶29 to ¶31.

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1. The Appellants did not plead separate defences of lack of authority against Dean in relation to the loan which he was alleged to have made personally and it is difficult to see how they could. His case was that at a meeting on or about 31 January 2020 Mr Horton asked him to pay HMRC, that he offered to use his and his wife’s savings to do so and that Mr Horton accepted that offer: see the Dean DC, ¶37. In their defence to his claim, the Appellants did not admit the payment and denied that Mr Horton made the request: see the Dean RDC, ¶30 and ¶31.

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1. The Judge clearly had all of these pleading points in mind. She noted the Appellants defence to Dean’s counterclaim at [88] and, after considering the contemporaneous documents, held that the Appellants had no real prospect of defending it: see [93]. In relation to both the Ivan and Crump payments, the Judge held that the Appellants had no real prospect of proving that they did not receive the funds or that they did not know that they had received them or that they had no need of the funds: see [108]. By contrast with her finding at [93] she was careful not to go further and to find that the loan agreements were binding on Select or the Partnership or Motorcycles. I therefore dismiss Ground 1(3)(a).

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(2) Ground 1(1)

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1. The real issue on Ground 1(1) was whether the Judge went any further than her earlier findings when she held that the Appellants had no real prospect of showing that the loans alleged by Dean, Ivan and Mr Crump “were not in fact loans”: see [109]. I am not satisfied that she did so. In the first sentence of [109] she was doing no more than summarising the findings which she had already made in [93] and [108]. In the second sentence, however, she was addressing the allegations made by the Appellants themselves that the loans were not genuine because they were made for the purposes of the Money Laundering Scheme.

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1. The Judge had to address that issue because it was part and parcel of the Appellant’s own case on money laundering that Dean, Ivan and Mr Crump did not make genuine loans to them. Their case was that there was no “legitimate explanation” for the circuitous payments, that the fragmentation of payments was “inconsistent with the payments having been made pursuant to legitimate loans required by the Claimant” and that even if the payments were made by way of loan those loans were made for an “illegitimate reason”: see the Dean POC, ¶23(a) to (d). Furthermore, the Appellants expressly alleged that there was no commercial justification for the Crump loans and that they were “inconsistent with any genuine loan transaction”: see the Crump Defence, ¶30. Finally, they also alleged that Ivan was “indifferent to and did not intend to create any contractual or binding relations with the Partnership (because they were not required for the money laundering scheme)”: see the Ivan Defence, ¶19.2.

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1. The Judge was required to address the issue whether the loans were genuine because the Appellants had raised it themselves and in the second sentence of [109] she summarised her conclusions. When she came to make the Order, however, the Judge did not grant summary judgment to Mr Crump on the questions whether Dean had actual or ostensible authority as pleaded in the Crump Defence, ¶36 and ¶39. I have set out paragraph 9 of the Order (above) and it did not extend to those paragraphs. Finally, there was no application to strike out or dismiss the defences of lack of authority in the Ivan Defence, ¶18.4 and ¶18.6 and the Judge did not address them. It remains open, therefore, to the Appellants to argue that even though Ivan, Dean and Mr Crump intended to enter into binding loan agreements and that those loans would otherwise be binding on Select, the Partnership or Mr Horton personally, they are not bound by those agreements because Dean had no actual or ostensible authority to enter into them on the Appellants’ behalf. I, therefore, dismiss Ground 1(1).

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Ground 1(3)(b)

1. Mr Parker’s primary argument was that the Judge started in the wrong place and that she should not have begun by considering whether the Appellants had a real prospect of demonstrating that the loans were not genuine but should have asked herself whether they had a real prospect of success on the question whether they formed part of the Money Laundering Scheme. He submitted that this was the logically prior question and that the Judge’s findings were flawed for this reason. I reject that argument for the following reasons:

(1) As I have already explained, it formed a key part of the Appellants’ case on the Money Laundering Scheme that there was no legitimate or commercial justification for the payments which Ivan and Mr Crump had made or given instructions to be made. Moreover, they pleaded in terms that the Crump loans were not genuine: see the Crump Defence, ¶30. As I have already held, the Judge was bound to address those allegations.

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(2) I accept that the question whether Dean, Ivan and Mr Crump made genuine loans to the Appellants is separate and distinct from the question whether they committed money laundering offences and that one does not follow from the other. It follows, therefore, that even if the loans were found to be genuine in the sense that Ivan and Mr Crump intended to lend money to Select and the Partnership and that Dean intended that both of them would repay those loans with interest, it would still have been open to the Court to find that all three of them had the ulterior purpose of using the bank accounts of Select and the Partnership to launder criminal property.

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(3) But I do not accept that the question whether the Appellants had a real prospect of proving money laundering at trial was the logically prior question. If Ivan and Mr Crump intended to make genuine loans to the Appellants at the request of Dean and the Appellants either authorised or ratified those payments, then it was far less likely that the three of them were engaged in the laundering of criminal property especially if Mr Horton was aware of the terms of the loans, their lack of documentation and the way in which Dean chose to account for them.

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(4) For example, the first finding which the Judge made was that the Appellants had no real prospect of establishing that the £75,000 which Dean paid to HMRC on Select’s behalf was not a genuine loan made at Mr Horton’s request: see [93]. Furthermore, and as Mr Lewis pointed out, Mr Horton chose to report Dean to the police after he and his wife had used their savings to pay Select’s tax bill and they continued to distribute dividends from Select to themselves even after having done so. I see no reason why the Judge should not have attributed significant weight to this conduct in considering whether the Appellants’ allegations of money laundering against him were fanciful.

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(5) But in any event, the Judge did not rely on the findings which she had made about the genuine nature of the loans when she came to address the Appellants’ case on money laundering. She went on to consider carefully whether the Appellants had a real prospect of proving the Money Laundering Scheme at trial and, in doing so, she assessed the evidence by reference to the indicia of money laundering which Mr Care had identified in his reports. As Mr Lewis pointed out, even if she had not made the findings at [93] to [108] at all, her reasoning and conclusions at [110] to [150] would have still have stood alone and it was necessary for the Appellants to identify clear flaws in them to succeed on the Appeals.

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(6) In substance, Mr Parker’s complaint was that the Judge must have been influenced by her conclusions at [93] to [109] in assessing whether the Appellants had a real prospect of proving the Money Laundering Scheme. But even if she was influenced by them – and there is nothing to suggest this in the Judgment itself – I do not consider this to be a flaw in her reasoning or a gap in her logic: see Lorenz v Caruana (above). It formed part of the Appellants’ pleaded case on money laundering, she had to start her assessment of the evidence somewhere and she was entitled to have regard to the findings which she made at [93] to [109] when she came to assess the Appellants’ case on the Money Laundering Scheme. That is unless, of course, those findings themselves can be challenged on these Appeals. I, therefore, turn to that issue.

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(2) The following findings, on which her decision was based, were of disputed issues of fact which were incapable of being resolved summarily and were in any event unjustified on the basis of the evidence before the Court: (a) as regards Dean, her finding that the Horton Parties knew that Dean had paid £75,000 from funds made available to him by his wife (J/92).

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1. Mr Kenny dealt with the payment made by Dean in detail in Kenny 1, ¶166.7 to ¶166.9. He produced bank statements showing that the insurance payment received by Dean’s wife, Sarah, was transferred into their joint account “D&S Norman” on 19 July 2019. He also produced the email dated 3 February 2020 (above) in which Mr Horton wrote to AIB stating that he had received a letter from HMRC confirming that Dean had paid the sum of £75,000 and asking the bank to pay a further £25,000. He also produced an email from Mrs Norman dated 30 January 2020 thanking Dean for doing so.

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1. The only point which Mr Parker and Mr Gardner took about the Judge’s conclusion at [93] was that Mr Horton’s email did not identify the account from which the payment to HMRC was made or that the funds originated from Sarah. I dismiss this argument. It is of some significance that Mr Horton did not refer to the payment by Dean or its source in Horton 2 or challenge the evidence given by Mr Kenny on this issue. If either he or his wife had wanted to say that they were mistaken and that they now believed that Dean did not make the payment or that it was not derived from his wife’s insurers, they had ample opportunity to do so and also to produce the relevant evidence. The Judge was faced with a bare denial that the loan was made unsupported by any evidence from Mr Horton and she was fully entitled to find that the Appellants had no real prospect of defending Dean’s counterclaim at trial.

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(b) as regards the Crump Parties, her apparent finding that all of the alleged loan payments were received by the Horton Parties (J/108(1), 109)

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1. The Respondents in the Crump Appeal pleaded that between 30 November 2016 and 10 January 2020 they lent the Appellants £3,088,522.42 and set out the 93 payments upon which they relied in the Crump POC, Appendix 1. The Appellants admitted that they received £1,807,300.69 but denied payments totalling £527,550. This denial was based on their inability to identify the relevant payments in Appendix 1 from their bank statements: see the Crump Defence, ¶41(1)(a) and (b).

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1. The Appellants did not admit the balance of the payments totalling £753,671.73 on the basis that they were paid into bank accounts over which they had no control: see the Crump Defence, ¶41(1)(c). Five of those payments were made to CDS and HFR and Mr Kenny gave evidence that the largest of those payments (£186,000 paid into HFR’s bank account) was used to pay Select’s PAYE to HMRC: see Kenny 1, ¶189. Additional payments totalling £315,917.73 were also made to HMRC directly by the Respondents on Select’s behalf.

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1. The remaining payments which the Appellants did not admit total no more than £25,694 and appear to have been made by the Respondents to suppliers on the Appellants’ behalf. The largest payment was for £18,783 and made to Quadzilla on behalf of Motorcycles. Quadzilla’s website describes it as a supplier of quad bikes and buggies. As the Judge pointed out, there was no reason why the Appellants could not have put forward a positive case that the payments to HMRC and the remaining payments to third parties (like the payment to Quadzilla) were not suspicious.

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1. Contrary to Ground 1(1)(3)(b) the Judge did not find that all of the payments in Appendix 1 were received by the Appellants. She recorded the Appellants’ admission that they had received £1.8 million at 94 and it is clear that she was referring to that admission at 108 and no more. Moreover, she plainly had the figures which I have set out well in mind when she came to address the Appellants’ defence of money laundering and, in particular, the use of circuitous payments: see [125]. Indeed, it was unnecessary for her to decide whether the Appellants had received all of the payments in Appendix 1 because it was the Appellants themselves – not the Respondents – who were relying on the payments from CDS and HFR which passed through their own bank accounts and also the payments made by Dean to third parties. Their case was that if they did receive the balance of the payments, then this was strong evidence of the Money Laundering Scheme and the more circuitous or third party payments to which they could refer, the stronger their defence of money laundering would appear. This was the case which the Judge was addressed.

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1. But in any event, I am not satisfied that the dispute over the figures had any bearing on the Judge’s conclusion that the loans made by Mr Crump, APL and APL Formwork were genuine because the Appellants’ defence was based only on their inability to verify the payments from their bank statements. They advanced no case that the Respondents had created fictitious loans or manipulated the figures to give the impression that the sums which the Respondents had advanced were greater than they were. It was (and no doubt still is) quite a complex exercise to arrive at a final account which will satisfy the Appellants or, if necessary, the trial judge. But the final figure will be a matter for trial.

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(c) as regards Ivan and the Crump Parties, her finding that the Horton Parties knew that the alleged loan payments had been received by them at the relevant time (J/108(2)); and (d) as regards all parties, the Judge’s finding that Mr Horton was aware of the loans and intimately involved in their operation at all material times (J/96-104, 149(1)).

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1. Mr Parker focussed on Mr Horton’s knowledge or awareness of the loans before December 2018 in his submissions on the facts and I have set out the key documents upon which the Judge relied and summarised Mr Horton’s evidence (above). Mr Parker submitted that Mr Horton gave detailed and cogent evidence on this issue which the Judge failed to consider, that it was not contradicted by the documents or demonstrably unsupportable and that the documents upon which the Judge relied fell well short of showing that the Mr Horton’s evidence would be rejected at trial.

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1. After some hesitation, I reject this argument. It is possible that I might have been prepared to accept that the Appellants had a real prospect of persuading the Court at trial that Mr Horton was not aware of the loans at the time when they were made. However, I remind myself that this is not the test which an Appeal Court must apply. The Judge carried out an evaluative exercise in assessing the documentary evidence and I can detect no flaw in the treatment of the question which she had to decide. In my judgment, she was entitled to reach the conclusion which she did and for the reasons which she gave. I have reached this conclusion for the following reasons:

(1) The Judge relied on the monthly summaries in the management accounts and the Appellants’ admission that Mr Horton received it at the time. Given the volume of the information sent to him and the trust which he placed in Dean, his evidence that he did not “focus” on the short term loans might well have been credible if he had protested that he had never seen these loans before or that Dean had never brought them to his attention. But this was not his reaction. In the email dated 14 January 2020 he acknowledged that these loans had always been shown in the management accounts.

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(2) Further on 2 March 2020 Dean sent Mr Horton a pdf headed “Short Term Loans” and reminded him that “these are the monthly packs so you will see the history of them from here”. If this was illustrative of Dean’s communications with Mr Horton, then it supports the Judge’s finding. But even so, Mr Horton’s response was not to suggest any of the information was unfamiliar to him.

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(3) The Judge also relied on a series of emails after December 2018 in which Mr Horton acknowledged the existence of the loans and either expressly or impliedly agreed to pay them: see [101] to [104]. (Footnote: 2) Mr Parker submitted that there was no acknowledgement of the debt to Mr Crump. I reject that submission. As Mr Cook pointed out, Mr Horton clearly acknowledged that sums were owed to Mr Crump in the email dated 2 March 2020.

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(4) Mr Horton’s evidence was that he intended to repay debts which were genuinely owed by Select and was prepared to agree a payment plan in principle. It was also his evidence that he was confused about what was owing and felt intimidated at the meeting with Ivan and Mr Crump. Again, this evidence might have been credible had it not been for the case which the Appellants pleaded in the Crump Defence, ¶58(1). In that paragraph, they pleaded a change of position defence based on their understanding that the sums received were not loans but rather “the Defendants’ own money to treat as they wished”. As the Judge pointed out, it is an essential element of that defence that the Appellants were aware of the payments and that they had received them.

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(5) Mr Horton’s evidence might have carried more conviction if the Appellants had withdrawn their change of position defence to Mr Crump’s unjust enrichment claim or sought to qualify or explain it. Mr Kenny took the point that they had admitted this knowledge in Kenny 1, ¶118. But Mr Horton did not address this point at all in Horton 2. In particular, he did not suggest that Mr Kenny had misunderstood the Crump Defence or that he was mistaken or even that the defence was a technical one suggested by his lawyers and that it did not imply that he was aware of the payments when they were made.

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(6) Finally, and as Mr Kenny also pointed out, it is inherently improbable that the Appellants would have received £3 million (or even £1.8 million) and distributed £1.35 million in dividends without investigating the source of these funds. Indeed, Mr Horton did not attempt to explain in Horton 2 how the Appellants could have believed that Select had distributable profits or reserves to declare dividends on that scale.

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Ground 2: The Judge erred in law in holding that the test to be applied at trial in civil cases alleging money laundering is that the circumstances in which the property was handled must be such as to give rise to an irresistible inference that it could only have been derived from crime (J/57).

1. It was common ground that the civil standard of proof applied to the Court’s determination whether Dean, Ivan and Mr Crump participated in the Money Laundering Scheme. It was also common ground that where the prosecution (or, in this case, one of the parties) was unable to identify the predicate offence or offences from which the criminal property was derived, it was open to the prosecution (or that party) to prove that it was criminal property by adducing evidence of the circumstances in which the property was handled. Indeed, the Appellants themselves relied on Anwoir in support of this proposition.

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1. The issue between the parties was whether the test in Anwoir either should or had to be modified where the prosecution (or a party) had to prove that assets or funds were criminal property on a balance of probabilities (the civil standard) rather than beyond reasonable doubt (the criminal standard). Mr Parker and Mr Gardner did not cite any authority for the proposition that the Anwoir test must be modified and they accepted that in many of the decided cases the Court used the language of “irresistible inference” derived from Anwoir even though the civil standard applied. In my judgment, the Judge accurately summarised the authorities in the Judgment, [51] to [55] and it is important for me to note that Mr Parker and Mr Gardner did not submit otherwise.

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1. Many of those authorities cite Gale v SOCA [2009] EWHC 1015 (QB) which involved civil recovery proceedings brought by the Serious Organised Crime Agency in respect of properties worth £2 million against the Defendant (or in the name of his former wife and son). Griffith Williams J stated that the standard of proof was the civil standard of a balance of probabilities before going on to state that the test was as set out in Anwoir. He stated as follows at [9] and also [17]:

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“9. The burden of proof is on the claimant and the standard of proof they must satisfy is the balance of probabilities. While the claimant alleged serious criminal conduct, the criminal standard of proof does not apply, although “cogent evidence is generally required to satisfy a civil tribunal that a person has been fraudulent or behaved in some other reprehensible

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manner. But the question is always whether the tribunal thinks it more probable than not” – see Secretary of State for the Home Department –v- Rehman [2003] 1 AC 153 at paragraph 55 per Lord Hoffmann…”

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“17. I respectfully agree with and adopt the above cited observations of Sullivan J, Langley J and King J and if support is needed it is to be found in the decision of the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division in R –v- Anwoir & Others [2008] 2 Cr App R 36 at para 21 at page 539 that there are two ways in which the Crown can prove in money laundering offences that property was derived from crime - either by proving it derived from unlawful conduct of a specific kind or kinds or by evidence of the circumstances in which the property was handled, such as to give rise to the irresistible inference that it could only have been derived from crime (although in criminal proceedings the higher standard of proof is required).”

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1. NCA v Khan [2017] EWHC 27 (QB) also involved a claim for civil recovery this time brought by the National Crime Agency for the recovery of property and funds held in a number of bank accounts. O’Farrell J adopted a very similar approach to the evidence at [26] to [28]:

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“26. The burden of proof in establishing that any of the properties are recoverable property for the purposes of POCA lies with the NCA. The standard of proof is the balance of probabilities, that is, whether on the evidence the facts alleged are more likely than not to have occurred: Re B [2008] UKHL 35 per Lord Hoffmann Para.13 and Baroness Hale Paras.62-70; Re S-B [2009] UKSC per Lady Hale Para.10; Gale v SOCA [2011] UKSC 49 per Lord Phillips Para.54, Lord Clarke Para.57, Lord Dyson Para.123.

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1. It is not necessary to prove that the property was acquired as the result of any particular criminal offence but it is necessary to prove that the property was obtained by the kinds of unlawful conduct relied on. This may be established by evidence of the circumstances in which the property was handled, such as to give rise to the irresistible inference that it could only have been derived from crime: Gale v SOCA [2009] EWHC 1015 per Griffith Williams J Paras.12-17; Olupitan v The Director of the Assets Recovery Agency [2008] EWCA Civ 104 per Carnwath LJ Paras.22-24; R v Anwoir [2008] EWCA Crim 1354 per Latham LJ Para.21.

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1. While a claim for civil recovery may not be sustained solely upon the basis that a respondent has no identifiable lawful income to warrant his lifestyle, the absence of any evidence to explain that lifestyle may provide the answer because the inference may be drawn from the failure to provide an explanation, or from an explanation which was untruthful (and deliberately so), that the source was unlawful: Gale v SOCA (above) per Griffith Williams J Para.14; Olupitan (above) per Carnwath LJ Paras. 13-18.”

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1. In NCA v Baker [2020] EWHC 822 (Admin) the issue was whether the Court should discharge three unexplained wealth orders made pursuant to section 362A to 362R of POCA (each an “ UWO ”) and related freezing injunctions obtained by the National Crime Agency on a without notice basis. One issue which Lang J had to decide was what inference to draw from the use of a web of offshore companies to hold a particular property. She held that the use of complex offshore structures is not without more a ground for believing that they are being used for criminal purposes and relied upon Anwoir in reaching this conclusion:

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“95. Ms Kelly placed significant weight on the "complex and secretive" manner in which Property 1 was obtained and subsequently handled, eventually being transferred to a Panamanian foundation which is subject to strict secrecy laws, whilst being managed by property management companies in the UK (paragraph 27.4 of her first supplementary witness statement).

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1. This raises an important point of principle. The need for caution in treating complexity of property holding through corporate structures as grounds for suspicion has been recognised in the context of the risk of dissipation of assets in civil proceedings. In Candy v Holyoake [2018] Ch 297, Gloster LJ said, at [59]:

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"Several cases have emphasised that there is nothing implicit in complex, offshore corporate structures which evidences an unjustifiable risk of dissipation. As Arnold J put in VTB v Nutrietek [2012] 2 BCLC 437, 517, para 233 (approved by the Court of Appeal ....):

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"It is not uncommon for international businessmen, and indeed quoted UK companies, to use offshore vehicles for their operations, particularly for tax reasons. This may make it difficult to enforce a judgment. But in that respect claimants such as VTB have to take defendants such as Mr Malofeev as they find them. More is required before the court will conclude that there is a risk of dissipation".

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Similarly, in Mobil Cerro Negro Ltd Petroleos de Venezuela [2008] 2 All ER (Comm) 1034, para 62 Walker J rejected that there was anything unusual about the ready transferability of assets within a corporate structure ..... ".

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In the present case, there was no or only minimal evidence to suggest a risk of the defendants dissipating their assets. There was also nothing about either the corporate structure or the ongoing corporate reorganisation that was suggestive of a risk of dissipation ...... there was no evidence in this case that the companies were set up or being used for wrongful purposes;

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and there was no allegation in the claim that any fraud was facilitated by the use of offshore companies (or similar) ... "

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1. In my judgment, these principles apply equally in the context of UWOs. The use of complex offshore corporate structures or trusts is not, without more, a ground for believing that they have been set up, or are being used, for wrongful purposes, such as money laundering. There are lawful reasons - privacy, security, tax mitigation - why very wealthy people invest their capital in complex offshore corporate structures or trusts. Of course, such structures may also be used to disguise money laundering, but there must be some additional evidential basis for such a belief, going beyond the complex structures used.

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1. The Respondents relied upon the principle established in R v Anwoir [2008] EWCA Crim 1354, [2008] All ER 582 where the Court of Appeal held, per Latham LJ at [21], that where the Crown seeks to prove that property derives from crime by evidence of the circumstances in which the property is handled, it must be "such as to give rise to the irresistible inference that it can only be derived from crime" (emphasis added). See also: R v MK and AS [2009] EWCA Crim 952 per Hallet LJ, at [12]; National Crime Agency v Khan & Ors [2017] EWHC 27 (Admin), per O'Farrell J at [27].

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1. I agree with the Respondents' submission that the evidence as to the manner in which Property 1 has been handled in this case does not give rise to an "irresistible inference" that it is the product of unlawful conduct.

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1. In conclusion, I consider that the NCA's assumption that RA was the founder of Villa Magna and provided its funds, was unreliable. It was rebutted by the cogent evidence that DN was the founder of Villa Magna and the source of its funds, and the ultimate beneficial owner of Property 1.”

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1. It is fair to say that it is not apparent from any of these authorities or those cited by the Judge that the point which Mr Parker and Mr Gardner took on these Appeals had ever been taken before or that it had been considered by the Court of Appeal. I was initially attracted to their argument on the basis that the difference between the standard of proof in civil and criminal proceedings must require a modification to the Anwoir test. The analogy which I debated in oral argument with both Mr Parker and Mr Cook was with findings of fraud or dishonesty. In cases of that kind the Court may not draw an inference of dishonesty or fraud if the evidence is consistent with innocence or negligence and there must be something to “tip the balance” in favour of finding of fraud. For example, in Suppipat v Narongdej [2023] EWHC 1988 (Comm) Calver J set out the test at [904] (Footnote: 3):

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“a. It is not open to the Court to infer dishonesty from facts which are consistent with honesty or negligence, there must be some fact which tilts the balance and justifies an inference of dishonesty, and this fact must be both pleaded and proved.

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b. The requirement for a claimant in proving fraud is that the primary facts proved give rise to an inference of dishonesty or fraud which is more probable than one of innocence or negligence.

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c. Although not strictly a requirement for such a claim, motive "is a vital ingredient of any rational assessment". By and large dishonest people are dishonest for a reason; while establishing a motive for conspiracy is not a legal requirement, the less likely the motive, the less likely the intention to conspire unlawfully.

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d. Assessing a party's motive to participate in a fraud also requires taking into account the disincentives to participation in the fraud; this includes the disinclination to behave immorally or dishonestly, but also the damage to reputation (both for the individual and, where applicable, the business) and the potential risk to the "liberty of the individuals involved" in case they are found out.”

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1. Furthermore, many of the cases upon which Mr Cook relied both before the Judge and before me involved inferences to be drawn from the unexplained lifestyle of the Defendant or their failure to explain the basis of their wealth or to cooperate with insolvency professionals or regulators: see, e.g., Khan (above). Speaking for myself, I am used to drawing inferences from conduct of this kind when making a finding on a balance of probabilities but I would be much more circumspect in doing so if the test was “irresistible inference”. My initial impression was the Anwoir test imposed a higher standard of proof than the Court appeared to be applying in practice in many of the relevant cases.

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1. On reflection, these concerns were more apparent than real. In my judgment, there is no difficulty in applying the civil standard of proof to the Anwoir test. In deciding the primary facts the Court will apply the civil standard of a balance of probabilities. Moreover, the Court will apply the civil standard to findings of primary fact even if those facts involve the drawing of an inference or inferences. For example, it may be necessary for the Court to make findings of fact about the state of mind of the individuals who are alleged to have participated in the money laundering scheme and, in particular, about their actual knowledge of primary facts. (Footnote: 4) But once the Court has made findings of primary fact, it must then apply the Anwoir test. If the party asserting that property is criminal property relies on the second limb of the Anwoir test, then the Court must be satisfied that the only possible explanation for the receipt or acquisition of the property in question is that it was derived from the proceeds of criminal activity.

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1. For example, in Baker Lang J had no difficulty in applying both the civil standard of proof and the Anwoir test. The issue for her was whether the relevant properties were acquired as a means of laundering the proceeds of unlawful conduct by Mr Rakhat Aliyev, a national of Kazakhstan, who died in prison in Austria on 24 February 2015: see [4] and [66]. Although there was evidence that he had operated through a number of offshore companies and structures, there was also cogent evidence before the Court that the beneficial owner of the properties was Mrs Dariga Nazarbayeva. This evidence took the form of a detailed solicitor’s letter supported by documentary evidence which appeared to be genuine and capable of verification by the NCA: see [74] and [75]. Lang J could not draw the irresistible inference, therefore, that the property was derived from criminal activity: see 99.

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1. On the other hand, Griffith Williams J was prepared to draw such an inference in Gale. But he was only prepared to do so after an exhaustive review of the evidence and after making very detailed findings of fact. As an illustration of the kind of fact finding which is necessary before the Court will draw an irresistible inference that property is criminal property, I set out the summary which he gave at [140]:

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“I have made specific findings of fact in the course of this judgment – see paragraphs 54, 55, 57, 65, 66, 72, 73, 76, 78, 84, 89, 90, 93, 97, 99, 100, 103, 104, 109, 111, 115, 116, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 132, 134 and 136 - and so at the risk of some repetition, I am in no doubt that DG and TG engaged in unlawful conduct – in DG’s case, money laundering and drug trafficking, in TG’s case, money laundering. There is also evidence of tax evasion in four jurisdictions. They have acquired capital and various assets as a direct consequence of the money laundering and/or drug trafficking but it is not possible to quantify the extent of the tax evasion or to estimate the extent, if at all, that it contributed to their capital wealth. For reasons given during the course of the judgment and below, I am satisfied the Receiver has correctly identified recoverable property. I found DG a witness whose evidence, on the central issues, was wholly unreliable. He was so often demonstrably lying. I am not prepared to believe the evidence of TG insofar as she purported to confirm his account or to explain her involvement; she too was shown to be a liar about matters of real moment. While I am prepared to accept that DG was the moving force behind all criminal conduct, she was hardly ignorant of what he was doing and played her full part in the money laundering. I base that conclusion not only on the unfavourable impression I formed of her as a witness of the truth, but in particular on the evidence about the paper concealed in the candlestick, her knowledge of the off-shore accounts and companies and her assumption of the role as money launderer when DG was in prison in Portugal. My other conclusions are as follows:-

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• I agree with the Receiver that DG and TG have accumulated significant wealth for which there is no evidence of lawful sourcing.

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• DG was engaged in drug trafficking in the UK before he left to live in Spain: this conclusion is based upon his admissions to the Portuguese authorities (paragraph 126 above) which corroborates UK police intelligence reports both before he moved to Spain and subsequently.

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• There is no evidence of him earning anything other than modest earnings from any business interests he had in Spain – his earnings would have been no more than enough to contribute to his living expenses and certainly insufficient to explain any capital savings or the capital savings he and TG made; in the unlikely event that any part of those earnings formed part of his and TG’s capital savings, then they were sourced from criminal conduct.

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• There is no evidence that DG made any money from lawful property speculation, development or investment in Spain or elsewhere – I reject out-of-hand DG’s evidence and the evidence of TG that his property interests were funded by his mother; her tax records contradict his claims that she was a person of financial substance; his capital base was at all times, the proceeds of crime: he used his mother’s name to launder the proceeds of crime in Spain and latterly in the UK.

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• While the picture is not clear and it may be that some of the monies for the purchase of Mezquita and Las Hortensias can be traced to the proceeds of sale of El Sardinell and Casa Manana, all were purchased with laundered monies and/or the proceeds of drug trafficking.

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• DG owned the ‘Hanja’ and used Tideswell Ltd and his brother, Philip Moore as ‘fronts’ to hide that interest – Tideswell was the name chosen for a company which owned a boat and DG said in evidence that he named the company that was incorporated for his flying business, ‘Airswell’.

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• DG lied about his links to the purchase of Calle Fluvia No 9; I am satisfied he was not a broker but was behind the decision, both in identifying its convenient location and in the provision of funds.

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• DG and TG made no attempt to challenge the freezing order over their Allied Dunbar Isle of Man accounts because they knew no challenge would succeed; similarly, they did not challenge a freezing order in Ireland, preferring to reach a compromise by which they accepted.

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• DG’s associations with drug traffickers cannot be a coincidence – there were Allen and Barry as well as his brother Christopher, who with Barry was arrested trying to smuggle 21 kilograms of cannabis into France; as Barry and Christopher Moore lacked funds, my conclusion is that either DG provided the funds for the purchase of that cannabis or was in some way associated with its carriage into France on route to the UK.

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• The use of false passports and false names, while consistent with money laundering, is equally consistent with drug trafficking.

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• The construction of the isolated airstrip, the use of light aircraft, the links with Morocco provide evidence that DG was close to the source of supply of cannabis; although DG claimed the aircraft was not large enough to transport much by way of weight, I am satisfied there was enough room to transport significant amounts.

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• The use of bank accounts, nominees, offshore accounts, offshore companies and the complicated transactions summarised above and shown on the relevant charts appended hereto relating to the acquisitions of 110 Corhampton Road, Melbourne Beach, Casa Paraiso, Glendale Road, 118 & 120 Hurn Road, Mezquita and Las Hortensias are not only redolent of money laundering but provide the cogent and compelling evidence from which I am prepared to infer on the balance of probabilities that DG and TG were actively involved in money laundering from the date they moved to Spain.

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1. I have concluded the only inference must be that the recoverable property identified and listed in Schedule 2 to the Interim Receivers Order was obtained from the unlawful conduct alleged – money laundering, tax evasion and drug trafficking.”

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1. Coming back to the present case, the Judge considered all of the relevant authorities and rejected Mr Parker’s arguments that the Anwoir test had been modified in those cases where the standard of proof was the civil standard: see [56]. In my judgment, she was right to do so. The “full” test which requires an “irresistible inference” that the relevant property could “only” be derived from criminal activity has been consistently applied at first instance in the authorities to which the Judge referred. Those authorities were binding on the Judge and I am bound to follow them as a matter of comity. Moreover, Mr Parker and Mr Gardner did not suggest that there was a conflict between the first instance authorities or that there was a real prospect that the Court of Appeal would adopt a different test. As Mr Cook pointed out, the Appellants did not advance the argument before me that Males J (as he then was) adopted a different or modified test in SOCA v Namli [2013] EWHC 1200 (QB). For these reasons, therefore, I dismiss Ground 2.

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She should have held: (1) that, at trial, it is only necessary to show, on the balance of probabilities, that the property was derived from crime and that this can be established if the circumstances in which the property was handled give rise to an inference that it is more likely than not to have been derived from crime.

1. In his oral submissions, Mr Parker focussed on trying to persuade me that the civil standard of proof required a modification in the test. For the reasons which I have given, I do not accept that submission. The test requires the Court to be satisfied that it is appropriate to draw the inference that the property could only be derived from criminal activity and that no other inference is possible. In my judgment, that is a legal test and unaffected by the standard of proof. As I say, it will be for the party asserting money laundering to prove all of the primary facts upon which the relevant inference is to be drawn to the civil standard before inviting the Court to consider whether the legal test is satisfied.

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and/or (2) that the words “irresistible” and “only” do not make any material difference to the test as formulated in R v Anwoir [2009] 1 WLR 980 in its application to civil proceedings.

1. Again, for the reasons which I have given I am satisfied that the words “irresistible” and “only” do make a material difference to the legal test. That difference is illustrated by the decisions in Baker (where Lang J was not able to draw the inference) and Gale (where Griffiths Williams J was able to do so). As Mr Cook pointed out, SOCA or the NCA has usually relied on the second limb of the Anwoir test where it is not possible to specify precisely what predicate offences the Defendant has committed but it is obvious from the circumstantial evidence that the property in question must have been derived from criminal activity. Again, Gale is a case in point. The amount of property which the Defendant had acquired and the length of the conduct in question made it unrealistic to try and prove the individual predicate offences from which the property was derived. But the evidence was overwhelming that it was derived either from drug trafficking or tax evasion.

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1. I also find both Baker and Gale instructive in relation to the practical application of the test. In Baker Lang J accepted that the use of complex offshore corporate structures or trusts is not, without more, a ground for believing that they have been set up or were being used for wrongful purposes such as money laundering. By contrast, Griffith Williams J found in Gale that the use of bank accounts, nominees, offshore accounts, offshore companies and complicated transactions was “cogent and compelling evidence” from which he was prepared to infer on the balance of probabilities that the Defendants were actively involved in money laundering.

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1. In my judgment, the use of circuitous payments, fragmentation and the other hallmarks of money laundering which Mr Care identified are not, without more, reasons to draw an irresistible inference that the source of the funds paid by the Respondents to the Appellants were derived from criminal property. The fact that all of those hallmarks were present and the frequency with which they were used might have provided cogent and compelling evidence from which such an inference could be drawn. But it depended on the explanations given by the Respondents and, in particular, whether they had given credible evidence about the reasons why Dean had adopted those accounting practices and the source of the relevant funds. If the Respondents had refused to adduce such evidence or if there had been a real prospect of challenging that evidence at trial, it might have been appropriate to grant permission to amend or to refuse reverse summary judgment. But those were conclusions on the facts and I am fully satisfied that the Judge stated the correct test.

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Ground 4: The Judge erred in law and/or in fact in ruling that the expert evidence of Mr Tim Care was inadmissible and in giving no, or no sufficient, weight to that evidence (J/81, 84) (save in relation to selected parts of that evidence which she considered to be adverse to the Horton Parties’ case).

1. The present case is unusual for three principal reasons. The first is that it is not a claim by a public agency (or quasi-public agency) to freeze or recover criminal property. It is a case in which the Appellants assert money laundering by the Respondents as a defence to claims for debt. They contend that there were no binding loan agreements and, even if the purported loan agreements were intended to be binding, they are void and unenforceable for illegality. The second reason is that in all three Appeals the Respondents have adduced direct evidence that the funds which they advanced were not derived from the proceeds of crime but from legitimate sources.

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1. The third and final reason is that the Appellants were unable to offer an alternative theory (far less any evidence) to explain what criminal offences the Respondents had committed to generate the funds which they advanced. In reply, I invited Mr Parker to speculate on the nature of the criminal activity from which the funds were derived and he submitted that it was likely that both Ivan and Mr Crump were involved in a fraud on HMRC. But this was not the Appellants’ pleaded case and in fairness to Mr Parker, it was no more than speculation and offered at my request. Importantly, the Appellants had no personal knowledge which would have supported such a conclusion.

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1. The only positive evidence upon which the Appellants were able to rely in support of their case that the Respondents were engaged in a Money Laundering Scheme was the expert evidence of Mr Care. If Mr Care’s evidence had been limited to identifying the hallmarks or indicia of money laundering and analysing the individual transactions to show how prevalent or widespread those hallmarks were, then I might well have admitted his evidence but given it fairly limited weight given that there was direct evidence of the source of funds. But Mr Care went further in Care 1 and Care 2 and expressed the view that there were reasonable grounds to believe that the individual Respondents were guilty of money laundering.

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1. Moreover, Mr Care went further again in Care 3 and expressed the view that those indicia led to the irresistible inferences both that Dean was engaged in a Money Laundering Scheme and that the payments made by Mr Crump, APL and APL Formwork formed part of that scheme. Moreover, he expressed those opinions before Mr Crump had given evidence about the source of the funds which he and his companies advanced to the Appellants: see Care 3, ¶5. Finally, Mr Care continued to hold the opinion that there were reasonable grounds to believe that Ivan was engaged in a Money Laundering Scheme and he gave little or no weight Ivan’s evidence about the source of the funds in Ivan 2 and 3 (which he had seen when he made Care 3).

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1. The Appellants may well have launched the Amendment Applications in the hope that they would uncover a genuine Money Laundering Scheme and that the Respondents would be unable to identify the legitimate source of the loans. But by the final hearing before the Judge, they had all done so and the only evidence of money laundering to which the Appellants could point were the opinions expressed by Mr Care. In my judgment, the real or core issue for the Judge was whether, on the basis of that evidence alone, the Appellants had any real prospect of persuading the Court at trial to reject the evidence of Dean, Ivan and Mr Crump about the source of the funds which they lent to the Appellants and then to draw the irresistible inference that those funds could only have been derived from criminal conduct.

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1. In my judgment, the Judge was right to exclude his evidence and for the reasons which she gave: see [79] to [84]. By Care 3 he was expressing opinions on the application of a legal test to the facts without any legal qualifications to do so. For the reasons which I have already explained, I did not find it easy to decide how to apply the Anwoir test and I have set out my conclusions only after hearing detailed submissions from highly experienced leading counsel. I have also explained how in practical terms the test should be applied in the present case. If Mr Care had been instructed that the individual indicia or hallmarks of money laundering could not without more justify the irresistible inference that the Respondents were guilty of money laundering, I doubt whether he would have expressed the opinions which he did.

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1. Likewise, if he had been instructed that it was wholly legitimate to consider whether Dean, Ivan and Mr Crump had given credible evidence that the funds which they advanced to the Appellants were not derived from criminal activity but from their successful trading as businessmen or the proceeds of an insurance policy, I doubt whether Mr Care would have expressed the same opinions either. There is no suggestion that the Judge did not direct herself correctly in relation to the applicable test for the admission of expert evidence and, in my judgment, she was entitled to find that his evidence was not admissible because he was not qualified to give evidence on the ultimate issue (which involved the application of a specific legal test) but that, even if it was admissible, it was neither necessary nor of assistance to admit it.

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1. In their Skeleton Argument, Mr Parker and Mr Gardner relied on two criminal cases in which expert evidence on money laundering was admitted. In R v Gill [2016] EWCA Civ 1366 the Court of Appeal adopted the reasoning of William Davis J (as he then was) in refusing permission to appeal on the basis that the judge had been wrong to admit evidence from a money laundering expert. They quoted his decision at [20]:

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“The judge applied Part 33A.1 of the Criminal Practice Direction as current at the time of the trial when deciding whether the evidence of Mr Lowe was admissible. This set out the relevant criteria in clear terms. Is the evidence relevant to a matter in issue? Is it needed to provide information likely to be outside the jury's knowledge and experience? Is the witness competent to give the opinion relied on? Mr Lowe's evidence about the features commonly found in money laundering arrangements plainly was relevant to a matter in issue. The defence case was that the circumstances were consistent with legitimate business dealings. The prosecution were entitled to adduce evidence to rebut that assertion. The way in which money laundering schemes work was outside the jury's knowledge and experience. Plainly they were entitled to bring their own common sense to bear on how to interpret the passage of huge sums of cash through the accounts of shell companies for no apparent reason. But

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they were also entitled to be assisted by the evidence of someone with experience of the operation of money laundering schemes and the common features of such schemes. Moreover, there were aspects of the evidence of Mr Lowe which went beyond the general nature of the arrangement and which were not in any way a matter of common sense e.g. the significance of large amounts of Scottish and Northern Irish banknotes being paid into the accounts and of the presence of a torn banknote as a token. Mr Lowe's expertise arose from his long experience of money laundering investigations. He did not purport to base his view on scientific or similar data. That did not prevent him from being an expert any more than a court would be prevented from receiving expert evidence from a police officer of sufficient experience who gave evidence of drug dealing or of gang culture. In his ruling the judge observed that Mr Lowe had given such evidence on many previous occasions, that he had been involved in cases of this type for over 15 years and that he had provided training to a variety of Government departments and non-governmental organisations. He was competent to give the evidence he did. The evidence of Mr Lowe was properly admitted.”

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1. In R v Gjurra [2016] EWCA Civ 811 the Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal on the basis that the judge was wrong to admit the evidence of two police officers as expert evidence because this gave their evidence enhanced status. No objection was taken to their evidence at trial and the Court rejected the submission that they did not have the relevant expertise, that they were not independent and that they had given evidence on the ultimate issue: see [10] to [19]. Mr Parker did not take me to either decision in oral argument or place particular emphasis upon them. Having read both cases, I did not find either decision of any assistance in the present case for a number of reasons:

(1) In Gill the Appellant’s defence was that he did not know or suspect that the money which he handled was criminal property: see [12]. The question whether the money was criminal property did not arise and the issue for the Court of Appeal was whether the prosecution was entitled to adduce expert evidence about the hallmarks of money laundering to assist the jury to decide whether to accept the Appellant’s evidence.

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(2) In Gjurra the prosecution’s case was that the Appellant was a cash collector and his co-accused a courier delivering cash to him which was specifically identified as criminal property in an earlier count and the proceeds of drug dealing: see [2] to [5]. The principal evidence against him was a mobile phone and his defence (which the jury rejected) was that the phone was not his: see [6]. Again, the question whether the money was criminal property did not arise and the issue for the Court of Appeal was whether it was appropriate to describe the police officers, who also gave evidence about the hallmarks of money laundering more generally, as “experts”.

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(3) In neither case, therefore, did the Court of Appeal have to consider the second limb of the Anwoir test and, if so, whether it was appropriate to admit the evidence of an expert who expressed the kind of views which Mr Care expressed in the present case and where, as here, the Court had direct evidence about the source of the relevant funds.

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(4) In any event, the test which the Court of Appeal applied in both cases was not the same as CPR Part 35.1 which required the Judge to be satisfied that Mr Care’s evidence was reasonably required to resolve the proceedings.

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1. I dismiss the Appeals against the Judge’s refusal to grant the Expert Applications and to admit the evidence of Mr Care. As I indicated in argument, I might have been prepared to admit it myself but for the reasons which I have already given, I would have attached little or no weight to Mr Care’s conclusions that the Anwoir test was satisfied (or would be satisfied if the three actions went to trial).

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3. The Judge in any event erred in law and/or in fact in deciding that the Horton Parties have no real prospect of establishing that the transactions that form the subject of these proceedings were part of a dishonest money laundering scheme (J/115, 127, 129, 134, 139, 140, 141, 144, 148, 150, 151).

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1. The Appellants make a number of detailed criticisms of the Judge’s reasoning in Grounds 3(1) to 3(7) which I consider briefly below. But their principal criticism was that the Judge focussed on the individual sums which the Respondents advanced rather than the 700 or so transactions which formed the subject matter of the Account. In my judgment, the Judge approached the evidence correctly by asking herself whether the Appellants had a real prospect of persuading the Court that the advances which the Respondents made were derived from criminal activity. If they were unable to do so, then it was unnecessary for her to consider the wider allegations of money laundering. In substance, it was the Appellants who were inviting the Judge to undertake a mini-trial which went well beyond the amendments which they were proposing to make.

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(1) In reaching that decision, the Judge: (a) failed to take the correct approach on a summary judgment or amendment application, but instead engaged in a review of a small part of the factual evidence before her (which comprised 273 pages of witness evidence, 90 pages of expert reports and 5,936 pages of exhibits), made numerous findings in relation to disputed facts which could only properly be determined at trial (including those addressed under Ground 1), and took no proper account of what further evidence might reasonably be available at trial

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1. Mr Parker and Mr Gardner made no criticism of the Judge’s summary of the law at [21] to [29] but rather challenged the way in which she applied it. Although I should pay tribute to Mr Parker’s persuasive submissions, I am unable to accept his analysis. Once it is accepted that the Appellants would have to persuade the Court at trial to draw an irresistible inference that the sums which the Respondents advanced were derived only from criminal activity, it can be seen that the Judge did not apply either the amendment test or the summary judgment test incorrectly. She went through each of the hallmarks or indicia of money laundering which the Appellants had identified and asked herself whether, even if the evidence which the Respondents had given was rejected, the Court would draw an irresistible inference of money laundering: see, in particular, [115], [124], [127], [134], [139], [141], [148] and [150].

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1. In my judgment, the Judge was entitled to conclude that the Appellants had no real prospect of persuading the Court at trial to draw an irresistible inference that the funds which Dean, Ivan or Mr Crump (or his companies) advanced could only be derived from criminal activity and, in this context, it is important to bear in mind that the Appellants had to prove that the funds which they transferred to Select and the Partnership were already the proceeds of crime. For example, it would not have been enough to show that Ivan or Mr Crump had used Select or the Partnership to “warehouse” profits or receipts from their legitimate businesses in order to hide them from HMRC. Before they had any prospect of establishing that any of the Respondents had committed offences which fell within sections 327 to 329, they had to show that the payments made to Select and the Partnership constituted or represented the benefit of criminal conduct. The Judge was well aware of this: see [45] and [46].

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1. It is possible that there might have been a defence open to the Appellants even if they were unable to show that the advances made by Dean, Ivan and Mr Crump (or his companies) could not be derived from legitimate trading or the proceeds of an insurance policy. If they had been able to show that the loan repayments which they themselves had made back to the Respondents were derived from criminal activity such as tax fraud and that those repayments had been “recycled” and lent back to them, then this fact pattern might have given rise to a defence which carried a real prospect of success. But, as the Judge carefully noted, the Appellants had not carried out this exercise and Mr Care had not considered it: see [134]. In substance, therefore, the Appellants had to satisfy her that they had a real prospect of persuading the Court at trial that Dean, Ivan and Mr Crump had already been engaged in criminal activity and that the money which they advanced was the proceeds of that activity.

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1. In HRH the Duchess of Sussex v Associated Newspapers Ltd [2021] EWHC 273 (Ch), [2021] 4 WLR 35 Warby J cited the well-known principles set out by Lewison J in Easyair (cited by the Judge at [27]). He then continued as follows:

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“14. Easyair principles (vi) and (vii) contain echoes of the law’s traditional disapproval of “a desire to investigate alleged obscurities and a hope that something will turn up …” as a basis for defending a summary judgment application; a case that is “all surmise and Micawberism” will not do: see The Lady Anne Tennant v Associated Newspapers Ltd [1979] FSR 298, 303 (Sir Robert Megarry V-C). The focus is not just on whether something more might emerge, but also—and crucially—on whether, if so, it might “affect the outcome of the case”; and the court’s task is to assess whether there are “reasonable grounds” for believing that both these things would occur: see The Bolton Pharmaceutical Co 100 Ltd v Doncaster Pharmaceuticals Group Ltd [2006] EWCA Civ 661; [2007] FSR 63, para 18 (Mummery LJ).

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1. As Mummery LJ warned in the Doncaster case at [10], on applications for summary judgment the court must be alert to “the defendant, who seeks to avoid summary judgment by making a case look more complicated and difficult than it really is”. But as he also said at [11], the court should beware “the cocky claimant who … confidently presents the factual and legal issues as simpler and easier than they really are and urges the court to be ‘efficient …’”. Efficiency is not a ground for entering summary judgment. Judgment without a trial may sometimes result in huge savings of time and costs; that would have been so in the hugely expensive litigation in Three Rivers District Council v Bank of England. But neither Part 24, nor the overriding objective, permits the Court to enter judgment on the basis that the claimant has a strong case, the defence is not likely to succeed, and the time and costs involved in a trial are disproportionate to the potential gains.

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1. The overriding objective of “deciding cases justly and at proportionate cost” does have a role to play if the Court concludes there is no realistic prospect of a successful defence, and the question arises whether there is “some other compelling reason” for a trial. At that point, the Court would be bound to have regard to considerations such as saving expense, proportionality, and the competing demands on the scarce resources (CPR r 1.1(2)(b), (c) and (e)). It is rare for the Court to find a compelling reason for a trial, when it has concluded there is only one realistic outcome. The defendant has not suggested that this is such a case. My focus must be on whether it is realistic or fanciful to suppose the claims might fail at trial.

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1. Mr White QC (who argued the defendant’s case on misuse of private information) invites me to bear in mind what he says is the rarity of summary judgments in the fields of law with which I am concerned. He and Mr Speck (who argued the case on copyright infringement) point to the need for an “intense focus” on the specifics of the competing rights in play, suggesting that it will usually be impossible to conduct this otherwise than at a trial. Mr Rushbrooke QC counters that summary judgment has been granted in several such cases, of which the most notable and the closest comparator is the decision of Blackburne J, affirmed on appeal in HRH Prince of Wales v Associated Newspapers Ltd [2006] EWHC 522 (Ch); [2006] EWCA Civ 1776; [2008] Ch 57 (I would add, in the case of copyright, The Lady Anne Tennant, decided under the previous and more defendant-friendly procedures of the Rules of the Supreme Court). Mr Rushbrooke suggests, further, that many of these cases are resolved finally at or shortly after the interim injunction stage.

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1. I do not gain much help from these broad propositions. There can be plain and obvious cases in privacy and copyright, as there are in other fields of law. So long as the lens is not obscured by fog or dust, it may be possible to see clearly that a case has only one plausible outcome, and a trial is superfluous. A recent example is the decision of Nicol J in BVG v LAR [2020] EWHC 931 (QB), to grant the claimant summary judgment on his claim in misuse of private information. The judge did not find it necessary to resolve all the factual issues before concluding with “no hesitation” that the claimant’s privacy rights would “far outweigh” the free speech rights relied on by the defendant: [25(iv)]. The application before me must be decided by the application of the relevant legal principles to the particular facts and circumstances of this case.”

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1. In my judgment, the Judge did not allow the lens of her judgment to be obscured by fog or dust, she focussed very clearly on the critical issue which I have identified in 139 and she saw equally clearly that there was only one plausible outcome. As it happens, I fully agree with her conclusions. In my judgment, this was a plain and obvious case and there were no reasonable grounds to believe that something will turn up either on disclosure or in cross-examination to prove that the advances made by the Respondents were derived from criminal activity. But even if I had entertained some doubts about that conclusion, I would not have allowed the Appeals. The Judge applied the summary judgment test and amendment test accurately and the Appeals are an attempt to challenge her evaluation of the evidence.

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(b) failed to consider the money laundering scheme alleged to have been operated by Dean, which involved more than 700 transactions over a period of four years with a total value of around £11.5 million, and in respect of which the Horton Parties had been forced to seek an Order for an account from Dean, and instead considered only the subset of payments on which Dean, Ivan and the Crump Parties found their claims in these proceedings

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1. The Judge held that the Appellants had no real prospect of showing that the £500,000 which was the subject matter of Ivan’s claim was not from him: see [111]. There was no challenge to that finding in the Grounds of Appeal. The Judge also considered that the wider allegations made about BCP and the Money Laundering Scheme were irrelevant and for that reason the only hallmark of money laundering which was relevant to Ivan’s claim was that the loan was undocumented, unsecured and made on uncommercial terms: see [113].

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1. The Judge did not find in terms that the funds which Mr Crump, APL and APL Formwork advanced to the Appellants were derived from legitimate trading. But this was implicit in her conclusion that it was wholly implausible that either he or his companies would lend “dirty” money to the Appellants when they had “clean” money available: see [140]. When she came to assess the individual hallmarks of money laundering and, in particular, the reliance placed by the Appellants on circuitous payments, she focussed solely on the payments to and from Mr Crump and his companies rather than the wider Money Laundering Scheme. She concluded that their case was “vastly overstated”: see [124].

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1. Mr Parker and Mr Gardner submitted that she ought to have considered all of the payments which were the subject matter of the Account (and the “Invisible Payments” disclosed by Dean) in deciding whether they had a real prospect of success on their money laundering defence. I reject that submission. In my judgment, it reflected the lack of clarity and opaqueness in the Appellants’ case which faced the Judge when she had to consider the evidence. If the Appellants had properly pleaded what criminal property was said to be the subject matter of the offences which the Respondents had committed, it would have been obvious that the Judge’s approach was correct and could not be faulted. I set out my reasons for reaching this conclusion in some detail because they are directly relevant to my conclusions on the remaining Grounds of Appeal and on the Respondent's Notices.

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1. The indicia or hallmarks of money laundering which Mr Care identified in his three reports might have given rise to a number of different findings of fact if the money laundering allegations had gone to trial. If the Court had accepted Dean’s evidence about the purpose of the various accounting practices which he adopted and Ivan and Mr Crump’s evidence about the source of funds, then it would have been unnecessary to draw any further inferences. If, however, the Court had rejected their evidence, the Court might have drawn one of the following inferences:

(1) The funds which Dean, Ivan and Mr Crump (and his companies) advanced to the Appellants were derived from their own prior and unconnected criminal activity. The Appellants did not allege that they were engaged in drug trafficking or VAT or carousel fraud but those would appear to be the most obvious candidates.

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(2) The funds which the Respondents advanced were “clean” in the sense that they were derived from legitimate trading activity but the Respondents’ purpose was to “launder” them through the Appellants’ bank account to hide them from their creditors or the authorities. Mr Parker suggested that the most obvious inference to draw was that Ivan and Mr Crump were hiding their profits from HMRC and engaged in tax evasion.

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(3) The funds which the Respondents advanced were “clean” in the sense that they were derived from legitimate trading activity but the Respondents knowingly participated in a separate Money Laundering Scheme which Dean was operating through the bank accounts of Select, the Partnership and Motorcycles.

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1. Mr Lewis and Mr Cook both submitted that the Appellants’ money laundering defence had no real prospect of success unless they were able to persuade the Court that inference (1) was irresistible. I accept that submission. It was reflected both in the Legal Statement agreed between the parties and the Judge’s own summary of the law. Sections 327 to 329 are “parasitic offences” and criminal property which falls within section 340(3) does not include property which the relevant party intends to acquire by criminal conduct. Inference (2) would not have given rise to money laundering offences because the property acquired by the Respondents, namely, the benefit of the chose in actions representing the loans to the Appellants would not have been criminal property. Likewise, inference (3) would not have given rise to money laundering offences unless the Appellants were able to prove that the repayments by the Appellants constituted benefits from criminal conduct or represented such a benefit: see section 340(3).

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1. For this reason, it was essential for the Appellants to identify the criminal property which was the subject matter of the offences which they alleged against all of the Respondents. It is possible that the individual Respondents might have been guilty of other offences (e.g. tax fraud) or that their conduct in assisting Dean either to commit wholesale breaches of Select’s bank mandate or to defraud AIB or Santander or any other banks would have given rise to other defences. But that was not the Appellants’ case, and the Judge did not need to entertain any of these other factual inquiries because they pinned their colours to the money laundering mast.

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1. However, the Appellants were only able to plead that the Money Laundering Scheme was as wide or expansive as it was because they did not identify the criminal property at the heart of it. The foundation for their case against all of the Respondents was the Money Laundering Scheme set out in the Dean POC, ¶23A. The Appellants then pleaded that Dean committed a range of money laundering offences: see the Dean POC, ¶23B. But neither of those paragraphs identified the criminal property which were the subject matter of those allegations. The first paragraph pleaded the hallmarks of money laundering which were said to give rise to the Money Laundering Scheme and the second paragraph pleaded the offences which Dean was said to have committed.

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1. When the Appellants came to plead their case against Ivan, the position was equally unclear. The Appellants adopted the Dean POC, ¶18A, ¶18B and ¶23B before pleading that Ivan knew (or knows) or, alternatively, suspected that the transfers in DN1, T17 and T68 and DN3, Appendix F formed part of the dishonest Money Laundering Scheme: see the Ivan Defence, ¶15B. As particulars of this allegation they set out the hallmarks of money laundering upon which they relied before pleading that Ivan had committed offences under sections 327 to 329: see the Ivan Defence, ¶15C. But in neither paragraph did they identify the criminal property which was the subject matter of those offences.

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1. Again, the Appellants adopted the Dean POC, ¶23A before pleading that Mr Crump knew (or knows) or, alternatively, suspected that the payments in the Appendices to the Crump POC were part of the Money Laundering Scheme: see the Crump Defence, ¶30(2). As particulars of that allegation, they set out the hallmarks of money laundering upon which they relied before pleading that Mr Crump’s knowledge should be attributed to APL and APL Formwork and that all three had committed offences under sections 327 to 329: see the Crump Defence, ¶43 to ¶45. But in none of those paragraphs did they identify the criminal property which was said to be the subject matter of those offences.

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1. If the Appellants had pleaded that the payments totalling £500,000 which Ivan made to the Partnership were the subject matter of the offences pleaded against him, then the position would have been clear. The Judge would have asked herself the simple question whether the Appellants had a real prospect of proving this fact at trial. Likewise, if the Appellants had pleaded that the payments totalling £1.8 million set out in Appendix 1 to the Crump POC – and which they accepted had been made – were the subject matter of the criminal offences pleaded against him and APL and APL Formwork, the Judge would have asked herself the same question about those payments.

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1. In either case, it was a distraction to investigate all 700 Account Payments. This exercise did no more than create fog and dust on the lens. If it was the Appellants’ case that Dean, Ivan or Mr Crump had committed offences under sections 327 to 329 in relation to the remainder of the 700 payments, then it was incumbent upon them to give full particulars of the criminal property which formed the subject matter of those offences. If they were unable to do so, then those transactions were irrelevant.

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(c) failed to consider whether, when considered collectively, the various hallmarks of money laundering pleaded by the Horton Parties meant that they had a real prospect of establishing at trial an inference (or, if necessary, an irresistible inference) that the relevant property was derived from crime, and instead, insofar as the hallmarks were considered at all, analysed each such hallmark individually and in isolation.

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1. If (as I have held) the Judge was entitled to focus on the payments made by the Respondents, then this Ground falls away in relation to the Dean and Ivan Appeal. There were no hallmarks of money laundering in relation to the payment which Dean made and the Judge dealt collectively with the allegations that the terms of the loan made by Ivan were undocumented, unsecured and on uncommercial terms: see [114] to [115]. It is fair to say that the Judge did not stand back and ask herself whether, if all of the hallmarks were made out, this would have given rise to an irresistible inference that the payments were derived solely from criminal activity. But even if she had done so, I have no doubt that the Judge would have reached the same conclusion given the conclusions which she reached in relation to each one.

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(3) As regards both Ivan and the Crump Parties: (a) The Judge failed to consider as a whole the dishonest money laundering scheme alleged to have been operated by Dean, in which scheme Ivan and the Crump Parties were alleged to have participated.

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1. Ground 3(3) raises the same issue as Ground 3(1)(b). In my judgment, it was not relevant for the Judge to consider all of the Account Payments if they did not involve the payment or receipt of criminal property by the Respondents. Indeed, to describe those payments as a “dishonest money laundering scheme” was to beg that very question given that inferences (2) or (3) above would not have involved offences under section 327 to 329 of POCA.

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(b) The Judge failed to give any or any sufficient weight to the undocumented, unsecured and uncommercial terms of the alleged loans as hallmarks of money laundering (J/114-115, 135-139) and, having correctly noted that the Court might, at trial, reject the explanations given by Ivan and Mr Crump for these matters, she erred in concluding that that would still “fall far short of justifying an irresistible inference that money laundering had taken place” (J/115, 139), without identifying what alternative explanation for such matters might exist.

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1. Ivan’s evidence was that he made the loans to the Appellants to help Dean out, that he did not think that he would have to sue to recover his money or need to take enforcement action and that interest at 3.5% offered a slightly higher rate of return: see [114]. Mr Kenny gave similar evidence on behalf of Mr Crump and consistently with his pleaded case: see [135] to [138]. The Judge held that even if the trial judge rejected that evidence, this would not give rise to an irresistible inference that the money which he lent was derived from criminal activity: see [115] and [119].

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1. In my judgment, there is no basis for challenging this conclusion. It was not incumbent upon the Judge to identify alternative explanations for the terms which Ivan and Mr Crump agreed. Their evidence was credible and quite likely to be accepted at trial. The only point which the Judge was making was that it was unnecessary to accept or rely on their evidence in reaching her conclusion that the Appellants’ money laundering defence had no real prospect of success. I agree. Even if Ivan and Mr Crump had frankly accepted that the terms of the loans were wholly uncommercial and highly imprudent, this would not have justified the inference that the funds which they were advanced could only have been derived from criminal activity.

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(4) As regards Ivan: (a) The Judge erred in considering only the payments on which Ivan founds his claim (J/112), when these were only a subset of the payments pleaded by the Horton Parties as comprising Ivan’s participation in the money laundering scheme operated by Dean.

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1. Ground 3(4)(a) raises a slightly different issue. I accept that it might have been relevant for the Judge to take into account not only the payments made by Ivan himself to the Partnership but the payments made by BCP set out in DN1, T17 and T68. They were made by a company controlled by Ivan at the relevant time and were relevant to the question whether Ivan was engaged with Dean in a Money Laundering Scheme. They also carried some evidential weight because the funds which Ivan lent personally to the Partnership were derived from BCP. However, I am not satisfied that even if the Judge had taken those payments into account, she would have reached a different conclusion. Although BCP made payments through CDS, it is clear from DN1, T17 that Dean transferred the funds to Select. Moreover, as Mr Lewis submitted, if the earlier payments had been part of a Money Laundering Scheme it made absolutely no sense for Ivan to transfer funds directly to the Partnership with a payment reference “Ivan”, “IN or “I Norman”.

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1. But most importantly the Judge would have been faced with the same question, namely, whether the Appellants had a real (as opposed to fanciful) prospect of persuading a Court that Ivan’s evidence was untrue when he said that BCP was the source of funds and that BCP had built up substantial capital reserves or savings since the 1990s. This was an evaluative question for the Judge, and I am not satisfied that the failure to consider the payments made by BCP in detail in the Judgment undermined the cogency of the Judge’s conclusion.

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(b) The Judge erred in failing to consider the following pleaded hallmarks of money laundering as regards Ivan: (i) circuity of payments, (ii) use of dormant/dissolved companies as intermediaries, and (iii) the inherent improbability of Ivan becoming involved in a money laundering scheme being operated by his son without knowing or suspecting that was the case.

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1. Ground 3(4)(b) adds little to Ground 3(4)(a). DN1, T17 showed that BCP transferred £460,000 to Select via CDS and the Invisible Payments which Dean disclosed also showed that Select made monthly and other repayments to BCP through HFR. These transactions did not provide compelling evidence either that Dean had lied in his explanations in Dean 1 or in the Account Spreadsheets or that the Appellants had a real prospect of persuading a trial judge to draw an irresistible inference that they or the subsequent payments made by Ivan could only be derived from criminal activity. Indeed, the only real basis for challenging Dean’s explanation was Mr Care’s evidence and, as I have found, the Judge was entitled to hold that his evidence was inadmissible.

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(c) The Judge failed to take any or any sufficient account of the fact that a different company, Black Country Pressings Limited (“BCP”), then controlled by Ivan, had previously claimed that the payments that form the subject of Ivan’s claim comprised loans by BCP to Select (not loans by Ivan to the Partnership, as now alleged) (J/112-113).

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1. There are undoubtedly cases in which the inconsistencies in a Letter of Claim can be highly material to the credibility of a party or their case. But I am not satisfied that this is one of those cases. It remains a live issue whether the loans were made by Ivan himself or by BCP and the Appellants may be able to demonstrate that they are not liable to Ivan personally. But Mr Parker failed to persuade me that the Judge ought to have attached very significant weight to this letter or that it would have moved the dial sufficiently to justify the Court giving permission to amend the Dean POC or the Ivan Defence or to dismiss the application for summary judgment.

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(5) As regards the Crump Parties: (a) The Judge erred in giving no weight to circuity as a pleaded hallmark of money laundering, by: (i) failing to consider the Horton Parties’ pleaded allegations that the Crump Parties were aware of the circuitous payments pleaded by the Horton Parties and knew that HFR (UK) Limited (“HFR”), CDS Holdings Limited (“CDS”), APL Formwork and Dean’s personal accounts would be used as intermediaries because they were subject to minimal scrutiny by third parties

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1. Mr Parker took me to DN3, Appendix C headed “Summary of HFR ledger” which recorded payments from HFR to Select, the Partnership and Motorcycles from 3 January 2018 to 2 December 2019 (and vice versa) together with an additional schedule of Invisible Payments which primarily consisted of payments made by HFR to HMRC, BCP, APL and also payments to and from Mr Crump personally. He also took me to DN3, Appendix G headed “Summary of APL Formwork Loan”, Appendix H headed “Summary of Access Products Loan” and Appendix J headed “Summary of amount owed to Steve Crump”. These were the documents pleaded in the Crump Defence, ¶43(1).

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1. The Judge summarised this evidence and the Appellants’ pleaded case at [117] to [120]. She then recorded Dean’s evidence that he used CDS and HFR to work around Select’s overdraft limits with Mr Horton’s knowledge and approval and the evidence of both Mr Kenny and Dean that Select’s balance consistently exceeded its overdraft limit. She also recorded the fact that the Appellants did not challenge the chart which Dean had produced in support of his witness evidence and Mr Horton’s admission that he was aware that Dean used intermediary companies to pay suppliers on a handful of occasions: see [121] to [123]. She accepted that she could not decide the scope of Mr Horton’s knowledge but concluded that “an examination of the extent to which intermediary companies were used shows that the Horton parties’ case is vastly overstated”: see [124].

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1. It is clear that the Judge considered the payments in Ground 3(5)(a)(i) carefully because she summarised them in some detail in [121] before weighing them up against the other evidence. In my judgment, she was entitled to reach the conclusion that the Appellants’ case on circuitous payments was vastly overstated whether she was referring exclusively to the payments which were the subject matter of the Crump POC, Appendix 1 or compendiously to the payments in DN3, Appendices C, G, H and J. Both before the Judge and before me Mr Cook placed great reliance on the fact that only 5 of the 93 payments which formed the basis for the claim were made through CDS or HFR. He also submitted that it was highly improbable that Dean would have used the funds of criminal activity to pay HMRC directly. These submissions were well made and, in my judgment, the Judge was entitled to accept them.

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1. Furthermore, DN3 and its Appendices would not have made very much difference. They would have confirmed that CDS and HFR were the only intermediaries which Dean used and that most of the funds paid into them were either paid out to Select, the Partnership and Motorcycles or paid to HMRC with a small amount being used to pay suppliers or used to repay the Respondents. This was consistent with the explanations given by Dean and provided far from compelling evidence that the funds could only be derived from criminal activity. But in any event, the weight to be given to those payments was a matter for the Judge and this Court should not interfere with her evaluation of that evidence.

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(ii) relying on her findings that (1) there was “limited use of intermediaries” (J/127), (2) “the substantial majority of the payments [were] made directly to or from the Horton Parties” (J/127), and (3) “the use of CDS and HFR was relatively small” (J/129), while failing to take account of (1) the significant value of the sums that were paid through CDS and HFR, (2) the extensive non-HFR/CDS circuity in the payments pleaded by the Horton Parties

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1. If it had been limited to the payments made by Mr Crump, APL and APL Formwork, then Ground 3(5)(a)(ii) would have been a straightforward attempt to challenge the Judge’s evaluation of the facts and, in my judgment, there is no basis for challenging that evaluation. Even if she had taken into account the value of the five individual circuitous payments, which amounted to £412,000, they only represented 13.33% of the total amount. Furthermore, the largest by far of those payments was that made by Mr Crump to HFR on 12 July 2019. Mr Kenny gave evidence based on the documents that this sum was used to pay Select’s PAYE liability to HMRC.

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1. For the purposes of the Appeals, however, Mr Parker and Mr Gardner produced an analysis which they did not put before the Judge to justify their reliance upon all 703 Account Payments. As Mr Cook and Mr O’Neill pointed out, before the Judge they based their argument on the frequency of the circuitous payments and Dean’s explanations. But for the purposes of the Appeal, they relied on their value instead (bundle references omitted):

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“24. There could be no real dispute that the Account Payments as a whole involved a significant number of circuitous payments. Of the 703 Account Payments:

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(1) 410 were between one of the Horton Parties and a counterparty which was not said to be a creditor. In particular: (1) 247 were transfers between accounts belonging to the Horton Parties, (2) 143 were to or from HFR, comprising ‘advances’ of £158,023 and ‘repayments’ of £1,160,939.26 (‘App C’ tab of DN3), and (3) 20 were ‘advances’ from CDS of monies it had received from the purported creditors, totalling £480,000 (‘T17’ tab of DN1),

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(2) 92 were between (a) the Partnership and (b) Dean, Ivan or the Crump Parties; given Mr Horton’s evidence that the Partnership had no need for capital and was not said to be a borrower until the disputes arose (Horton-2/30-37), these payments must properly be viewed as circuitous too (or at least arguably so), (3) as explained in paragraph 38 below, a further 63 were circuitous ‘repayments’ by Select and 14 were circuitous payments involving APL Formwork.

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1. The Horton Parties can therefore show by reference to the evidence currently available that at least 579 of the 703 Account Payments were circuitous (82.36%). Dean’s explanations for this have been inconsistent and are not credible. It would be impractical and inappropriate to consider at this stage each such explanation. As before the Judge, the Horton Parties will address by way of illustration Dean’s explanations for the use of CDS and HFR as intermediaries.”

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1. There can be no criticism of the Judge for failing to address this point because it was never made to her. But in any event, I am not satisfied that it would have made any difference to present the figures to her in this way. Mr Cook carried out an analysis of the figures in his oral submissions which I found to be far more compelling. 93 payments were made by Mr Crump, APL and APL Formwork of which 5 were made to CDS and HFR and 19 to “non-Horton” parties such as HMRC and Quadzilla. Indeed, 11% of the payments by value were made to HMRC for the benefit of Select. 131 payments were pleaded in Appendix 2 of which only 17% by number or 24% by value were made by HFR. 109 repayments were made either by Select or the Partnership directly to either Mr Crump or APL or APL Formwork. It follows that 83% of repayments by number and 74% of them by value totalling £1.261 million were not circuitous payments.

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1. In my judgment, it is fanciful to suggest that parties who had derived funds from criminal activity would have used those funds to pay Select’s tax liabilities or to do so directly revealing their identity to HMRC (the only possible victim whom Mr Parker was able to identify). It is also impossible to understand why Dean would have arranged for Select and the Partnership to make the loan repayments directly to Mr Crump or APL or APL Formwork if their objective was to launder the proceeds of criminal activity through the Appellants’ bank accounts. They would have taken care to repay them either through HFR or CDS or, more likely, through other intermediary companies which appeared to be unconnected with the original source of funds. Indeed, the Judge was fully alive to these points: see [126] and [127].

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(iii) making a finding that the use of HFR/CDS as intermediaries was “explicable by reference to the financial difficulties of the Horton Parties” (J/129), which involved making findings on disputed factual issues which were incapable of being resolved summarily and took no account of the further evidence on this issue that would likely be available at trial;

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1. Ground (3)(5)(a)(iii) fails to characterise the Judge’s finding correctly. The Respondents adduced convincing evidence that the Appellants were in significant financial difficulties and consistently exceeded their overdraft: see [105], [106] and [123]. None of that evidence was challenged before the Judge or before me. The Judge was entitled to conclude, therefore, that they had no real prospect of persuading the Court to draw the necessary and irresistible inference of money laundering from the practice of using intermediary companies alone.

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(iv) failing to consider (1) the inconsistent explanations for such circuity offered by Dean in evidence, (2) the Horton Parties’ submissions as to why the ‘overdraft’ excuse which she accepted cannot explain such circuity, (3) the absence of any explanation for the non-CDS/HFR circuity, (4) the absence of any evidence from Mr Crump as to his understanding of circuity and (5) the likelihood that further relevant evidence on this issue would be available at trial.

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1. Dean gave two explanations for the use of CDS in evidence. The first was that it was used to introduce funds to Select slowly and, secondly, that funds were held in its bank account whilst Mr Horton and he agreed a plan of action. In their original Skeleton Argument dated 8 April 2024 for the Amendment Applications Mr Parker and Mr Gardner submitted before that these explanations were “both contradictory and fanciful”. They also submitted that this could be demonstrated by a single example taken from DN1, Tab 17: see ¶39 to ¶49. This example consisted of a series of “revolving” transactions which took place on 17 March 2017 which Mr Care had been asked to analyse in Care 1, ¶21.

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1. In their revised Skeleton Argument dated 22 July 2025 dealing with both the Amendment and the Strike Out Applications counsel expanded their submissions to deal with the allegations against Mr Crump, APL and APL Formwork but also to introduce a more complicated analysis. They analysed the evidence by reference to three separate categories: “circuitous payments”, “dormant/dissolved companies” and “revolving transactions”. They also focussed far more on the knowledge of the individual Respondents about the use of CDS and HFR: see ¶51 to ¶77.

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1. The Judge was not satisfied that the use of CDS and HFR was sufficient by itself to give rise to an irresistible inference of money laundering: see [127] and [129]. This was obviously correct: see Baker (above). But the Appellants’ reliance on Mr Care’s evidence about the payments made on 17 March 2017 also backfired because the Judge’s own analysis showed that there was nothing inherently suspicious about those payments or which required further explanation: see [130] to [134].

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1. I accept that the Judge did not deal in terms with Dean’s explanations about the overdraft or the knowledge of Ivan and Mr Crump about what he was doing with their money. But I am not satisfied that his explanations were contradictory or fanciful as Mr Parker and Mr Gardner asserted in their first Skeleton Argument and I found the mass of further material by which they tried to bolster this submission in their second Skeleton Argument unconvincing and, with the greatest of respect, yet more fog and dust.

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1. Dean’s evidence was that he used intermediaries to avoid paying the money through Select’s bank accounts and held it in their accounts whilst he decided what to do with it. Both of those explanations were coherent and consistent with the evidence that Select consistently exceeded its overdraft limits. Moreover, even assuming in the Appellants’ favour that Ivan and Mr Crump were fully aware that Dean was using CDS and HFR, this knowledge does not demonstrate that either they or Dean were involved in a Money Laundering Scheme far less that such an inference was irresistible. This was plainly the view which the Judge took and, with respect, I agree with it.

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1. As the Judge saw it, the real issue was whether circuitous or revolving payments made through intermediaries such as CDS and HFR were suspicious enough to justify the conclusion that the Appellants had a real prospect of satisfying the Anwoir test (as properly understood). She also considered that the way to test that was to look closely at a number of individual payments and the obvious ones to take were the payments on 17 March 2017 upon which Mr Care had relied and which Mr Parker and Mr Gardner had put forward as their principal example in both of their Skeleton Arguments. When the Judge looked at those payments, it became clear that they did not support the inference that Dean, Ivan and Mr Crump were participating in a Money Laundering Scheme (let alone an irresistible inference). It also became clear that those payments supported Dean’s evidence that CDS and HFR were used to “work around” Select’s overdraft limits enabling it to pay its creditors whilst at the same time remaining just within its overdraft limits. Finally, it is telling that there is no appeal against the findings which the Judge made at [133].

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1. Furthermore, the Judge fully appreciated that if the Appellants had been able to show that funds were channelled by Ivan and Mr Crump from CDS through Select’s bank accounts at AIB or Santander and back out through HFR to companies or other entities controlled by them, this would have been strong evidence of a Money Laundering Scheme. But, as she pointed out, the Appellants had not carried out an exercise to trace the funds through their own bank accounts in this way. Furthermore, the Judge was not required to assume that if they were to carry out such an exercise, the Appellants would be able to raise a strong suspicion that the Respondents were participating in a Money Laundering Scheme or that some other evidence to that effect might come out: see HRH the Duchess of Sussex v Associated Newspapers Ltd (above) at [14]. The Appellants had had ample to time to carry out a proper “revolving transactions” analysis and there is no suggestion that Mr Parker asked the Judge for an adjournment to do so before she made her decision. In my judgment, the prospect that anything else might come out is properly characterised as “Micawberism” (to use Warby J’s description).

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(b) The Judge erred in giving no weight to revolving transactions as a pleaded hallmark of money laundering (J/131-134) by: (i) conducting an improper mini-trial on the issue of whether the Crump Parties’ participation in the scheme involved revolving transactions which were hallmarks of money laundering and not taking account of the likelihood that further relevant evidence would be available at trial; (ii) making a finding that there was nothing inherently suspicious or requiring explanation in the one set of revolving payments that she considered (J/133), which involved making summary findings on disputed issues which were incapable of being resolved summarily; and (iii) failing to address the other example of revolving transactions provided by the Horton Parties in their skeleton argument for the July hearing or to take account of the likelihood that other examples of revolving transactions would fall to be scrutinised at trial.”

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1. In my judgment, the Judge did not conduct a mini-trial or make summary findings on disputed issues and properly applied the appropriate tests to the allegation of “revolving transactions”. The Appellants themselves relied on Mr Care’s evidence about the 17 March 2017 payments in both of their Skeleton Arguments for the hearings before the Judge and she was entitled to test the quality of their evidence by scrutinising this example; and when she looked at the bank statements (which Mr Care did not appear to have done), they did not support the inference of a Money Laundering Scheme. I am satisfied that the Judge was entitled to find that the Appellants had no real prospect of proving this hallmark of money laundering at trial.

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1. The Appellants also criticise the Judge for failing to address their second example of “revolving transactions”. This involved DN1, Appendix F, transactions 23 to 30 all of which took place on 29 November 2016 to 2 December 2016. In their Skeleton Argument, Mr Parker and Mr Gardner relied on the fact that on 30 November 2016 APL Formwork paid £50,000 into Select’s Santander account and received £50,000 back from its AIB account on the same day. I was not taken to this example or to the transcript of the hearing below and it is unclear to me whether any oral submissions were made to the Judge about this example. But in any event, most of the relevant bank statements were not in the Appeal Bundle. One sheet of Select’s AIB bank statements for 30 November 2016 (SB243) was in the Supplementary Appeal Bundle but it makes no reference to a credit of £50,000 to APL Formwork on that day. The Judge was not required to deal with every point in the Appellants’ Skeleton Argument and there is no evidence to suggest that she made an “identifiable flaw” in the treatment of this issue.

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(c) The Judge erred in giving no weight to the lack of satisfactory evidence as to the source of the Crump Parties’ funds (J/140-141), by: (i) conducting an improper mini-trial on the issue of whether the Crump Parties had demonstrated that the sums used to make the alleged payments had been derived from non-criminal funds and not taking account of the likelihood that further relevant evidence would be available at trial; (ii) making factual findings that the Crump Parties had sufficient legitimate funds to make the alleged loan payments (J/140), which involved making summary findings on disputed factual issues and was in any event unjustified, given that the one document on which she relied to make those findings was not in evidence, incomplete, untested, unexplained, and did not support the finding she made; (iii) drawing the obviously unjustified conclusion that if the Crump Parties had sufficient legitimate funds to make the alleged loan payments, then it was “wholly implausible” to suggest that they would have dealt with “dirty” money by lending it to the Horton Parties (J/140).”

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1. The Appellants’ principal complaint in relation to Ground 3(5)(c) is that on 24 July 2024 DWF sent a copy of APL’s general ledger (or extracts from it) to Peters & Peters without adequate explanation. Mr Parker and Mr Gardner described this in their Skeleton Argument for the Appeals as an “inscrutable document”. However, DWF served a copy of the general ledger to address the specific criticism made by Mr Parker and Mr Gardner in their second Skeleton Argument for the adjourned hearing before the Judge that Crump 1 and 2 and their exhibits were inadequate (because they did not show the source of the funds which were paid into APL and APL Formwork’s bank accounts). In particular, they criticised his evidence for the following reasons:

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“The Crump Claimants have very belatedly sought to demonstrate the source of the funds purportedly loaned to the Horton Parties, by way of Crump-1, served only on 11 July 2024, which exhibits (an incomplete set of) bank statements for the Crump Claimants and purports to explain some of the payments into their accounts. That late evidence fails to demonstrate that the funds advanced to the Horton Parties were legitimate, still less to the summary judgment standard, including because (1) the statements for AP Midlands only go back to April 2018, so that they do not shed any light on the source of (a) the funds advanced by AP Midlands before that date (going back to November 2016), or (b) the April 2018 opening balance of £456,627.98 [C/14/5218], (2) there is an unexplained gap in the AP Midlands statements from 28 January 2019 to 15 February 2019 with 11 sheets apparently missing… the information on the bank statements is not conclusive proof as to the source of the payments, as it can be manipulated by the parties to the payment, see for example Ivan’s payments to the Partnership which were misdescribed as payments to Select on Ivan’s bank statements, described further in paragraph 56(4) below. To the contrary, even in the limited time available, the Horton Parties have found that the partial set of bank statements and purported explanations provided by Crump-1 tend to support the Horton Parties’ case, rather than undermine it.”

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1. With all due respect to them, Mr Parker and Mr Gardner appear to me to have lost sight of the fact that it was not for Mr Crump to prove that the source of funds was legitimate but for the Appellants to satisfy the Court that they had a real prospect of satisfying the Anwoir test at trial. Mr Cook took me to the management accounts and audited accounts of APL and APL Formwork and, if they had been before me, I might well have dismissed the Amendment Applications and granted the Strike Out Application on the basis of those documents and the bank statements alone.

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1. But in any event the Appellants can hardly have been surprised when DWF produced a copy of the general ledger when they had complained about the inadequacy of the bank statements and had made a submission that the source of the payments “can be manipulated”. Moreover, I do not consider the extract from the general ledger to answer to the description given by Mr Parker and Mr Gardner in their Skeleton Argument for the Appeals. They had sufficient time to take instructions on it and to show it to Mr Care for his comments and if they had objected to the late service of this evidence, they could have applied for an adjournment. They did not do so. Finally, if Mr Care had found typical ledger entries “inscrutable” I would have placed even less weight on his evidence.

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1. The Judge concluded that Mr Crump had ample funds available to lend to the Appellants and that the Appellants had no real prospect of proving at trial that he would have lent “dirty money” to the Appellants or permitted Dean to mix his “clean” money with “dirty” money derived from criminal activity: see [140] and [141]. This was an evaluative judgment which she was entitled to make based on Mr Crump’s evidence which I have summarised above. The allegation that the funds which he advanced to the Appellants were solely derived from criminal activity was, in my judgment, fanciful and I dismiss Ground 3(5)(c).

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(d) The Judge erred in giving no weight to the absence of proper loan documentation as a pleaded hallmark of money laundering (J/142-145), by: (i) conducting an improper mini-trial on the issue of whether the alleged loans were properly documented and not taking account of the likelihood that further relevant evidence would be available at trial; (ii) making apparent factual findings that the alleged loans were recorded in contemporaneous documents including AP Midlands’ accounts (J/145), which involved making summary findings on disputed factual issues and was in any event unjustified, given that the evidence to support those findings was only adduced by the Crump Parties on 11 July 2024, and was incomplete, untested and did not support that finding; and (iii) treating the limited material provided by the Crump Parties as constituting proper documentation for the alleged loans (J/143-144).

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1. The Judge referred to contemporaneous documents which evidenced the making of the loans and accounting documents recording them (including the management accounts and audited accounts): see [142] to [146]. She also pointed out that if the Appellants were right, emails passing between Dean and Mr Crump over a significant period of time would have been a sophisticated sham designed to disguise the fact that they were involved in a Money Laundering Scheme. The Judge considered this to be fanciful and so do I. I dismiss Ground 3(5)(d).

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(e) In relation to the inconsistent assertions made by the Crump Parties about the terms of the alleged loans (J/146-150), the Judge erred in: (i) relying on the evidence of Mr Care that the “inconsistencies in the amounts said to have been lent by the Crump Parties to Select, do not, in and of themselves, indicate money laundering” (Expert Report of Mr Tim Care dated 5 June 2024, paragraph 32), when Mr Care was not addressing the inconsistencies between who was said to be the lender and the borrower under the alleged loans, which the Judge failed to address; and (ii) failing to consider whether those inconsistencies, when taken in conjunction with the other matters relied upon, meant that the Horton Parties had a real prospect of establishing money laundering at trial.

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1. The Appellants relied on a number of inconsistencies before the Judge. They principally related to the identity of the lender and whether the loans had been made by BCP (in the case of Ivan) or APL or APL Formwork (in the case of Mr Crump). They also relied on the fact that the amounts claimed varied. Given the informality of the loans and the need for funds urgently, it is not surprising that there was some uncertainty whether the loans were made by the individuals or the companies which they controlled. Informality and urgency also explain the uncertainty about the precise amounts paid. In certain circumstances, these inconsistencies might have been much more sinister but not in the present case. In my judgment, the Appellants hugely exaggerated the significance of these statements and the Judge was right to conclude that they did not justify the grant of either permission to amend or to defend by themselves.

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1. As the Judge recorded, it was also Mr Care’s evidence that: “Then (sic) inconsistencies in the amounts said to have been lent by the Crump Parties to Select, do not, in and of themselves, indicate money laundering.” She was not, however, relying on this evidence; far from it. She was doing no more than pointing out that even if the Appellants had a real prospect of proving this hallmark of money laundering, evidence of inconsistent statements would not satisfy the Anwoir test alone. She had already ruled that Mr Care’s evidence was inadmissible or of no (or very limited) assistance to the Court. She was making it clear that the Appellants could not get home on evidence of inconsistency alone.

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(6) The Judge erred in deciding on a summary basis that Dean had not lied about Mr Horton’s alleged knowledge of the loans (J/149), because that finding was based on the Judge’s summary finding that Mr Horton was aware of the loans at all material times, which was itself wrong for the reasons set out above.

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1. In their Skeleton Argument, Mr Parker and Mr Gardner submitted to the Judge that Dean had produced knowingly false evidence in two respects: first, he had given false evidence about Mr Horton’s knowledge of the loans and, secondly, he had given false excuses about the circuitous payments. Nevertheless, they accepted that these false statements would not justify an inference of money laundering on their own:

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“While these factors would not justify an inference of money laundering on their own, when viewed in combination with the other facts addressed above, they create a picture of an individual seeking to conceal his wrongdoing rather than to provide honest assistance in relation to legitimate loans.”

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1. Given this concession, it was unnecessary for the Judge to decide whether Dean had deliberately lied to the Court or produced knowingly false evidence because she had rejected the Appellants’ case in relation to all of the other hallmarks of money laundering. Moreover, in my judgment, she did not do so. She recorded the Appellant’s case that Dean had deliberately misled the Court and also that the Appellants were not relying on Dean’s failure to produce unredacted bank statements: see [149]. But she did no more. I therefore dismiss Ground 3(6). I add by way of footnote that the Appellants did not suggest before me that the Judge was wrong about the bank statements even though Mr Parker took me to a number of those redacted bank statements in his oral submissions.

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(7) In making the summary findings set out above, the Judge failed properly to apply the principles applicable to summary judgment and amendment applications and summarily decided numerous factual issues that could only properly be resolved at trial.

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(8) The Judge also erred in failing to have any or any sufficient regard to the fact that matters can be established at trial through circumstantial evidence and that such evidence works cumulatively, such that the whole is stronger than the individual parts: JSC BTA Bank v Ablyazov [2013] 1 WLR 1331 at [52].

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1. The Appellants did not submit that the Judge had failed to state the test for amendment or the test for summary judgment correctly and Grounds 3(7) and 3(8) contain what I would describe as “portmanteau” Grounds of Appeal in the sense that the Appellants did not rely on any additional criticisms of the way in which the Judge applied either test apart from those set out in Ground 3(1) to 3(6). Having considered and dismissed those Grounds individually, I therefore dismiss Grounds 3(7) and 3(8).

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(9) The Judge also erred in failing to consider the primary question of whether the Horton Parties had a real prospect of successfully establishing money laundering at trial and effectively approached the applications on the basis that it was necessary for the Horton Parties to establish at the summary stage that there was an irresistible inference that money laundering had taken place (see e.g. J/82, 115, 127, 139, 149(2) and (3)).

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1. I also dismiss Ground 3(9). I have set out the relevant conclusions which the Judge reached in section IV (above) and I have examined the extensive criticisms which the Appellants made of those conclusions and her reasoning in this section V. For the detailed reasons which I have given, I am satisfied that the Judge asked herself whether the Appellants had a real prospect of satisfying the Anwoir test at trial and persuading the Court to draw the irresistible inference that the funds which the Respondents advanced could only have been derived from criminal activity. She did not apply the wrong test or rush to judgment and I can detect no flaw in her reasoning. Indeed, I am satisfied that she was entitled to find that the allegations of a Money Laundering Scheme were fanciful and had no real prospects of success.

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5. In all the circumstances, the Judge erred in law and in fact in refusing the Horton Parties permission to amend so as to raise allegations of money laundering and in granting the Crump Parties summary judgment in respect of those allegations.

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1. Finally, I dismiss Ground 5. For all of the reasons which I have given, I am satisfied that the Judge made no errors of fact or law in dismissing the Expert Applications, in refusing to allow the Amendment Applications and in dismissing the Strike Out Application.

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VI. The Respondent’s Notices

1. Having refused the Amendment Applications but granted the Strike Out Application on the basis that the Appellants had no real prospect of success, the Judge did not consider it necessary to deal with the alternative basis on which the Respondents had applied to strike out the money laundering allegations, namely, that they were defectively pleaded: see the Judgment, [151]. By Respondent’s Notices dated 23 July 2025 the Respondents in both the Ivan Appeal and the Crump Appeal gave notice that they wished to uphold the Judgment on that basis. Mr Lewis made submissions on behalf of Ivan which Mr Cook adopted on behalf of Mr Crump, APL and APL Formwork and Mr Parker answered them in his oral reply. Out of deference to the quality of their submissions, I set out my conclusions in relation to the Respondent’s Notices but given the outcome of the Appeal, I do so only briefly.

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1. Mr Lewis began by drawing my attention to Various Airfinance Leasing Companies v Saudi Arabian Airlines Corporation (above). He then pointed out that the allegation of a Money Laundering Scheme was primarily made against Dean (which the Appellants had then adopted in the Ivan and Crump Defences) and that the Appellants alleged 105 different offences against him: see the Dean POC, ¶23A and ¶23B. He then pointed out that the Appellants had adopted a similar formula in relation to the allegations of money laundering offences against both Ivan and Mr Crump: see the Ivan Defence, ¶15C and the Crump Defence, ¶45. As Mr Lewis pointed out, the Judge accepted this analysis: see the Judgment at [12]. Furthermore, there was no appeal against that conclusion and Mr Parker did not challenge it in his reply.

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1. Mr Lewis submitted that, as currently pleaded, the Ivan and Crump Defences did not disclose a reasonable cause of action because the Respondents did not know the primary factual allegations which they had to meet and that it was not appropriate to require the Respondents to try and work out how many of the 105 offences were alleged against them and, if so, which ones. This did not satisfy the Airfinance Leasing test for amendment or the enhanced requirements for pleading fraud or dishonesty. Mr Lewis also submitted that the Appellants ought to have adopted a two stage approach and at the first stage to identify the criminal property which was alleged to be the subject matter of the pleaded offences. He submitted that this was an “irreducible minimum”. At the second stage, so he submitted, it was for the Appellants to set out the ingredients of the individual offences which the Respondents were alleged to have committed and the primary facts upon which they relied. He identified three ingredients:

(1) The Appellants had to identify the criminal conduct which Dean, Ivan and Mr Crump were said to have performed. For example, to prove that they had committed an offence under section 329 of POCA they had to prove acquisition, use or possession of the criminal property (once properly particularised).

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(2) The Appellants had to identify the mental element and whether knowledge or suspicion was alleged. Mr Lewis did not object to the Appellants pleading the mental element in the alternative but objected to a “rolled up” plea that Dean, Ivan and Mr Crump “knew and/or knows or suspected”. He took particular exception to the alternative allegation that Ivan and Mr Crump “know” that “the alleged payments in the Appendices to the Particulars of Claim, if made, were part of the Money Laundering Scheme”: see the Ivan Defence, ¶15b and the Crump Defence, ¶43(1).

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(3) If the Appellants were relying on accessory liability or conspiracy to commit the relevant offences, they had to plead the separate conduct ingredients of those offences (e.g. that Ivan or Mr Crump assisted or encouraged Dean to commit the relevant offence).

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1. I accept Mr Lewis’s submission that the Appellants have failed to plead or to give proper particulars of the criminal property which is the subject matter of the offences which Dean, Ivan and Mr Crump are alleged to have committed. I also accept that this is an irreducible minimum and that the allegations of money laundering would have been liable to be struck out in full unless the Appellants had been given time to cure the defect and had been able to do so in an acceptable form. I have reached this conclusion for the following reasons:

(1) I have already explained why the inadequacy of the pleaded case caused problems for the Judge and why it would have made her task so much easier, if the Appellants had pleaded their case adequately. But in my judgment, the defect was more fundamental than this. For the reasons which I have explained, the facts upon which the Appellants relied were equivocal and consistent with the Respondent having committed no money laundering offences at all.

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(2) Further, unless and until the Appellants had cured this defect, it was not possible for the Appellants to plead adequately (or for the Respondents to understand) the primary facts upon which they relied to prove the ingredients of each money laundering offence. The Appellants were unwilling to plead that the payments made by Ivan or by Mr Crump (and his companies) were the proceeds of prior criminal activity because this would have exposed the wholly speculative nature and the thinness of their case.

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(3) Moreover, it is clear that the Appellants were either unable or unwilling to plead that all 703 Account Payments were criminal property and wanted to keep open the option of arguing that some of the sums were paid to Select and the Partnership became criminal property as they were channelled through their bank accounts and the accounts of the intermediate companies. The allegation that Ivan or Mr Crump were involved in tax fraud might well have been more credible but required a much more detailed analysis than Mr Care was able to provide.

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(4) In my judgment, this is not a permissible way to plead serious allegations of offences of dishonesty. Mr Parker and Mr Gardner relied upon a number of authorities relating to fraud or conspiracy where the Court has given the claimant a significant amount of latitude given that the facts of the conspiracy or fraud are within the exclusive knowledge of the perpetrators and the claimant will not be in a position to provide adequate particulars until disclosure or even exchange of witness statements. I accept the general principle and I return to it below. But in my judgment, the defects in the Crump and Ivan Defences went well beyond the permissible latitude which would normally be allowed to the victims of fraud or money laundering.

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(5) For example, nowhere in either pleading are the ingredients of each offence set out and particulars of each ingredient given. Until the Appellants nail their colours to the mast and identify the criminal property (which they have not done), it is not possible to identify the facts which it was necessary for Ivan and Mr Crump to know or suspect and the date on which it was necessary for them to have the relevant knowledge or suspicion. In my judgment, it is not sufficient to plead knowledge or suspicion that some or all of the Account Payments were criminal property and to give as particulars of this allegation the indicia or hallmarks of money laundering identified by an expert such as Mr Care.

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(6) I also accept Mr Lewis’s submission that a “rolled up” plea of knowledge and suspicion is embarrassing in the present case. It was common ground that to prove an offence of money laundering under sections 327 to 329 the mental element must coincide with the criminal conduct: see the Legal Statement, ¶6(6). If, say, the Appellants had only been able to prove that Ivan knew or suspected that the Account Payments were criminal property by the date of the Ivan Defence, then he did not commit such an offence. Furthermore, the Appellants effectively accepted this in the Annex to their Supplemental Skeleton Argument (to which Mr Lewis took me).

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(7) Again, until the Appellants nail their colours to the mast and identify the criminal property (which they have not done), it is not possible to identify the primary facts upon which the Appellants rely in support of their case that Dean, Ivan and Mr Crump conspired to commit money laundering offences or attempted to do so. I also accept Mr Lewis’s submission that the allegations of conspiracy or inchoate offences were embarrassing in the present case. It was common ground that the mental element for these offences is actual knowledge and not suspicion: see the Legal Statement, ¶6(8). If, say, the Appellants had only been able to prove that Mr Crump suspected that Dean was involved in a Money Laundering Scheme when he made or received the relevant Account Payments, then he did not commit those offences either.

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1. I accept, therefore, that the Dean POC and the Ivan and Crump Defences are defective, that the money laundering allegations are liable to be struck out of the Crump Defence and that permission to amend the Ivan Defence should be refused. However, if I had been persuaded that the Appellants had a real prospect of satisfying the Anwoir test at trial on the basis of Mr Care’s evidence, I would have given them an opportunity to cure the defects and to renew the Amendment Applications and also adjourned the Strike Out Application. However, since I have held that the Judge was correct and that the Appellants had no real prospect of satisfying the Anwoir test at trial, this eventuality does not arise.

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VII. Disposal

1. For the reasons which I have given I dismiss all three Appeals and affirm the Judge’s Order and, although I would have upheld the Judge’s decision to refuse the Amendment Applications on the alternative basis in the Respondent’s Notices, I would have varied the Order to give the Appellants an opportunity to cure the defects. I invite the parties to agree directions for a short consequential hearing or for the determination of any outstanding issues on paper. I will also extend time for the making of any application for permission to appeal under CPR Part 52.7 until I have made a final Order (either by consent or after any consequential hearing). I invite the parties to agree and submit an Order incorporating these directions on the hand down of this judgment.

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End of document

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