By Tony O’Riley
Solicitor and former Leeds United football club boss David Haigh must pay the 4m ordered by a High Court ruling enforcing a Gulf court order made earlier this year.
Haigh claimed bankruptcy after a High Court judge ruled he must repay the huge sums he acquired fraudulently from private equity outfit GFH Capital. He claims his human rights are being breached, but legal experts say his chances of success in overturning the latest ruling are very slim.
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The case began in May 2014 when Mr Haigh was arrested by Dubai police a month after resigning as managing director of the Premier League-bound football club.
It was found that he had forged invoices and fraudulently directed nearly £4 million from his former employers – GFH Capital Limited – a Bahraini private equity company which owned Leeds United between 2012 and 2014 – into his own and a friend’s bank accounts.
Haigh sort permission to appeal a ruling by the High Court of England and Wales in favour of GFH Capital’s claim to enforce a judgement of the Dubai International Finance Centre (DIFC) Courts, which ordered him to repay money he was found to have taken.
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The Honourable Mr Justice Henshaw had said in the case that there were no grounds to challenge the claim against him in the DIFC court as one being fictitious such that ‘the DIFC judgement was procured by fraud.
Instead, Mr Justice Henshaw’s quoted Sir Jeremy Cooke’s 2018 judgement which said:
‘On the contrary, as Justice Sir Jeremy Cooke said…“no-one has ever come forward with a coherent explanation for the fact that large sums of money found their way into the bank accounts of the defendant and that false invoices were created with payment instructions which disguised the receipt of those sums by the defendant’.
Permission To Appeal
Haigh subsequently filed an application for permission to appeal the order. However, the Rt. Hon. Lady Justice Carr refused his application. He said: ‘I do not consider that the appeal has a real prospect of success or that that there is any compelling reason why an appeal should be heard.
There is no prospect of an appellate court finding that the Judge’s decision was wrong. He made no arguable error of law or fact. In so far as he exercised discretion, there is no prospect of a court interfering with his approach.’
She added: ‘For the avoidance of doubt, the stay of execution pending determination of the application for permission to appeal is lifted.’
Haigh has also been issued with a disclosure order by the High Court with a penal notice attached. He could face a prison sentence or a fine.
GFH Capital is represented by boutique firm Preiskel & Co LLP while Haigh is a litigant in person.
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