Quinn Finance & Ors v Lyndhurst Development Trading SA & Ors

[1] I refer to the court's separate judgment in the recusal application mounted in the course of the contempt proceedings brought by the Plaintiffs against one of the Defendants herein (" Lyndhurst ") and two individuals said to have been acting as their agents. That satellite judgment and the current substantive judgment are handed down on the same date.

[2] The subject matter of the Plaintiffs' claims is a series of inter-related purported assignments of a single loan and so-called "supplementary loan agreements" (hereinafter described as " the impugned transactions "). The Plaintiffs make the case that the impugned transactions were unlawful and seek relief accordingly, under Article 367 of the Insolvency (Northern Ireland) Order 1989 and otherwise. The Defendants are Lyndhurst, Innishmore Consultancy Limited (" Innishmore ") and Public Joint Stock Company Univermag Ukraina (" Univermag ").

[3] Initially, the court embarked upon the hearing of a contempt motion initiated by the Plaintiffs. The impetus for the contempt motion was an order of this court, in the form of a Mareva injunction, made by me on 23 rd December 2011. I shall describe this as " the injunction ". It was made ex parte on the application of the Plaintiffs and is directed to Lyndhurst only, in the following terms:

For convenience, I shall describe " directors and officers and servants or agents " as " Lyndhurst's agents ".

[4] Under the umbrella "The Effect of this Order", the injunction further provided: