Claimants who hired a private intelligence firm covertly to extract privileged information from the other side's solicitor have lost their worldwide freezing orders—even though their underlying fraud claim remains strong. In Pliego and another v. Astor Asset Management 3 Ltd and others [2026] EWCA Civ 940, the Court of Appeal upheld the finding of a serious abuse of process—and went further than the first-instance judge, discharging the worldwide freezing orders the claimants had obtained.
Background: a fraud claim and a covert sting
The underlying dispute concerns a Stock Loan Agreement concluded in July 2021, under which the claimants transferred shares in Grupo Elektra worth approximately USD415M in exchange for a loan of just USD115M. The greater part of the share proceeds ultimately passed into the control of the fourth defendant, Vladimir Sklarov. The claimants allege the transaction was procured by fraud.
What made the case extraordinary, however, was what happened next. The claimants engaged Black Cube (formally BC Strategy UK Ltd), a private intelligence firm composed of veterans from special units of the Israeli intelligence community, to run a covert sting against the defendants' litigation solicitor. A Black Cube operative posed as the representative of an Italian oil company seeking to instruct the solicitor in a multi-million-dollar arbitration. He invited the solicitor first to a Zoom call and then to meetings in Amsterdam—one over lunch and one over dinner with alcohol—carefully designed to extract information about the defendants' litigation and settlement strategy, the impact of the freezing orders, and the perceived weaknesses of their case. All meetings were secretly recorded.
For its services, Black Cube was paid a retainer fee of GBP1.14M, payable in two instalments, plus a success fee of 4% of any amount or value received by the claimants if intelligence sourced by Black Cube was “used”. The Court of Appeal observed that the payment terms provided a powerful incentive to Black Cube to adopt unethical methods, as the claimants must have understood.
The Court of Appeal's decision
Lords Justice Males, Phillips, and Foxton unanimously dismissed the claimants' appeal and partially allowed the defendants' cross-appeal. The claimants had challenged the finding of abuse and sought to reinstate their summary judgment application; the defendants cross-appealed on the grounds that the claim should have been struck out in its entirety.
Lord Justice Males, writing for the court, had no difficulty concluding that the conduct was a very serious abuse of process. He described obtaining privileged information by suborning the other side's solicitor by deception as “a form of corruption”, endorsing the first-instance judge's assessment of the conduct as “an affront to justice and inimical to the fundamental norms and values of civil litigation in this jurisdiction”. He added: “Some things are so obvious that they do not need much analysis.”
The court firmly rejected the claimants' argument that their conduct was not abusive because the operation “should” have returned nothing. The claimants were paying millions for Black Cube's expertise in extracting information that should not have been available to them; they expected and intended to benefit from it.
Freezing orders discharged
While the Court of Appeal agreed that an outright strike-out of the claim was not proportionate—given the strength of the claimants' fraud case and the public interest in exposing serious wrongdoing—it found that striking-out only the summary judgment application, as the first-instance judge had done, was insufficient. The court held that the first-instance judge had been wrong to proceed on the basis that nothing unlawful had occurred, and wrong to overlook the possibility of discharging the freezing orders, despite the defendants having applied for this as an alternative remedy.
One of the valuable insights the claimants had obtained through the sting concerned the ways in which the freezing orders were causing serious pressure on the defendants' banking relationships, creating a direct nexus between those orders and the abusive conduct. The court reasoned that had Mr Justice Calver (who earlier considered an application to discharge the freezing orders) been made aware of the Black Cube operation, he would not have continued the freezing orders. A party committing a serious abuse of process could not have expected to benefit from discretionary relief of that kind.
The freezing orders were discharged in their entirety, while the claim itself continues to trial. The defendants may seek to enforce the undertakings in damages that the claimants gave when obtaining and continuing those orders.
What happens next
Should the claimants succeed at trial, it will be for the trial judge to decide whether and to what extent their abusive conduct should disqualify them from the equitable and discretionary relief they seek—including their proprietary claim over the Elektra share proceeds.
Takeaway
The Court of Appeal's message is unambiguous: “privilege hunting” is a very serious abuse of process, and a costs order will not be enough. The discharge of significant worldwide freezing orders—notwithstanding a strong underlying fraud claim—shows just how far courts are prepared to go to deter abusive practices.
Practitioners should also heed Lord Justice Males' pointed postscript: solicitors who are presented with material obtained through “privilege hunting” must consider not only their professional obligations, but also the risk that, by deploying such material they may be encouraging, or assisting their clients to benefit from, criminal acts.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
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