Robert Lawrie, Ewelina James, and Francesca Donno from the Civil Litigation team of BCL Solicitors, working with Faisal Osman of 33 Chancery Lane, have successfully defended a claim made against their clients. The two companies form part of an international group of online betting companies operating under the prestigious i-gaming brand Parimatch.
Our clients, Fastron and Rillius, entered into a joint venture with Abudantia to expand their business into the Turkish-speaking market. Abudantia provided the market knowledge and expertise, access to payment services, and the infrastructure to operate a website, www.paribahis.com, and Fastron provided a license to use the Parimatch brand.
The joint venture did not work out as planned. After one year, our clients stated that they did not intend to renew the agreement on the basis that the venture had performed poorly and had not met financial expectations. Abudantia claimed that termination after one year was not permitted under the contract, that the performance had been adequate, and that, as a result, under the contract's terms, the contract was renewed for a further three years.
This could have been a contractual dispute about nothing more than the term of the contract: whether there was a short initial term (a "test period") before the term of the contract was extended, how the contract was renewed into an extended term, whether there were conditions for renewal and whether those conditions were met – all pretty standard fare for a commercial dispute.
However, that is not how Abudantia chose to present its case. Instead, it pursued claims that a conspiracy had been hatched and pursued from the highest echelons of the Parimatch Group to cause Abudantia harm and to steal its business. These were potentially highly damaging allegations for a multinational corporate group operating in a series of regulated sectors.
Abudantia commenced the proceedings by attempting (unsuccessfully) to seek ex parte injunctions. As the case developed, the conspiracy allegations demanded a disclosure exercise that involved extensive document searches by some of the Group's most senior individuals. Our clients had no option but to comply, in order to prove that there was no conspiracy.
In the majority of civil litigation of this nature, the Court will set a budget for the case, which will usually determine the extent of costs that can be recovered from the losing party. The disclosure exercise required to meet Abudantia's case on conspiracy was extensive and expensive. When the Court set the budget, our clients could not know the full costs of disclosure. Once they became clear, we persuaded the Court to take the unusual step of increasing the budget for disclosure. Even more unusually, the Court agreed to an exceptional eight-fold increase in the budget for disclosure, from £45,000 to £350,000, taking our clients' total recoverable costs for disclosure to £400,000.
After a two-week trial, the Court comprehensively dismissed all claims. The conspiracy claims failed in their entirety.
We had said from the outset (this was set out at the very start of our clients' Defence) that the claim was exaggerated and that this was fundamentally a contractual dispute between Abudantia and Fastron concerning the renewal of their agreement. The Judge agreed. The judgment notably addressed key commercial principles around performance metrics and contractual interpretation.
The judgment serves as a reminder that conspiracy allegations must be properly evidenced and that commercial disputes should be assessed in light of business realities. A deep understanding of the market in which a client operates is essential.
The case is also notable because of the vast disparity between what Abudantia claimed and the total legal costs it forced our clients to incur. Only shortly before the trial, Abudantia finally set out its claim for loss. Abudantia was pursuing alternative claims based on whether our clients had indeed terminated the agreement, in which case it sought €1.7m based on a contractually-determined termination payment or whether the contract rolled into an extended term. Its claim for damages on the alternative case (no termination and a renewed contractual term) transpired to be no more than €25,000. The trial Judge, Dias J, dealt with this in trenchant terms:
"In other words, a total sum of €25,000 is sought (excluding exemplary damages). This compares starkly with nearly £400,000 that I allowed the Defendants in their costs budget for disclosure, the vast majority of which was attributable to the conspiracy and other tort claims. Truly, it might be said that the mountains laboured mightily and brought forth a mouse, and the court is entitled to query whether the cost and effort of maintaining these claims for such a paltry sum was consonant with the overriding objective."
The judgment can be accessed here: https://www.bailii.org/cgi bin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/Comm/2025/234.html&query=(abudantia)
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