BL-2021-002235 - [2025] EWHC 2367 (Ch)

The next question is whether that custodial sentence should be suspended. Once again, I remind myself that there has been no compliance. The respondent has simply written and said whatever he thought might best advance his own interests. I reject the argument that he has made the statements in question out of a sense of public spiritedness. On the contrary, he has done it in order to be as difficult as possible, whether to improve his own negotiating position, or simply out of spite. It does not matter. There is no mitigation.

But is there any likelihood of compliance, if the order were suspended? Is it likely to encourage the respondent to say, “Well, rather than go to prison, I will obey the injunction. I will give up”? I have to say that there has been very little sign of this so far in this case, though, as I understand it (though not from anything that the respondent has put in evidence), on a previous occasion, when the respondent was sentenced to imprisonment for contempt of court, he decided to purge his contempt after only a short time in prison.

But I also note the strenuous efforts being made by the respondent, through the various (hopeless) applications which he has made in an attempt to stay the sentencing process. And I note that, in his latest witness statement, he says that he

“will pursue the fraud allegation solely through the Part 7 claim and the Court process and will refrain from any external communications or actions inconsistent with the 5 April 2022 Declaration while it remains in force”.

Accordingly, it seems to me that there is a real (rather than illusory) possibility that the respondent retains such a desire not to repeat his previous experience in custody that he will observe the terms of the injunction granted on 5 April 2022 rather than serve a further term.