BL-2023-000501 - [2025] EWHC 2334 (Ch)

The claimant’s analysis depends in part on consideration of what Mr Jaffe said about the Payment in the Revoker Proceedings, both in his fifth witness statement in those proceedings, and in cross examination on days 4 to 6 of the phase 2 trial before Cockerill J in October 2021.

In that fifth witness statement, dated 23 July 2021, after explaining that the Payment was made to Pumula by a company on behalf of Mr Anisimov, Mr Jaffe said this:

Mr Stein was not identified during the Revoker Proceedings, even though he was referred to repeatedly as the individual or third party for whose benefit the Payment had been paid to Pumula. I was told without contradiction that this was because Mr Stein did not wish to be identified, and that Mr Jaffe sought to protect his identity despite encouragement to reveal this, including from the trial judge.

In cross examination in the Revoker Proceedings, the case put to Mr Jaffe was that the Payment was his money to do with as he liked such that he could have used it to commence those proceedings sooner, or that it was intended to be used for that purpose. His ability to fund the Revoker Proceedings is not the point that is in issue now. Mr Jaffe indicated during that cross examination that he had a USD2 million windfall not in June, but by September 2012, and that ‘Mr Anisimov indicated that he didn’t want to utilise the services of a third party anymore’. He also said that he had a liability to pay USD1 million to the individual (i.e. Mr Stein), and another liability to spend the same on lawyers and various disbursements, but ‘how I were to fund it and from which account, it didn’t matter whether it’s Pumula or something else’.

During that cross examination Mr Jaffe also said that, because the Payment represented a loan that was immediately written off, Mr Anisimov did not come into the question whether he (Mr Jaffe) was free to spend it. Mr Jaffe indicated that ‘my agreement with the third party was that I needed money at the time and part of it, assuming I put it back later, I’m free to use, and that’s exactly what I did’. This evidence is different from the evidence given in the current proceedings, where Mr Jaffe said that he needed to be sure that he was free to spend the money from Mr Anisimov’s perspective. Mr Jaffe’s evidence in this claim is, however, that he told Mr Stein that he was effectively borrowing from the USD2 million.

On the fifth day of the phase 2 trial, Mr Jaffe was cross examined about the incorporation of Pumula. He said that the idea for setting up Pumula arose after he had had a conversation with Mr Anisimov about him paying the unidentified third party. He accepted that the Payment was never going to be a loan, but a payment for services and disbursements, and he accepted as he did in the present claim that the loan agreement was a sham as it was always intended to be written off, but said that all parties knew the true position, including Mr Stein. He also said in a similar vein that there was an agreement to postpone payment, including to Mr Stein, until the autumn of 2012.

Mr Page placed particular reliance on an answer given by Mr Jaffe, said to be in direct support of the claimant’s case. It was not suggested that this was a concession, but a prediction with which the claimant hopes that the court will now agree.