CL-2018-000297, CL-2018-000404, CL-2018-000590, - [2025] EWHC 2364 (Comm)

Mr Fletcher was fair, careful, helpful and straightforward in his oral evidence. In writing, through his witness statement adopted as his evidence in chief, he allied himself to a number of the bad points that Mr Jain sought to maintain and justify in his evidence. At all significant stages in the litigation, Messrs Fletcher, Godson and Jain coordinated their efforts in the defence of SKAT’s respective claims against each of them. In doing so, they used common legal and expert advisors, but without ceasing to be litigants in person (the legal advisors not being qualified in this jurisdiction) and without calling any expert evidence. It was not evident that the involvement of those advisors had provided meaningful assistance to Messrs Fletcher, Godson or Jain. Indeed my sense was, to the contrary, that it had been unhelpful to them without their realising as much.

In Mr Fletcher’s case, significant caution must be attached before placing any significant weight on his evidence in chief, affected adversely as I consider it was by being the product of misdirected team effort. But when free to be himself in the witness box, in my judgment Mr Fletcher was honest with the court at trial, and a reliable witness as to his contemporaneous thinking, motivations and understanding. As usual with anyone becoming involved in the Solo Model trading activity, Mr Fletcher was privy to elements of the incidental dishonesty that surrounded it. This was no more attractive in Mr Fletcher’s case than in the case of others; but it was indeed incidental and though it does Mr Fletcher no credit that he engaged in it, it did not cause me to doubt his honesty when it came to his oral evidence either as to what did and did not happen, to the extent that was in issue, or as to what he knew or understood, or his thinking, at the time.